Product School

There's no real school for Product Management, but I think all PMs know that working with industry experts is the best way to gain that key PM skill. Although the content of the PLC course was decent (it's a lot of information you can find elsewhere for much less cost). The benefit really comes from working with a great instructor. Navin Nair taught our class and I really enjoyed his teaching style. He ensured we had a good class discussion around different topics, didn't just "talk about the slides" but brought some really applicable real-life examples. The exercises we did he also ensured to create we all presented and discussed the different outcomes. 

Not sure how Product School has such raving reviews. The majority of the learning takes place virtually via videos and slides. The content is informative but the online learning platform is not super user friendly which is surprising for a school that supposedly is specialized in tech product mgmt. The 36.5 hours of instructor-led learning promised in the course brochure are not really instructor led (it's you working on a group project for 90+ minutes of each 120 minute class). The project canvases in Mural are poorly designed and not explained well. (Design and communication should be baseline for this space, so I'm confused again as to why the school does not practice what it sells). I also found it frustrating that one of my team members did not collaborate well. Because of the structure of the class, I was stuck with them throughout. The one plus was that I was able to use the language from the syllabus and course content to boost my resume, but in retrospect, I wish I had just signed up for Coursera or another option at the fraction of the cost. Really not worth the $5K price tag.

I have thoroughly enjoyed my live PMC sessions with my classmates, project team members and the instructor Ronke Majekodunmi. Before I enrolled in her class, I thoroughly researched all instructors on the syllabus. I wanted to find someone who looked like me so that I could see myself in that role. She was the only one on that list and it has been a fantastic experience being a learner in her class. Ronke breathed life into the lectures, PowerPoints, and videos by providing us with real life examples, chunks of wisdom and advice, encouragement, and perspective. I also enjoyed the additional recommended resources she provided throughout the course that added additional context to the lectures. My journey would not have been possible without the exceptional support, guidance, and communication from our instructor. I highly recommend enrolling in her class and listening to her podcast!

My experience with The Product School was great! The course did a good job of ramping the student up from the basics of product development to the eventual final project. The course is supplemented with the product schools own book that is a great reference for when you don't understand a concept. My Instructor, Farhaz Karmali had a strong background in Product Management and could pull examples from his own experience when teaching us. He's great when explaining different concepts of PM and even gave us helpful feedback before and after our final projects. All in all a great experience. 

 February 8th, 2020 marked a very important journey in expanding my expertise in my career as a Product Manager. My experience at Product school has been a pretty amazing to say the least.  I would like to give a special thanks to my Instructor Dr. Joel Palathinkal, Dr. Joel is a very influential person. He always made me think out of the box and innovative.  What is awesome about him is that he does not give you a yes or no answer, he introduces the answer as storytelling and make you deduce the correct answer for your question. I once asked Dr. Joel how can get useful feedback from customers in order to come-up with a monetization plan, instead of throwing an answer at me, Dr. Joel asked the class a few questions and was able to filter out few people and then he introduced these people to a product and while Dr. Joel was presenting this product this select group was really engage and were actually willing to pay a certain subscription fee. Instead of Dr. Joel telling me filter out the correct audience for your product and then you are able to ask them how much they would pay, Dr. Joel actually showed me a live example for how this should be done.  I will definitely miss Dr. Joel classes, and I would highly recommend him as an instructor for my friends and anyone interested in joining Product School. 

It's been a very interesting journey. Because the program and the instructor "Vishal" were exactly what I needed to bring together my experience into focus and make a significant impact on my role and with my team in a very short time.
The structure of the course is designed very well, and the selection of the instructor worked very well for me. 
Vishal has deep experience that he was generous in sharing with us. In addition to he managed to create a good atmosphere where everyone got to share and learn from each other.
Overall this was a superb experience that I would recommend to everyone looking to become a product leader.