Platform Product Management

Delivering a platform solution for your business in a “clicks not code environment” seems easy. However the drag and drop interface of the technology isn’t the hard part. This is a course that will help you focus on the real difficulty in platform implementation, the structure of your business and its people. We will explore the benefits of low-code application development vs no-code development and how these tools are surpassing traditional development as the gold standard for custom applications. Our classes will showcase the low-code app development on the google platform and show you how to leverage LC/NC apis to leverage the functionality of tools like Zapier to connect your platform applications. All with little to no coding knowledge.This fun and engaging course will take a foundational look at the necessary elements to successfully transform your business with the right platform. Starting with establishing a foundational understanding of LCNC tools and taking a look at the landscape of platforms in the market. Participants will get a taste of how citizen developers and professional developers can collaborate to build productive low-code applications. We will then introduce the four pillars model as a tool that will provide clarity for all of the critical elements that are involved in your implementation. We will also highlight some real world use cases where LC/NC applications have been built successfully and where application development has failed. Historically, traditional implementation models utilize project management techniques to deliver solutions. Throw your PMBOK (project management body of knowledge) out the window. We are no longer running a project. Our platform is now a product and you are on the road to your digital transformation.

Are you someone who likes to “tinker with technology” but don’t know anything about writing code or programming languages? This class will satisfy that excitement by diving headfirst into a number of well-known Low Code/No Code platforms and their no-code tools without the perquisite of coding skills. Showing you the fundamentals to get you interested to see more.We will cover exciting topics like data modeling best practices, creating a solid and consistent user experience and building automations and workflows your users will love. We will also touch on some of the LCNC strategies in support of integrations (leveraging open APIs) and discuss strategies for managing data sources. In the first course (Platform Product Essentials) of this certificate, we discussed some of the history behind LCNC platforms and the roles of the key players that support your success when building applications. This class is all about app development. Students will be asked to dive into a LCNC tool and define and build a LCNC app using the methodologies provided to create no-code solutions. For this class we will dive into the functionality of your own app. You can come out of this course calling yourself an app builder or, even better, a citizen developer! As part of this class, we will be assigned a common use case and build an app front/dashboard. Here we will focus on the front-end and back-end perspective through low-code app development and different no-code softwares. These are intentionally designed so that non-programmers, who have never written a single line of code, can still develop.

At multiple points in your professional life, a technology tool you are responsible for building will fail. There are a million reasons why these things happen, but failed systems aren’t failures. They are delayed successes. This final course will go through the process to help you digest what went wrong, and how to course correct.We will start with strategies to evaluate where things failed. You need to know how to react when users say everything is broken. The first response is usually frustration. Which while understandable, isn’t productive. You will learn strategies for user engagement and bringing them into the fold for the development process. You will learn how to engage with users. Listening is critical for success but how you show them you are listening is part of the art form. Once you have heard from your users, get them talking to each other. Facilitate a user community to get support for your platform rollout. This will ultimately lead to increased adoption. After you have tried everything, we will show you how to determine if anything is salvageable and decide how to move forward. That may mean a new Platform. We’ll show you how to get the most out of a bad situation. You’re not starting over, but you are starting again with more information and understanding of your business, your users, and your platform needs. Knowing how to close a failed platform implementation is an important Product Platform Managers skill.