Product Management

Product Management explores the unique challenges of creating products and bringing them to market.

The role of a product manager has evolved and changed significantly in recent years. Today, high-tech companies widely organize with product managers serving as the central decision and coordination point for all aspects and stages of a product. With the accelerating speed of innovation across most industries, the PM role has been evolving in traditional industries as well. 

This course explores both established and new frameworks that span the product lifecycle, the constituencies that the PM orchestrates, and the skills required to do so successfully. Students develop these skills by applying tools and methodologies to real problems, working with PMs from a sponsor company, and delivering on a project addressing a major product opportunity or challenge. Project work complements a wide range of class topics including product strategy, team management, operations, metrics, roadmaps, ideation methods, resource planning, product requirements, difficult decisions a PM must take, and more.

We select sponsors from leading tech companies at various stages and across industry verticals to partner with us on the projects. Below are examples of the diverse set of challenges that project sponsors bring to us for the class. Students work in groups of five and are partnered with one sponsor to take these very open-ended project ideas and turn them into defined sets of problem statements and solutions to bring value to the sponsor companies and their customers.

Project Examples

• Develop a set of features on an interactive live streaming service to increase value for brands that sponsor creators.
• Research and develop a product for a new financial product targeted at lower-income customers.
• Research and write specifications for ways to create collaborative learning opportunities within a learning management tool.
• Research and write specifications for solutions to re-engage users who have signed up for accounts but are inactive in a leading collaboration platform.

Product Management (ALP 305) is available to the following students:

• Students, with or without prior product management experience, who are interested in exploring the emerging frameworks and tools essential for success in the PM role (in partnership with PMs from a sponsor company, students work on projects and apply these methods through a hands-on learning experience)
• Second-year MBA and all MSx students at Stanford GSB