This course would be great if it weren't for "peer-reviews"!!! There are plenty of people out there who simply cannot be bothered to go through peer reviewing as they should and just give out random points!!! It's extremely disappointing spending all the time, effort and money on what could be a great course, to then have someone give you unfair reviews. And the worst of it all Coursera does absolutely NOTHING about it!!! The best you can get from them are some automated template answers. They can't even bother to edit student's name on these templates! Very disappointed!!!

I think it was a wonderful experience.

I liked the theory introduction of Course 1 when we learned about the Agile Manifesto and we have been teach why processes, requirements, planning and monitoring matter. Personally, it was a nice review for what I have learned in my mastering and, earlier, when taking my Bachelor’s degree.

I also enjoyed the Course 2, specially when it came to Agile methodologies explanation. I learned many things about Lean and Scrum practices that I hadn’t known or I hadn’t remembered by that time.

Course 3 is, by far, the one I enjoyed and learned more. In my mastering thesis I used a lot of usability techniques, I also studied many of these and I kinda enjoyed the way wireframes were emphasized. The exercise to draw a wireframe was awesome. It was really fun to do it and check what my colleagues did. It was also nice to learn about user stories standards and acceptance tests, I am using a lot of what we learned in my current job.

Course 4 was cool, too. I liked to see many techniques working together, such as WBS, User Story points, Pert Charts and so on. However, I felt a little bit lost when I was taking the course, not knowing exactly where was the exact place of each technique. I am very experienced with project management, so it was not that hard, but I was wondering about my colleagues who were seeing these subjects for, maybe, the first or second time in their lives. I think it could be the most tiring course, even though the topics were pretty important and very well explained.

Course 5 was a good one. It’s not everybody who gives attention to monitoring and retrospectives. As far as retrospectives is concerned, it was really nice to learn every step we should go over in this kind of meeting. I have been working in this field for a while and I have never seen a project retrospective taking place, so it was nice to learn about this and realize it could work if we put some energy on it.

Course 6. The Capstone Project. It was amazing. By far the best course of these six. Every week was pretty good, with a good amount of scenarios and practices. I loved the “RPG” style of the simulations, also, it was really nice going over each sprint, checking, working and changing the plans accordingly. You guys from Alberta rocked, as far as this capstone is concerned.

I wish you could put more of this kind of practice along the whole course. Sometimes the exercises of the courses 1 to 5 were too much theoretical, so it would be nice to see this kind of “capstone scenario applied to that”. Also, I think it would be nice to take a “Capstone Part 2” course where other problems could arise and we can face harder practices. I noticed as you guys from Alberta that the forum was a little bit quiet. I think one way to make it more active is to put the students in situations that they are not so sure about, so they will be “obligated” to discuss. I think this “advanced capstone” could do that. This is my suggestion, I hope you think about it!

Finally, it was a pleasure to be with you and learn everything I learned. I don’t regret that I decided to take the whole specialization. Also, i want to say thank you all my colleagues who spent time checking my answers and my mistakes. I learned a lot from you too, guys!

This whole specialization is not  Product Management but is really a course in software Project Management. Content on building a product strategy and roadmap is limited to some (albeit very useful) frameworks on prioritisation, but does not go beyond this.But the biggest failure of the course is the lack content on customer insight. The one module that covers this simply suggests to ask the CEO - not a single mention is made of talking to an end user, or even prototyping! Other vital skills of a Product Manager beyond shipping the initial product are ignored. Product data analytics and iteration are barely mentioned. Where data analytics is mentioned, the focus is on does the product work as designed, rather than does it actually meet the goals of the business. The course seems designed for someone working for a rather unimaginative consultancy, where you build what the client tells you, and wipe your hands clean as soon as that is done. This does not match any of my experience working in-house as a Product Manager. The focus is very firmly on building the product right, with little attention given to building the right product. However, as a course in Software Project Management, the content is great, and I found this course to be extremely useful. But please don't go away thinking this is all that a Product Manager does, and I'd strongly suggest taking other courses on customer insights, prototyping and product data analytics to build up your skills across everything that being a Product Manager involves.

Whilst I found the course useful, it is more about project management than product management. I did appreciate the refresher on project management, but I would have expected more on product management itself (as the course title is product management). Furthermore, there are many peer reviewed assignments, which should be a good thing, but there are so few people taking the course that after submitting your assignments, there are no or not enough assignments to be reviewed and not enough people to review your own assignments. If you are interested in agile project management, this course is for you.

Essential information necessary for finishing some Assignments are missing. And this is a reported and not resolved issue since months now. Actually I liked this course very much but, because of this, it's really annoying...

Most of the assignment links are broken and makes it very difficult to complete the course

The capstone project has many broken links which makes it impossible to complete 6 tasks.

I really like the whole Specialization "Product Management". And particalarly the "Capstone" module. I think it is very useful for beginners as well as for experienced Product Managers and Business Analysts. It provides structured knowledge and gives a possibility to practice the skills. Also, it was very usefull for me to participate in peer-graded assignements - to see different solutions and approaches to the same problems by other students. Particularly, I had chance to improve my skils in creating requirements. Also, I learned how to provide feedback to sprint and release plan, build a burndown chart, take part in reprospective and many more things that I use on my "real life" projects. This course is excellent. I often recommend it to my friends who would like to learn or systematize their knowledge in Product Management and Business Analysis. Thank you, Coursera Team and University of Alberta Team! :)

Update Capstone Materials!!! A lot of links are broken. As a product manager with work experience, I would say this simulation is a good way for people to have a taste of how PM works, but some situations are too ideal and imaginary. I really suggest the capstone only focus on delivering a small module of an App (for example, register-login-logout, account management). Even a small module contains a lot of ambiguity and challenges for a junior product manager. A huge project like developing an APP is not this easy, and most of the scenarios are made up for getting a standard answer. (Then, it will lose the fun of capstone)

Good concept, but bad management, many documents are not available

This module is absurd. It ruins the experience of all the other modules in the course. Many of the materials for the peer reviewed exercises are not provided and you get "Access denied" error when you click the links. You wait for peer reviews forever and can't receive your certificate. I would classify the whole experience as a scam, because that's what it is when you've paid for something, spend time and effort on it and you get nothing at the end.

This was a great course until the Capstone. Everyone is unable to access required Google Docs and having to unenroll or abandon the course. If you want the Specialization don't waste your time. The courses leading up to it were very good. Sad

With only two days class many people said they are Scrum Master or Product Owner, with this specialization you can be a good Software Product Management.

This a fantastic specialization, I lean a lot of thinks trough the 6 courses: process, requirements, planning, metrics and practical experience. Definitely a 5 star score is deserved, because the specialization have great material, video, exercises and off course fantastic teachers and participants, The more you know about a subject, the easy you can explain it, and with this specialization I acquired much more confidence in SPM.

My favourite part of the specialization is the capstone, because you can practice all the things learned, also I enjoyed the pair assignments, because while you do the reviews, you can also reinforcing the knowledge.

I think that for the next iteration, you can improve:

the decision tree, becase they do not have subtitles, and for not native English speakers this can be a little difficult. Also some times many days pass with your assignments in "grading in process" state.The metrics course need more practical assignments, because many people have problems with the burndown charts and the PDF was not enough, maybe a step by step video.

Again, thanks for this class, I really enjoyed and learned many thinks.

I must say that I am completed astonished with this course. When I started it I wasnt so sure that an online course would enlight me with new knowledge because I consider myself a specialist in agile practices but it turns out that I've learned a lot. The teaching style of the course was amazing since the begining. The teachers have explained detailed facts that I was used to ignore and now I can see that they were useful and important to follow.

I learned really useful things about software project/product management and I hope to use these concepts to get a full-time role. The capstone was really intensive and there were a lot of assignments, but you will get to go through what happens during sprints.

The SPM is an awesome specialization! The instructors are superb and could not have delivered it better. Although the course was rigorous, yet exciting and actually worth it. I am better equipped as a Software Product Test Lead.

Great course. You are immersed in a pseudo-realistic experience working with a real software development project. Overall very well done. One of the more enjoyable capstone courses that I have taken.

So far this is the best and most useful course, I've taken with Coursera. I will recommend it to my colleagues and friends. Very interesting and highly motivating!

I couldn't decide what I liked best during this course, whether that was the content, the way it was presented or the interactivity of the material! Great job!

This one was amazing (but I would suggest to use 2 peers instead of 3...)

The course is a real-life simulation of the Product Management role on a small product. The stakeholder and team meetings simulations (decision trees) are excellent, and provide a good way to understand what would happen based on your decisions. Unfortunately, after the third week the course becomes a bit repetitive. The graded exercises become similar to each other, and very few unexpected or challenging situations happen.

In summary: excellent wrap-up for the SPM specialization, unfortunately lacks challenges in the second half of the course

This capstone was fantastic. You implement all of the topics covered in the first five courses by acting as a project manager in a simulated project.

The only reason I am not rating this a 5/5 is due to the repetitiveness of the activities. Unless more variation is added to the activities, one iteration of sprint planning will suffice.

Overall good, but too extensive: many simple assignments that should be graded frequently by peer. So far, not enough peers, so instead of completing the course within 3-4 weeks, it took me more than 7.

Very poor course delivery. Links were broken and support was non-existent

Tooooooooooo long