Jul 16-17, 1pm – 4:30pm EDT

Buy your Foundations ticket

Training Workshop Overview

The role of a product manager is a complicated one, that changes and shifts, depending on the product, team, organisation, and PM themselves. A myriad of skills, at all points of the product development lifecycle, all seem equally important and urgent. As new product managers enter the role, it’s difficult to understand what to focus on first, and how to begin the path towards mastering the skills and craft of product management. How can product managers be assured that they are focusing on the right skills?

Foundations is an overview course that attempts to clarify and define the aspects of the role that a new product manager should tackle first. Focused specifically on core team practice and methods that drive the delivery of value to customers, this course offers overviews and definitions of the theories and mindsets that drive the core elements of the product role. Once certain theories are explored, the course deep-dives into specific skills and processes that allow product managers to effectively run a team dedicated to continuous learning and delivery.

How does “remote” work?

This two half-day workshop is dedicated to product management learning. As with our in-person workshops, you can focus all of your time and energy into two concentrated half-days of product learning with full access to our tried-and-tested curriculums, expert trainers, and a community of product peers.

Each day will run 1pm – 4:30pm EDT (10am – 1:30pm PDT) and will include live online lectures interspersed with regular discussion, Q&As, and group activities to encourage hands-on learning. We’ll use Zoom and other digital collaboration tools.

To keep you energised and engaged, we’ll also run warm-ups and icebreakers, and take regular breaks.

Timings:

• Join us online from 12:45pm EDT (9:45am PDT), to connect calmly and help mitigate accessibility issues

• Class will start at 1pm EDT (10am PDT) and end at 4:30pm EDT (1:30pm PDT) each day

To participate successfully you’ll need a comfortable quiet space, with a good internet connection, where you can fully participate and focus.

Please note: This workshop is run as two half-day sessions and you must attend both parts

What You’ll Learn

Product Management Foundations is comprised of six modules. Each module includes a lecture component on theory and practice, interspersed with hands-on activities. This ensures that you are afforded an opportunity to apply and work with concepts in a setting that will answer questions and facilitate critical thinking.

Pre-Workshop Module:

You will be given access to the first module (Product Mindsets) in advance of your training and you’ll need to complete this ahead of your workshop. This module will cover:

• Defining product
• The problem landscape
• Breaking down learning mindsets at different points through the product development lifecycle

On-the-Day Modules:

Design Thinking

• What design thinking is and why it’s important
• The role of product in design thinking
• Common frameworks and how they link together

Goals Alignment

• Creating effective goals and aligning the team and organization around them
• OKRs vs. KPIs vs. Metrics
• The difference between business goals and product outcomes

Hypothesis & Validation

• Designing tests around your assumptions
• The evaluation process
• Lean experiments

User Interview Guides

• Different types of interview
• Creating interview guides that do not bias or lead the subject
• Using interview guides to ideate, and to validate assumptions

User Stories & Backlogs

• Epics and stories: the differences between them and how to use them
• Conveying priority to your team
• Translating user needs into product features

Team Culture & Communication

• “Culture as product”
• What high-performing teams look like and how to create one
• The role of a product manager in a healthy team

Key Takeaways

At the end of the workshop, you will be confident in your understanding of the role of a product manager, including a firm grasp of the concept of design thinking and how it is important. You’ll have a clear understanding of where the customer sits in the product practice, how to define and prioritise your customer personas, and how not to bias your customer research. You’ll return to your role feeling confident in your ability to facilitate a goals conversation, and how to structure hypothesis for lean tests.

Buy your Foundations ticket

July 20-21, 12pm – 3:30pm EDT

Buy your User Story Mapping ticket

Training Workshop Overview

Ideal Agile development teams build small valuable chunks of functionality. But, that’s easier said than done. Not all products or features are small and breaking them down into small buildable parts is challenging. And, even when you do, how do the people building those small parts not lose sight of the big picture?

Story mapping is a simple practice for telling the story of a whole product or feature starting by telling the stories of the users who’ll use it. In this fast-paced workshop, you’ll learn the concepts of story mapping by building a map collaboratively with others. You’ll learn advanced techniques for slicing a map to find small viable product releases, and then how to build your product using smaller stories without losing sight of the big picture.

How does “remote” work?

Usually a one-day workshop, our trainer, Jeff Patton has been working hard to convert this workshop into two half-day sessions:

• There will be one half-day session on July 20 and one on July 21
• Each session will run for 3.5 hours
• The start time will be at 12pm EDT on both days
• We will be using Zoom as the primary tool for discussion and Mural as our main collaboration platform
• You’ll see your work group’s maps and everyone else’s too – so you’ll get a chance to learn from each other
• Attendees will be divided into working groups for the sessions
• Jeff (your trainer) will be available for an open, 1-hour “office hours” session after each of your classes – attendance is optional but you can use this time for deep-dive discussions on anything you like
• To participate successfully you will need a computer with a webcam, microphone, headphones, and a good internet connection
• You’ll need to set up for the workshop in a comfortable quiet space where you can fully participate and focus

Please note: This workshop is run as two half-day sessions and you must attend both parts

Buy your User Story Mapping ticket

July 20-24, 12pm – 14pm EDT (9am – 11am PDT)
(no class on July 22)

Buy your ticket to this workshop

Designing Product Teams with Intention: Crafting your Successful Team

It’s time to give teams the same attention and craft we give our products. In this workshop, Christina will share lessons from top companies in Silicon Valley that apply to anyone who functions as part of a team: equally applicable to managers and peer leaders, these approaches will make your team thrive. Awesome products come from awesome teams, so it’s time to stop doing business as usual: learn how to design a team for maximum impact.

Christina knows how to design and inspire diverse teams to work together, going all out in pursuit of a single, ultra-challenging goal – this course is an intimate opportunity to learn her proven results-forward methodology for product team design. Christina will take you into the factors that inform strategically crafted product teams, and address the core question: why do some product teams break while others thrive?

• You will consume many virtual Post-its as you explore:
• Cultural tensions facing teams
• Cadences of winning product teams
• Setting norms, and why they matter
• How to use OKRs to help teams define, tackle and realize big goals in a methodical way (leaving nothing to chance!)
• Organisational learning and teams
• Feedback for individuals and for teams: how regular check-ins can keep you on track to success

How does “remote” work?

To make it easier to digest in a remote format and allow for reflection between sessions, we have taken this incredibly valuable, tried and tested, one-day workshop and broken it into four bite-sized sessions – just 120 minutes (2hrs) each and spread across four separate days. The content covered will be the same as the full day workshop, although optimised for remote training, with group activities and collaboration throughout:

• There will be one session at the same time each day on 20th, 21st, 23rd, and 24th July – there will not be a session on Wednesday the 22nd
• The start time each day will be 12pm EDT
• Each session will run for 2 hrs
• There will be pre-workshop activities and homework throughout the course
• We will be using Zoom as our primary tool with exercises taking place within Zoom and also in other tools like Mural
• Attendees will be divided into working groups for the sessions
• Each working group will have an assignment to complete between sessions
• To participate successfully you will need a computer with a webcam, microphone, headphones, and a good internet connection

Please note: This workshop is split across multiple days and you must attend all parts

Schedule

• Day 1, July 20: Introduction to the model for high performing teams and cross-cultural conflict
• Day 2, July 21: Norms for team cohesion, roles for individual management
• Day 3, July 23: OKRs for goal setting
• Day 4, July 24: A cadence of continuous improvement

Buy your ticket to this workshop

July 20-23, 8am – 10am PDT (11am – 1pm EDT / 4pm – 6pm BST)

Buy your OKRs workshop ticket

Training Workshop Overview

Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) are a worldwide phenomenon, helping to drive the success of organizations like Google, Zynga, Oracle, Twitter, and many more. They are particularly suited to driving the alignment necessary for a high-performing cross-functional product team. But if not handled correctly, OKRs can quickly lead to silos, unethical behaviour, and demotivation.

During this workshop, you’ll gain first-hand experience using OKRs throughout a simulated year-in-the-life of a product team, handling what goes wrong, adjusting course, and managing expectations. You’ll also get the chance to set OKRs for your team and get live feedback you can leverage when you get back to the office.

How does “remote” work?

Bruce (your trainer) has converted this one-day workshop into 4 bite-sized sessions taking place over one week so that you can fit it in around your everyday life (and avoid some Zoom fatigue!). We’ll do a little warm-up exercise each day, and take a mandatory 5-10 minute break in the middle of each session.

There will be a combination of pre-workshop activities, homework, a few solo exercises, and group activities throughout.

To maximize our hands-on time in class, every participant is expected to complete about 45 minutes of prep before each session, including watching a few short videos (5-10 min) and completing 1-2 short solo exercises.

• There will be sessions on the 20th, 21st, 22nd, and 23rd of July.
• The start time will be at 8am PDT (11am EDT / 4pm BST) on all 4 days
• Each session will run for 2 hours
• You’ll meet over Zoom, use Breakout Rooms for team exercises, and use Google Jamboard, Google Sheets, and Slack for collaboration
• Each session focuses on hands-on exercises in small teams of 3-4 people
• Each participant will also have the option to book a 30-minute coaching session with your trainer, Bruce McCarthy
• To participate successfully you will need a computer with a webcam, microphone, headphones, and a good internet connection

Please note: This workshop is split across multiple days and you must attend all parts

What You’ll Learn

How do the best-performing product cultures use OKRs? Topics we will cover:

• How to define effective OKRs
• How to set annual OKRs and break them down quarterly
• How to determine the right level of ambition for your organization
• How OKRs drive your product roadmap
• How to map OKRs to people and teams
• How to make OKRs visible across your organization
• How to turn OKRs into action plans
• How to monitor and report on OKRs
• How to adjust OKRs when thing don’t go as planned
• How to get buy-in on OKRs from your stakeholders

We’ll also cover the most common what-if scenarios teams experience (or fear):

• What if we can’t measure the most important things?
• What if we miss our targets?
• What if our outputs don’t generate the outcomes we wanted?
• What if our direction changes mid-year?
• What if we realize our objectives were wrong all along?

Buy your OKRs workshop ticket

July 28-29 + Aug 4-5, 8am – 10am PDT (4:00pm – 6:00pm BST)

Buy your User Behaviour ticket

Training Workshop Overview

A practical, hands-on way to understand how the human brain works and apply that knowledge to user experience and product design. Learn the psychological principles behind how our brain makes sense of the world and apply that to product design and create easy to use innovative products.

We’ll look at two frameworks; one to supercharge the UI and the second to design, plan, and launch innovative new features and ideas.

How does “remote” work?

Joe (your trainer) is a trained, experienced teacher so expect to be sketching, designing and applying the psychology from the very start of the workshop. He has been working remotely for 5 years and is experienced in delivering this workshop remotely across 4 x 2-hour sessions:

• There will be sessions on the 28th July, 29th of July, 4th August, and 5th August
• The start time will be 8:00 am PDT (4:00 pm BST) on all 4 days
• Each session will run for 2 hours
• We will be using Zoom as the primary tool for discussion and Miro/Slack as the main collaboration platforms
• To participate successfully you will need a computer with a webcam, microphone, headphones, and a good internet connection

Please note: This workshop is split across multiple days and you must attend all parts

What You’ll Learn

Through a series of fun, practical exercises you’ll learn:

• Psychology and interaction design – how to evaluate and design interactions such as onboarding, search, navigation and eCommerce using psychology
• Psychology and user experience – evaluating and improving digital products based on psychology. How humans perceive and understand the world around them and how to build your product around that framework
• Psychology and the dark arts – persuasive design, cognitive biases and other brain hacks. Do they really work and how to apply them in product design. What are the ethics of applying psychology to digital design?

After the workshop you’ll be able to:

• Design products, apps and websites that match how people think and behave
• Find, understand, evaluate and apply psychology theory to digital product design
• Make better, informed design decisions and advocate to the wider team using psychology theory

Buy your User Behaviour ticket

July 20-24, 11am – 3pm EDT (4pm – 8pm BST)
No class on July 21

Buy your Roadmapping ticket

Workshop Overview

Ask 10 people what a product roadmap is and you will get 10 different answers! This artifact is often misunderstood, yet an incredibly powerful if done right. Creating a great one is part art and part science. In this full-day session, we will talk through the purposes of a roadmap and a process for establishing your product’s vision, gaining alignment with your stakeholders, validating themes, and presenting to upper-level execs in order to maximize your team’s impact.

Key questions to answer include:

• What are the differences between product strategy, a product roadmap and a feature release plan?
• How do I relate my product work to business objectives?
• How can I balance the need to plan, while staying lean and agile?
• How do I look beyond the next quarter without over-committing?
• How do I confirm projects or initiatives that have not been fully validated by customers?
• How do I manage stakeholders and their pressure/influence?
• How do I prioritize what product aspects to work on 1st, 2nd, 3rd…?
• What’s the best way to present a product roadmap to my stakeholders?

How does “remote” work?

Usually a one day workshop, C. Todd Lombardo (your trainer) has converted this into four sessions spread across one week. Each of the four sessions will be 2 hrs – but we’ll take breaks regularly. We’ll meet on Zoom for discussion and use other collaboration and chat tools throughout.

• There will be sessions on the July 20, 22 , 23, and 24 – there will not be a session on Tuesday, July 21
• The start time will be at 8am PDT (11am EDT / 4pm BST) on all 4 days
• Each session will run for 2 hours
• You’ll be using Zoom and other collaboration tools presented by your trainer
• Each session focuses on hands-on exercises in small teams of 3-4 people
• To participate successfully you will need a computer with a webcam, microphone, headphones, and a good internet connection

Please note: This workshop is split across multiple days and you must attend all parts

Class Schedule

July 20: 8am – 10am PDT / 11am – 1pm EDT / 4pm – 6pm BST

July 21: no class

July 22: 8am – 10am PDT / 11am – 1pm EDT / 4pm – 6pm BST

July 23: 8am – 10am PDT / 11am – 1pm EDT / 4pm – 6pm BST

July 24: 8am – 10am PDT / 11am – 1pm EDT / 4pm – 6pm BST

Buy your Roadmapping ticket

This workshop is now SOLD OUT

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July 16-17, 1pm – 4:30pm EDT (8am – 1.3-pm PDT / 4pm – 9.30pm BST)

Buy your workshop ticket

Training Workshop Overview

We know that product managers are responsible for so much more than simply product delivery but are often given little authority. However, as product managers develop in their roles and continue to confidently deliver value to their customers, it is crucial that they begin to align their organisation around their process and vision in order to have an impact.

Communication and Alignment empowers product people to begin understanding how to align their organisation around product process and practice. In this overview workshop, we outline some of the grounded, tactical skills that product managers can use every day, and how they can add a layer of strategic thinking to help collaborate with their stakeholders.

Together we delve into communication strategies that will help foster trust and collaboration within your organisation, how to evaluate an opportunity, how to extract maximum value from your research activities, and much more.

How does “remote” work?

This two half-day workshop is dedicated to product management learning. As with our in-person workshops, you can focus all of your time and energy into two concentrated half-days of product learning with full access to our tried-and-tested curriculums, expert trainers, and a community of product peers.

Each day will run 1pm – 4:30pm EDT (10am – 1:30pm PDT / 4pm – 9.30pm BST) and will include live online lectures interspersed with regular discussion, Q&As, and group activities to encourage hands-on learning. We’ll use Zoom and other digital collaboration tools.

To keep you energised and engaged, we’ll also run warm-ups and icebreakers, and take regular breaks.

Timings:

• Join us online from 12:45pm EDT (9:45am PDT), to connect calmly and help mitigate accessibility issues

• Class will start at 1:00pm EDT (10:00am PDT) and end at 4:30pm EDT (1:30 PDT) each day

To participate successfully you’ll need a comfortable quiet space, with a good internet connection, where you can fully participate and focus.

Please note: This workshop is run as two half-day sessions and you must attend both parts

What You’ll Learn

Communication & Alignment is a training workshop set across two half-day sessions. Each module includes a lecture component on theory and practice, interspersed with up to three hands-on activities. This ensures that you have an opportunity to apply and work with concepts in a setting that will answer questions and facilitate critical thinking.

Syllabus:

• Stakeholder Management: A deep-dive into organisational relationships and understanding how to build a communication strategy
• Evaluating Opportunity: Understanding how to unpack product assumptions and line up macro data to establish product viability and the foundations for product/market fit
• Conducting Synthesis: Distilling insights from research and how to collaborate with stakeholders to deepen user understanding and influence
• Prioritisation: Covering a range of techniques and their uses for alignment at points of the product development lifecycle
• Reporting Out: Understanding why you report out, how to report out at different levels in an organisation and outside it, and understanding bias as it relates to reporting

Key Takeaways

You will come away from this workshop with the skills you need in order to build a strategic layer onto your core product practices. You will understand how to evaluate a potential product idea/change for value, and how to use process as an alignment tool within your company. You’ll return to your role with a firm grasp of where you should include your stakeholders as collaborators, understanding how to build effective relationships with said stakeholders, and with the ability to create a communication strategy with your organisation.

Buy your workshop ticket

This workshop is now SOLD OUT

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July 16-17, 1pm – 4:30pm EDT

Buy your Mapping workshop ticket

Definition

The definition of systems thinking is a “holistic approach to evaluating how a system’s parts relate, and how a system works over time.” Using systems thinking through systems mapping in your product practice is critical for understanding risk and spotting opportunities for innovation.

Training Workshop Overview

Designed for working product managers who are striving to create product strategy, this training workshop will enable you to use maps effectively in order to make critical product decisions, communicate with stakeholders, and facilitate a shared understanding.

Not be confused with the process of story mapping, systems maps come in all shapes and sizes; user journey maps, experience maps, process maps, flows, etc. The key part of maps is that they help the people involved in building products understand the system(s) which underpin their organisation, customer base, workflow, etc. At the end of the session you’ll have the key tools and techniques necessary to effectively facilitate mapping sessions and achieve desired outcomes.

How does “remote” work?

This two half-day workshop is dedicated to product management learning. As with our in-person workshops, you can focus all of your time and energy into two concentrated half-days of product learning with full access to our tried-and-tested curriculums, expert trainers, and a community of product peers.

Each day will run 1pm – 4:30pm EDT (10am – 1:30pm PDT) and will include live online lectures interspersed with regular discussion, Q&As, and group activities to encourage hands-on learning. We’ll use Zoom and other digital collaboration tools.

To keep you energised and engaged, we’ll also run warm-ups and icebreakers, and take regular breaks.

Timings:

• Join us online from 12:45pm EDT (9:45am PDT), to connect calmly and help mitigate accessibility issues

• Class will start at 1:00pm EDT (10:00am PDT) and end at 4:30pm EDT (1:30 PDT) each day

To participate successfully you’ll need a comfortable quiet space, with a good internet connection, where you can fully participate and focus.

Please note: This workshop is run as two half-day sessions and you must attend both parts

What You’ll Learn

We will use a collaborative scenario in this training workshop to drive hands-on learning. Additionally, you will be prompted at the end of each exercise to reflect on actions or practices from your own products. The following topics will be covered:

• An overview of systems thinking and the utility of mapping
• Defining goals for mapping exercises, and aligning stakeholders to potential outcomes
• A tactical guide to maps, including:
  • Types of maps
  • How interactions create outcomes
  • Who to include and how to include them
• How to evaluate and decide on structure:
• Selling the value of the mapping process to stakeholders
• Map creation process:
  • What do you need to know?
  • What are you looking for?
  • Who is involved?
  • How can product managers guide towards success?

Key Takeaways

At the end of the workshop, you will have the ability to use maps to achieve goals and outcomes within your organization and will have a firm understanding of key mapping frameworks and scenarios. You’ll be able to identify the right map for the organizational challenge and have the tools needed to effectively facilitate collaboration on maps within your wider team. In short, you will have a plan for maintaining the effective use of maps and adopting them as a long term asset.

Buy your Mapping workshop ticket

This workshop is now SOLD OUT

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July 16-17, 1pm – 4:30pm EDT

Buy your Metrics workshop ticket

Have you ever asked, “How do I know if my product is successful”? As Marty Cagan, the author of Inspired, and the godfather of modern product management has said – “as product managers, it is our job to discover that which is valuable, feasible, viable, and usable”. We can only know if we’ve achieved those aims by measuring our progress in some way – so metrics and product analytics are critical to building successful products.

Metrics /ˈmɛtrɪks/ (noun) A standard of measurement by which efficiency, performance, progress, or quality of a plan, process, or product can be assessed.

In this workshop we will cover all the fundamentals a product manager, designer, or leader needs to know about metrics – so you can make better data-driven decisions.

What You’ll Learn

• Understanding why metrics are important
• Understanding what you need to measure and why
• Unpacking the jargon of metrics and analytics
• How to create and define useful metrics
• Understanding the risks in metrics
• How to operationalise metrics and build an evidence-driven culture

Key Takeaways

After this workshop, you’ll be able to return to your team and ensure you’re measuring the right things without being distracted by all the noise. This workshop will help you to not only understand metrics as a concept but give you the tools to develop a clear plan for applying this to your everyday work.

How does “remote” work?

This two half-day workshop is dedicated to product management learning. As with our in-person workshops, you can focus all of your time and energy into two concentrated half-days of product learning with full access to our tried-and-tested curriculums, expert trainers, and a community of product peers.

Each day will run 1pm – 4:30pm EDT (10am – 1:30pm PDT) and will include live online lectures interspersed with regular discussion, Q&As, and group activities to encourage hands-on learning. We’ll use Zoom and other digital collaboration tools.

To keep you energised and engaged, we’ll also run warm-ups and icebreakers, and take regular breaks.

Timings:

• Join us online from 12:45pm EDT (9:45am PDT), to connect calmly and help mitigate accessibility issues

• Class will start at 1:00pm EDT (10:00am PDT) and end at 4:30pm EDT (1:30 PDT) each day

To participate successfully you’ll need a comfortable quiet space, with a good internet connection, where you can fully participate and focus.

Please note: This workshop is run as two half-day sessions and you must attend both parts

Buy your Metrics workshop ticket

This workshop is now SOLD OUT

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Training Workshop Overview

Prioritization is hard and it’s also what makes excellent product managers. Product strategy is about deciding what not to do, but it’s hard to know when or what to say “no” to. Prioritization becomes even harder as companies evolve, grow, and form more product teams since teams lack a common language to make systematic decisions.

In this workshop, you will be taught a prioritization framework that you can systematically apply across your team and organization that will enable you to make decisions that will maximize for IMPACT.

Remote Workshop Format

In order to continue offering product management training in a safe environment for our attendees and trainers, we have devised a new interactive, remote workshop format.

July 20: 9:00am – 11:30am (2.5hrs) PDT

July 21: 9:00am – 11:30am (2.5hrs) PDT

July 22: 9:00am- 11:30am (2.5hrs) PDT

This workshop is part of our #mtpcon Digital 2020 event, happening on 13-15 July (tickets sold separately).