Online courses help you gain knowledge quickly and as it is imparted by people who have experience of putting product management into practice you can gain knowledge from their experience. Unlike professors who provide theoretical knowledge more, these courses help you shape your knowledge more from practical aspects. At the end of the day, you will be learning more about keywords around product management from these courses, which may or may not be helpful, rather you should focus on the process of product management, which requires a lot of discipline. The more you practice, the better product manager you will become.
There is one important thing around these courses, since they are taught by individuals with their own course syllabus or are part of an organization or a group, they have their own definitions and approach to various product management concepts. For instance, MVP(Minimum Viable Product) definition although stays same, there are different thoughts about what exactly could be called a MVP and how to build one.
As everybody is teaching their own approach, you may get confused on how to apply various concepts and what those would mean. That is why it is advisable to go through books and keep your base stronger with the knoweldge provided by them. Even if approaches vary, the basis stays same.
Another point you must undrstand is that the high paid courses are not necessarily the best ones. You may get the same understanding of the concepts from cheaper or free courses and after application of those you will be able to master them. So do not worry much about if someone has paid for the course, unless it is taught by a well established and proven product manager, it is all the same.
Please note that there are many courses out there and each one teaches almost same thing. The proble is that they are not regulated and as mentioned earlier give their own undersatnding of rpoduct management. The best you can do is follow to the list here and avoid taking up a course which has no backing and is another copy of some other course. When you click on the link, just go through reviews to understand if the course is worth taking up.
There are also many courses within a site, for example, Udemy may have hundreds of courses around product management. What I have mentioned here are the ones with good ranking or are from well know sites in product management. You can explore other course based on your own interest.
Free Courses
- Software Product Management by Coursera: Focuses on software development with agile process. You will find many product management courses which are free to enroll and pursue in Coursera. The certifications of completion however, are paid. It is upto you to decide if you want to have a certificate to tell someone that you completed these courses.
- Digital Product Management Specialization by Coursera: Another program by University of Virginia. Focuses on hypothesis and lean product development.
- IBM Product Manager Professional Certificate: Product management from the lens of IBM.
- edX Product Management course: edX has many free courses same as coursera and has wide choices of product courses. You can select any of thm based on your research of ratings and reviews and also how easy it is for you to follow up the trainer.
Paid Courses
- Become a Product Manager: One of the best paid course on Udemy, which can be bought for much lesser price on the sale days. It has good rating and teaches you quite basic stuff by going through each concept individually. It is recommended to go through this course if you are just starting.
- Product Management A-Z: Another Udemy course which has good rating and provides better teaching on how to appraoch product management practically.
- Product Manager Certification (PMC): Product school is one the site where you can get lot of resources to learn product management. Apart from courses it provides free books and some free certifications. You can start with this course and then move on to other resources on this site.
- Product Management 101– Another course covering the basics. Focuses on Strategic product management from the beginning.
- Great Product Manager: A course focused on Big tech’s product management.
- Product Owner Certification Prep & mock exams for Scrum 2024: Good to work on your product ownership skills and prepare for agile scrum exams.
- Product Management by Career Foundry: A comprehensive course to cover product management as a field. They vouch to focus on individuals with great attention to make them ready for product field. If you are in Germany and unemployed, you take advantage of free vouchers to do these courses for free.
- Product Manager- Nanodegree Program by Udacity: Udacity is one of the platform which promises good practical training. It has many free courses but their nanodegree programs are paid.
- Linkedin Product Management courses: Linkedin is a subscription based model, so the courses comes with the subscription only. You can have a free one month of learning.