Digital Product Management Lab

15.786 Digital Product Management Lab

Digital Product Management Lab (PM-Lab) is an Action Learning lab that provides students with a hands-on introduction to product management with an emphasis on its role within technology-driven enterprises. Using common digital tools, such as storyboarding, wireframe mock-ups, and A/B testing, students will help real companies with their business challenges. This course is intended for students seeking a role in a product management team, or to contribute to product management in a new enterprise.

Topics include:

• Opportunity discovery
• Product-technology roadmapping
• Product development processes
• Go-to-market strategies
• Product launch
• Lifecycle management
• Central role of product manager in each activity

Readying products for the market

Students help companies with their product management strategy, from the product design stage to development and marketing. In 2021, 82 students worked with 40 hosts from 7 different industries. 

Project companies by industry

B2B/SaaS

• AirWorks
• Boss Insights
• Contack 
• Hardworkers
• IDEO
• Metrika
• WellMode

Consumer

• Agni
• CarGurus
• Charli Cohen
• Embr Labs
• Loop
• Strava
• Whoop
• Wiley

E-commerce

• Klaviyo
• Thras.IO

Edtech

• Fuzu
• qBraid
• Raga Labs
• Trybe

Fintech/real estate

• Apartment List
• Elphi
• EverQuote
• HaloDAO
• Intralinks
• Juno
• Let's Get Set
• Softcom

Healthtech

• 1uphealth
• Ginger Health
• Grand Rounds
• Inito
• LeanTaaS
• Mumble Melody

Sustainability/IoT

• Acoustic Wells
• Adaviv
• Blue Wave Solar
• Ceres Imaging
• REsurety

The class

This course equips students with the skills required to hit the ground running as a product manager for a software product. These skills are as relevant to the management of a feature within a larger product, as they are to the management of the entire product surface area at a young startup.

The class covers:

• Lean principles in customer development
• Lean product development through rapid iteration of MVPs. Pivoting in real life
• The modern cloud ecosystem and how software is architected on it today
• A UX development workshop and usability testing
• Agile software development via Scrum
• Learning through experimentation and A/B testing
• A practitioner career retrospective on going from CEO-of-the-product to CEO

A number of these class sessions will be co-led by well-regarded practitioners. Recitations will focus on learning the use of tools (such as Balsamiq, Confluence, Jira, and Google Cloud Console) that complement some of the above sessions. In emphasizing that becoming a successful PM requires a great deal of learning by doing, students will work in fixed teams of 3 – 4 students over the six weeks of class to:

1. Identify a customer problem
2. Build a lightweight (3-4 page) market requirement document (MRD) for the product
3. Build a lightweight (3-4 page) product requirement document (PRD) for the product
4. Release a PR/FAQ for the product

Cross-functional teams (e.g. MBAs, MBAns, SFMBAs) are encouraged but not required.

Details

PM-Lab is partnered with the Product Management Club, one of the largest clubs at MIT Sloan. The lab portion of the course starts in January during IAP, and is 6 credits. Students enrolled in the lab are required to take the 15.785 Digital Product Management course portion in H3, which is an additional 6 credits. Students who are matched with a project will automatically be enrolled in the H3 course. Students taking PM-Lab do not have to bid for the course portion. 

Benefits of becoming a host organization

PM-Lab offers an invaluable opportunity for students to work on a real time PM project over four weeks from January to early February, while also providing companies an opportunity to build connections with MIT Sloan students.

Some benefits of hosting a PM-Lab team include:

• Support on company product strategy (e.g. understanding the market landscape and analyzing competitive products for an enterprise e-commerce company, then developing a prioritized product feature roadmap)
• Support in implementation and execution (e.g. validating product-market fit, funnel and conversion impact analysis, creating epics/user stories for an MVP)
• Streamlining recruiting process for summer internships and beyond
• Improved presence and reputation on-campus at MIT

Roles and responsibilities

Host companies must be able to:

• Identify and scope PM projects for at least 2 students
• Support a 4-week experience
• Submit description of host company and project to be included in a company book
• Attend virtual Networking Night
• Delegate a mentor (preferably a PM) for the student through the duration of PM-Lab
• Engage in mid-review and final-review sessions in which students can receive feedback
• Complete a post-program survey

Interested in becoming a host?

If you are interested in hosting a PM-Lab team, please contact pm.officers@sloangroups.mit.edu with the number of student spots available.
 

Application/matching process

• Participating students receive a company book with host company projects and descriptions ahead of the Networking Night
• Each student submits an application, including a list of preferences for host companies
• Sloan faculty review applications and match students with companies, based on interest and skill. Companies can request certain criteria of candidates (e.g. industry knowledge)
• Sloan faculty/ the PM club will reach out to the company for final confirmation before confirming the match.