Software Product Management

Maximizing Product Success

Excellent product management is key to a successful market entry and the basis for sustainable success of products.

This is particularly true for software and internet offerings where product managers enjoy a unique degree of flexibility – from the definition of the product itself to the choice of distribution and payment models.

This creative freedom presents challenges over the entire life cycle of a software product.

To address these challenges, specific processes and techniques for the management of software products have been developed over that last couple of years, and the industry is moving towards a specialized discipline of Software Product Management.

Training: Certified Software Product Manager CSPM (ISPMA)

CSPM is a training curriculum established by the International Software Product Management Association (ISPMA) to advance the discipline of Software Product Management (SPM). ISPMA has defined the SPM Body of Knowledge (SPMBOK) and the CSPM training curriculum with corresponding certification. It provides product managers with a qualification scheme recognized internationally.

We cover the entire roster of ISPMA-compliant trainings for Software Product Management:

• Foundation Level: Certified Software Product Manager (three-day class)
  We are teaching this training since 2014, with more than 200 participants by summer 2016.
  The training is available as open courses and as in-house courses. Open courses are offered regularly in Germany, in the Karlsruhe/Stuttgart region. In-house courses are delivered globally, in English or German languages.
  Training overview flyer in English
  Additional information and training descriptions

• Excellence Level: Product Strategy (three-day class)
  We are teaching this training since September 2015, as soon as certification has become available.
  It is available as open courses and as in-house courses.
  Training overview flyer in English
  Additional information and training descriptions

• Excellence Level: Product Planning (three-day class)
  We offer this training as public training classes starting 2016 and as in-house training.
  Training overview flyer in English
  Additional information and training descriptions

• Excellence Level: Strategic Management (one-day class)
  The syllabus is already available, and ISPMA is currently working on certification.
  We offer this training upon request, starting 2016.
  Training overview flyer in English
  Additional information and training descriptions

• Excellence Level: Orchestration (two-day class)
  Syllabus and certification are currently under development at the ISPMA.
  We offer this training upon request, starting 2016.

We provide these trainings either as public classes or as in-house trainings on a worldwide basis. The training language is German or English.

Contact us for more information or request a quote for in-house trainings.

Training: Specific Product Management Topics

Sometimes, companies struggle with specific product management challenges that cannot be covered in detail as part of a standard ISPMA training curriculum.

In these areas we offer our own advanced trainings. Examples are:

• Software Product Management in an agile development context
  Agile development comes with new product management instruments and adds special challenges, in particular for larger organizations.
  We offer this one-day compact class as public training and as customized in-house training.

• Introduction to Lean Startup and Customer Development for product managers
  Lean Startup and Customer Development is an approach used by software and internet startups to build and launch radically new offerings.
  We offer this one-day compact class as in-house training.

Contact us for more information, for additional topics, or request a quote for in-house trainings.

Consulting and Coaching

We offer consulting and individual expert coaching on most topic areas of software product management. We support you in mastering SPM challenges, in building up expertise in specific SPM topic areas, and help you evolving your product management processes to fit your unique business needs

Example topic areas include:

• Adapt Software Product Management to agile environments

• Tailor SPM techniques to the specific needs of your industry and your organizational setup

• Leverage techniques from Lean Startup and Customer Development for product management of entirely new, disruptive software-based products

• Introduce modern requirements management tools to improve collaboration between product management and other stakeholders – including, but not limited to, the development organization

Contact us for more information, for additional topics, or request a quote for in-house trainings.

Learning with the Experts

We are a team of independent experts and we collaborate closely in coaching and consulting projects, and in developing and delivering our training offerings.

Each of us has deep expertise and leading-edge knowledge in specific areas that are essential to Software Product Management: from product strategy and business aspects of software to modern requirements engineering practices, from working with agile development teams to using modern tools to collaborate across disciplines and organizations.

Our industry experience covers a wide range of software types, from enterprise software products to embedded software in high-tech products, and from software and internet startups to company-internal IT applications.