Digital Product Management

Group	Teacher	Department	Language
Year 1	Angelo Romasanta	Operaciones, Innovación y Data Sciences	ENG

Workload distribution

Session 1: Transformation of products and the role of product managers
Content:
- Physical, digital and connectivity components of products
- Data-driven digital solutions and implications for business offerings
- Decoupling products and implications for business offerings
- Role of product managers: archetypes, skills, challenges

Session 2: Human-centered approaches and user research methods
Content:
- Implementing human-centered approaches for product design: personas, user research, user experience, journey mapping
- Identifying users' pain points, latent needs, technological contexts, and organizational environments
- User research methods: Semi-structured customer interviews, ethnographic-type observations, informal chats, focus group, empathy maps, and others.

Session 3: User requirements workshop
Content:
- Practice empathizing with users and customers
- Researching the user and customer context
- How to draft user needs statements
- Practice structured tools to adopt insightful perspectives about users

Session 4: Designing digital solutions workshop
Content:
- Learn how to translate user needs into business offerings and product specifications
- Practice mapping stakeholders, specific technological context and user's environment.
- Identifying potential benefits and limitations of your product.

Session 5: Prototyping workshop
Content:
- Practice prototyping methods and strategies aligned with product specifications and customer needs.
- Practice creating a rapid prototype of your product incorporating feedback loops

Session 6: Product development processes and agile in practice
Content:
- How to select and implement a product development process aligned with product architecture and characteristics
- Agile and Waterfall methodologies
- The experience of implementing agile in a selected company.

Session 7: Product architectures and product management in practice
Content:
- Building blocks of products
- Modular and integral product architectures
- Implication of product architectures for centralized and decentralized development
- The experience of product management in a selected company

Session 8: Prioritization and roadmapping
Content:
- Roadmap's structure: How to define direction, priorities, and progress of a product over time.
- Practice defining action plans that aligns organizations around short and long-term goals for the product vision.
- Prioritization analytical frameworks

Session 9: Products demos and conclusions
- Presentation of products demos, voting and selection of best products, concluding remarks.

COURSE CONTRIBUTION TO PROGRAM

Physical products are becoming increasingly digital and data-driven. Harnessing the power of digital technologies such as internet of things (IoT), radio-frequency identification (RFID), data analytics, artifical intelligence, cloud and more, products are being transformed and with them the business processes for companies that need to accommodate to this hybrid nature of products.
Product management must address the challenges of designing, developing, and managing purely digital or hybrid products with digital/ data layers across their product life cycle. Product managers face the challenge of leading cross-functional teams that are put together with experts covering a wide range of capabilities in software/ hardware development, data science, user experience, innovation and business, and must be equipped with the skills to apply strategical thinking and manage complex products lifecycle.
Managing products is at the heart of many businesses since various functions and roles are involved. From startups to large and small organizations, all seek to develop successful digital solutions, which require an understanding of key actors, methods, tools and approaches for managing digital products.
The student will learn to manage user experience frameworks to fit user's need and user journeys with technological solutions, how to translate needs into product specifications, techniques to activate data-driven opportunities and comprehend the impact of human behavior in product development, agile/ waterfall methodologies and how to choose the right development process for developing digital/hybrid solutions, prototyping methods, and roadmapping. In the course we will also worked on student's soft skills to present and communicate final ideas, to incorporate real-time feedback and to manage conflict and disagreement in heterogeneous teams, which are core to the role of product managers.

Course Learning Objectives

The objectives of the course is that students are able to understand, implement and assess:
- Landscape of products in the digital age: physical, digital and hybrid products
- Product architectures: modular, integral product architectures and building blocks of a product.
- Role of product managers, capabilities and skills requirements
- Concepts and frameworks to ideate products: ?personas', customer centric design, user journeys and how to articulate customer experience across product development
- Methods for product development: Waterfall and agile methodologies and frameworks to choose the appropriate development model according to the product characteristics.
- Minimum viable products and prototyping methods
- Product roadmapping: how to build a product roadmap, milestones and metrics.
- Scaling products, frameworks for features prioritization in products lifecycle and business implications

Complementary, the course aims at exposing students to core soft skills core to the role of product managers. The course goals is that students:
- Understand and apply basic principles of working in multidisciplinary teams within and across organizations
- Learn and practice how to communicate final ideas and get real-time feedback
- Manage conflict and disagreement in heterogeneous teams

Methodology

The course is organized around 6 main blocks:
I. Products landscape and the role of the product manager
II. Product ideation
III. Product design
IV. Prototyping
V. Product development and product architectures
VI. Prioritization, roadmapping and scaling
To achieve the objectives of the course, the format of it would be based on:
In-class discussions. Participatory discussions where basic concepts, frameworks, methods related to each of the topics will be introduced and discussed. In-class discussions sessions will be often accompanied by suggested readings, which may be articles, book chapters or technical notes.
Cases. The case method is an effective pedagogical tool to sharpen students' analytical skills and enhance students' learning experience through their active participation. From the participatory dynamics in class, we will extract basic concepts and frameworks relevant for product development. Students must prepare the cases before class to participate in the class discussions.
Role play. A role play will be performed in class where students will be assigned different roles in product management. The professor will send the instructions in advance and students will prepare their strategy in groups before class. Role play will simulate a real-life decision about a digital solution. Students will practice assembling data, defending, and discussing their positions while listening to others' arguments.
Workshops. The course will organize a set of workshops across the phases of digital product development, where students will work in groups and will apply the concepts, tools and frameworks discussed in class to develop a specific digital solution. The workshops will incorporate different feedback loops from other students' group and peers, and at the end of the course students will have the opportunity to briefly present and demo the digital solution developed.
Participation of invited professional experts. The course aims at incorporating guest speakers during the course that share their personal experience in digital product management, and discuss with students the main challenges of developing products in the digital age.

Bibliography

- Gnanasambandam, C.; Harrysson, M.; Srivastava, S.; Wu, Y. (2017) "Product managers for the digital world?. McKinsey. Accessed September 2022: https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/technology-media-and-telecommunications/our-insights/product-managers-for-the-digital-world
- Chisa, E. "Evolution of the Product Manager? (2014) Communications of the ACM, November 2014, Vol. 57 No. 11, Pages 48-52. Accessed September 2022: https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2014/11/179824-evolution-of-the-product-manager/fulltext
- Christensen, C.M; Hall, T.; Dillon, D.; and Duncan, D.S. (2016) "Know Your Customers' Jobs to Be Done?. Harvard Business Review. Accessed September 2022: https://hbr.org/2016/09/know-your-customers-jobs-to-be-done
- Case: SI-193-E "Vueling's mobile strategy takes flight?
- Case: "Motorola Droid 2: The Product Manager's Dilemma? 2014, KEL772-PDF-ENG https://store.hbr.org/product/motorola-s-droid-2-the-product-manager-s-dilemma/KEL772
- Henfridsson, O., Mathiassen, L. & Svahn, F. Managing technological change in the digital age: the role of architectural frames. Journal of Information Technology 29, 27-43 (2014).
- Porter, M. E., & Heppelmann, J. E. (2014). "How smart, connected products are transforming competition?. Harvard business review, 92(11), 64-88.Accessed September 2022: https://hbr.org/2014/11/how-smart-connected-products-are-transforming-competition

IMPORTANT: Additional materials will be provided in the Moodle before the course starts

Type:	OPT	Curs:	1	Period:	S semester
ECTS Credits:	3 ECTS

Digital Product Management (2235.YR.015459.1)

General information

Type:

Curs:

Period:

ECTS Credits:

Teaching Staff:

Prerequisites

Previous Knowledge

Workload distribution

COURSE CONTRIBUTION TO PROGRAM

Course Learning Objectives

Methodology

Assessment criteria

Bibliography

Timetable and sections

Timetable Year 1