Welcome and Introduction from Nitin Joglekar

What does it take to product manage a digital product or service through its lifecycle?
Lean and agile practices are necessary but are they sufficient? Digital products generate
a tremendous amount of data in distribution and use, lend themselves to constant
iteration, and enable innovative business models. Digital product management (DPM)
therefore involves sophisticated analytics, design thinking, and business modeling in
addition to the central coordinating role of traditional product management. We have
designed this course based on the centrality of Digital Product Management Thinking
(DPMT) a collection of systemic practices and skills that integrate Analytics, Business
modeling, Coordination, and Design thinking the ABCD of DPMT. These practices and
skills are most relevant to the product manager, but DPMT is even more effective when
it is viewed as an organizational-wide competency.
Digital products and services have been mainstreamed in startups and established
organizations over the past decade. The demand for competent digital product
managers is quite evident in all types of industries. Products such as smartphones and
IoT based devices and application platforms, such as WhatsApp, are means for positive
social and economic change. Product managers often serve as the fulcrum for solving
problems and balancing conflicting issues surrounding the development of such
products. Varun and I hope that you will use the lessons from this course to make a
difference: for launching and nurturing products that serve the needs of your customers
and the society at a large, for fulfilling the goals of your team, and for your own
professional growth.

Course Faculty
Nitin R. Joglekar is on the faculty at Boston Universitys Questrom
School of Business. His interests involve Digital Product
Management Thinking (DPMT), deployment of analytics and
machine learning techniques in innovation processes, and
digitization & public policy issues in global supply chains.
In addition to his academic career, he has overseen product
management and supply chain implantations at established firms, and founded a
software startup. He holds degrees in engineering from IIT, Memorial University, and
MIT. He also holds a doctorate in management science from the MIT Sloan School.
Professor Joglekar is the department editor for Technology, Innovation Management,
and Entrepreneurship at IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management. He is also a
department editor for industry studies and public policy at Production and Operations
Management. Feel free to check out his ongoing projects.

Varun Nagaraj is a Digital Learning and Innovation Fellow at

Boston Universitys Questrom School of Business, and a Ph.D.
candidate and Design and Innovation Fellow at the Weatherhead
School of Management at Case Western Reserve University.
Varun has been a product manager, consulted to product managers
on strategy and cycle time excellence while at PRTM management
consulting (now PwC), and hired and mentored product managers in his roles as VP of
Product Management and CEO in the fields of networking, security, data center
virtualization, medical instrumentation, and the Internet of Things (IoT).
Varun holds degrees in electrical and computer engineering from IIT Bombay and North
Carolina State University in Raleigh, and an MBA from Boston University.

Learning Facilitator
Emre Guzelsu is a Ph.D. Student at Boston University studying
business operations and public policies with a focus on startups and
survival rates.
Emre worked in municipal finance for 4 years at Public Financial
Management (PFM). PFM helps state and local governments and
municipal authorities with their debt financing strategies. While back
in school, Emre has become the lead designer for the expandable card game Doomtown:
Reloaded (it amount to a de facto product manager role, without the title!) and is one of
the founding members of Pinebox Entertainment. He also does freelance public
consulting work for state and local government projects.
Emre holds a bachelor's in Economics and Business from Franklin & Marshall College,
and also holds a Master's in Systems Engineering from Boston University's School of
Engineering. He is a Level III Candidate for the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA)
designation.
 Learning Approach
The course has been structured around multiple opportunities to access and hone
DPMT skills through a combination of (a) posted readings on key concepts and
tradeoffs; (b) optional links to blogs by industry experts; (c) video testimonials from
industry experts; (d) a course long problem context, CLPC, driven exercise; (e)
numerous discussion questions for giving and getting peer feedback, and (f) graded
quizzes in each part followed by a final exam. The course is divided into six parts. Each
part opens with an introductory video, followed by a sequence of (a) through (f)
activities.
This MOOC based course is breaking new ground each learners CLPC based thought
experiment will draw upon the collective wisdom of thousands of fellow learners with
diverse sets of demographic background and rich industry expertise. The output of the
CLPC exercise is accumulative so that each learner finishes the course with a product
concept and, a roadmap for developing it, within a specified digital product/platform
context along with relevant business model analysis work. This course will also set the
learners up to take companion digital product management courses featuring themes
such as analytics, experiment design, platform economics and social media marketing.

Prerequisites
Secondary school (High school) algebra; basic mathematics concepts
Background in one of these areas:
- Project and process (operations) management concepts
- Marketing concepts
- Software engineering concepts
Learners may develop a background in these three areas either through on-the-job
exposure or by auditing 3rd or 4th-year university level or online courses before taking
this course.
 Course Outline

Part Title Estimated effort Release Date

Part I: Product Management ABCD: 4-8 hours

July 31st at 19:00
Analytics, Business Model, UTC
Coordination & Design Thinking

Part II: Envisioning Products & 4-8 hours August 7th at 19:00
Leveraging Organizational Processes UTC

Part III: Requirements, MVP, and 4-8 hours August 14th at 19:00
Evolution of Products UTC

Part IV: Development Iterations & Go- 4-8 hours August 21st at 19:00
To-Market Effort UTC

Part V: Systems Thinking: P&L, 4-8 hours August 28th at 19:00

Lifecycles & Roadmap UTC

Part VI: Taking a Long View: PM 4-8 hours September 4th at

Career Paths 19:00 UTC

We attribute the anticipated variation in effort (4-8 hours) to two factors: (i) Verified
learners are provided with additional content for their proctored final exam, and (ii)
Learners without adequate prerequisites will have to fill up gaps in their know-how by
working through either optional links provided in this course or outside sources (e.g.,
browse through online courses or sites to clarify basic concepts, terminologies etc).
 Assessments and Grading
In each part of the course, you will find ungraded and graded assessments that test your
understanding and challenge you to apply what youve learned. Please make sure to
complete them, including the peer-graded assessments in parts II, IV and VI, by the
deadlines specified in the course. (Below is the grade breakdown for your assignments).

Assessment Weight

Participation in Discussion Questions 6%

throughout the course
Participation in CLPC Discussions in
Parts I, III and V
Quizzes with Multiple Choice Questions
(MCQs) in Parts I, II, III, IV, and V
Peer-graded Open Response
Assessments (ORA) in CPLC Parts II,
IV, and VI
For those of you who are taking
6% the course for a Verified
Certificate, you will have to
complete additional assessments
30%
and you must meet a minimum
grade of 67% in the course to be
27% eligible to receive a certificate
from edX.

Final Exam 31%

Open Response Assessment (ORA) deadlines

Response Due Date/ Complete peer grading

ORA
Start peer grading by...

Part II

1 08/11/17 at 15:00 UTC 08/14/17 at 19:00 UTC

Part IV

1 08/25/17 at 15:00 UTC 08/28/17 at 19:00 UTC

Part VI

1 09/08/17 at 15:00 UTC 09/11/17 at 19:00 UTC

ALL graded assessments must be completed before the end of the course date to count
towards your final grade --> September 11th 19:00 UTC)

Final Exam deadlines

Final exam (Audit learners) & Proctored exam (Verified learners)

Track Final exam Assessment Due date

15 Multiple Choice
Audit learners September 11th, 19:00 UTC
Questions (MCQs)

15 MCQ (Some will be

Verified learners September 11th, 19:00 UTC
based on scenario analysis)

Discussion Forum Guidelines

Throughout the course, you will be asked to comment on the posts of other learners. The
discussion forums are meant to be an area where learners can interact with each other,
ask questions, and share experiences and resources. We encourage you to explore
various posts and contribute to a lively discussion forum community!
To aid in this goal, we ask that you do not post comments that are derogatory,
defamatory, or in any way attack other learners. Be courteous and show the same
respect you hope to receive. We will have discussion forum moderators who will delete
posts that are rude, inappropriate, or off-topic. We also ask that you do not post answers
to assessment questions on these forums. You may discuss how to approach a problem
or help other learners who may have questions, but please do not directly provide
answers. Commenters who repeatedly abuse this public forum will be removed from the
course.
We do encourage course participants to answer questions posed by other learners. The
course staff may well purposely refrain from answering immediately, to encourage peer
discourse.
Additionally, there is a feature in the discussion forums that allows you to select from
two post types, which are Question and Discussion. When posting to the discussion
board, please bear in mind that the Question type is meant for specific issues with the
platform or with content, while the Discussion type is meant to share ideas and start a
conversation.
Please read the edX Learner Guide for more information about Participating in Course
Discussions.
Course Material
Learners, both in the audit and in the verified track are only responsible for material
posted on the course website. That is, all graded questions have been drawn from the
posted set of material.
Please, note that verified learners will have their own discussion threads, and will be
provided with additional content and questions throughout the course, in anticipation of
the proctored final examinations at the end of the course. Some of this content is drawn
from proprietary sources and its cost is bundled into the verification fee.

Companion Book
We have authored an eBook, Digital Product Management Thinking: Integrating
Analytics, Business Models, Coordination, and Design Thinking. This book is available
on Kindle (ASIN: B0741RQM7R) for $9.99. For details see our Digital Product
Management Thinking website
This is NOT a required textbook. Learners will be able to complete all the graded work
without this book. We recommend this as a companion learning and reference book
during and after the course. Some clarifications about the differences between the eBook
and the online course:
1. The online course material is organized in a modular manner based on the
requirements of the edX platform. The online course material also provides optional
readings by drawing open source blogs etc. Such material is not included in the eBook.
The online material features the course long problem-solving exercise that is not
included in the eBook.
2. The eBook is organized as an integrated text for ease of understanding. The
book also offers additional content that we could not feature in the course because of the
anticipated time availability for the learners. And, the sequencing of some content, titles
of some sections, figures and tables have been modified (and will not match the course
content exactly) to reflect these differences.
3. Many learners will not access the eBook. Hence, the course facilitator will not
respond to the questions about the eBook online. If there any conflicting messages,
learners should rely on the online course content.
The eBook and online course themselves are digital products. We view the first
version for you with a lot of thought, field testing and care. And, as with any digital
innovation, we have room to improve. With your feedback, we look forward to iterating
and improving the book and the online course over time. Online Course Feedback
should be provided on the platform. The eBook feedback is best handled through the
books own website.

FAQ
Q: Should I email the professor or any persons involved with this course
directly?
A: No. If you feel the need to contact the course staff involved in this course, please post
a question in the discussion forum. You will also have the opportunity to provide course
feedback in the Course Evaluation. Course related emails to the instructors personal
emails or social media sites will not be answered.

Q: Do I need to buy any personal materials to take this course?

A: No. You do not need to purchase textbooks or any materials to aid you in completing
the course. The material within the course website should be sufficient.

Q: I've never taken an edX course before and this is confusing. What do I
do?
A: For further information, please visit the demo edX course.

Q: I found a mistake in the course. Where do I report it?

A: To report an error or make suggestions, please post to the discussion forum and
provide feedback in the Course Evaluation.

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edX Honor Code Pledge

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Complete all tests and assignments on your own, unless collaboration on an
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