A woman with long hair smiles while standing in a warehouse aisle filled with boxes.

Product Management Strategy and Innovation

Program at a Glance

  • Complete in 15 weeks
  • Fully online with a blend of self‑paced learning and live virtual sessions
  • Project‑based learning with portfolio‑ready deliverables
  • Earn a digital badge that verifies your expertise and achievement
  • Transition your business, technical or cross-functional experience into a career in product management
  • Includes AI-enabled product management workflows
  • $6,000 (payment plan available)

Enroll Now

Transition Into Product Management With Practical Strategy and Innovation Training

Product management is one of the most cross-functional career paths in business, technology and innovation. If you work in a product-adjacent role, UC Davis Continuing and Professional Education’s Product Management Strategy and Innovation program helps you build the skills to move toward a product manager role.

In 15 weeks, you’ll learn how product managers identify customer needs, validate product ideas, build roadmaps, prioritize features, guide cross-functional teams, use AI-enabled workflows and measure product success. The course is designed for working professionals who want practical, real world product experience to build a portfolio, strengthen their resume and demonstrate product management expertise in interviews.

This course is especially relevant for business analysts, project managers, program managers, product marketing professionals, customer success managers, UX professionals, data analysts, implementation specialists, technical account managers, operations professionals, quality assurance professionals and others who work near product teams and want to transition into product management.

What You’ll Get

Translate your existing professional experience into product management capability. You’ll move from foundational product management concepts to applied work in customer research, product strategy, roadmapping, innovation, launch planning, product analytics and lifecycle management.

Gain hands-on experience with AI-supported product workflows, including using AI to support customer research, persona development, feedback analysis, product mockups, scenario planning and workflow efficiency.

  • A structured introduction to product management strategy and execution
  • Practical experience applying product frameworks to real business challenges
  • Portfolio-ready product work that demonstrates your expertise to employers
  • A clearer understanding of how product managers collaborate with engineering, design, marketing, sales, support and executive stakeholders
  • A digital badge that demonstrates completion of UC Davis Continuing and Professional Education training
  • Career-relevant language and deliverables to help support a transition into product management

What You’ll Learn

Build the practical skills needed to transition into product management and confidently guide products from idea to launch. Topics covered include:

  • Product management fundamentals and the product lifecycle
  • Customer and market research, product discovery and validation
  • Product strategy, roadmaps and feature prioritization
  • Product design, prototyping and go-to-market planning
  • Customer segmentation, adoption and product performance metrics
  • Cross-functional collaboration and stakeholder communication
  • AI tools for product research, feedback analysis and productivity

By the end of the program, you'll be able to:

  • Validate customer problems and identify product opportunities
  • Develop strategic product roadmaps aligned with customer and business needs
  • Guide product development and launch planning across the product lifecycle
  • Measure product success using data and product health metrics
  • Build portfolio-ready product deliverables that showcase your product management skills
  • Collaborate effectively with engineering, design, marketing, sales and executive stakeholders
  • Measure product success using key performance metrics and product health indicators
  • Manage product quality, risk, course correction and portfolio decisions throughout the product lifecycle
  • Use AI tools to support research, persona development, feedback analysis, prototyping and day-to-day product management tasks
  • Create portfolio-ready product deliverables that demonstrate your product management skills

How to Become a Product Manager From an Adjacent Role

Many product managers begin their careers in related roles that require customer insight, analytical thinking, communication and cross-functional collaboration. To move into product management, you need to show that you can do more than manage tasks, analyze data or support customers. You need to demonstrate that you can identify valuable problems, prioritize solutions and connect product decisions to customer and business outcomes.

A strong transition plan includes:

  1. Map your current experience to product management skills. Project managers may already have stakeholder and execution experience. Business analysts may understand requirements and business needs. Customer success professionals often bring strong customer insight. UX and data professionals may already understand user behavior and product performance.
  2. Build product-specific skills. Focus on product discovery, roadmap development, prioritization, user research, product analytics, go-to-market planning and stakeholder communication.
  3. Create product work samples. Employers want evidence that you can think like a product manager. Roadmaps, personas, product briefs, launch plans and metrics dashboards can help demonstrate readiness.
  4. Learn to communicate product impact. Strong product managers connect decisions to adoption, retention, revenue, efficiency, customer experience or market growth.
  5. Update your resume and LinkedIn profile. Translate your current role into product language and highlight outcomes, not just responsibilities.

UC Davis Continuing and Professional Education’s Product Management Strategy and Innovation course supports this transition by helping you build product discovery, roadmapping, stakeholder communication, product analytics and product lifecycle skills in a structured online format.

Product Management Training for Your Career Path

  • For Business Analysts: Business analysts often bring strong experience gathering requirements, analyzing business needs and translating stakeholder priorities into recommendations. This course helps you expand those skills into product strategy, user research, roadmap prioritization and product delivery.
  • For Project Managers and Program Managers: Project and program managers are skilled at timelines, coordination, execution and stakeholder management. This course helps you move from managing delivery to shaping product direction, defining customer problems, prioritizing features and measuring outcomes.
  • For Customer Success Managers: Customer success professionals understand user pain points, adoption barriers and product feedback. This course helps you turn customer insight into product opportunities, roadmaps, feature decisions and product health metrics.
  • For Product Marketing Professionals: Product marketers already understand positioning, messaging, competitive research and go-to-market strategy. This course helps you build deeper product development fluency, including discovery, prioritization, roadmap planning and lifecycle strategy.
  • For UX, Data and Operations Professionals: UX professionals, data analysts and operations professionals bring valuable insight into user behavior, product performance, process improvement and decision-making. This course helps you translate those strengths into product strategy, stakeholder communication and cross-functional leadership.

 

 

Frequently Asked Questions

  • Who is this program for?

  • This program is designed for professionals working in product‑adjacent roles who want to transition into product management or strengthen their product leadership skills. 

    • Designers and UX professionals

    • Customer success and support professionals

    • Data analysts, business intelligence professionals

    • Engineers and software developers

    • Marketing and product marketing professionals

    • Project and program managers

    • Quality assurance and operations professionals

    • Sales and business development professionals

  • Product vs. Project Management: What's the Difference?

  • While product management and project management both require leadership, communication and cross-functional collaboration, they focus on different outcomes.

    Product managers focus on what to build, why it matters and how it supports customer and business goals. They guide product strategy, customer discovery, prioritization, roadmapping, launch planning and product performance.

    Project managers focus on how work gets done. They manage timelines, budgets, dependencies, resources and deliverables to keep projects moving.

    If you are a project manager, program manager or agile delivery lead, this course can help you expand from execution ownership into product strategy, customer problem framing, roadmap prioritization and product outcome measurement.

    UC Davis Continuing and Professional Education also offers a Project Management Certificate Program for professionals focused on planning, execution and operational leadership.

    Can I become a product manager without a product management title?

  • Can I become a product manager without a product management title?
  • Yes. Many professionals transition into product management from adjacent roles. The key is learning how to translate your existing experience into product management capabilities, including customer discovery, product strategy, prioritization, roadmapping, stakeholder communication and outcome measurement.
  • Is this course good for project managers?
  • Yes. Project managers often have strong execution, coordination and stakeholder management skills. This course helps project managers build the product-specific skills needed to move closer to product strategy, customer discovery, roadmap ownership and outcome-based decision-making.
  • Is this course good for business analysts?
  • Yes. Business analysts often have experience gathering requirements, analyzing business needs and translating stakeholder priorities. This course helps business analysts develop product discovery, user research, prioritization, roadmap and product strategy skills.
  • What product management skills will I learn?
  • You’ll learn product strategy, customer research, product discovery, market analysis, product roadmapping, prioritization, stakeholder communication, agile product development, product launch planning, data-informed decision-making, product health metrics, lifecycle management and AI-enabled product workflows.
  • Will this course help me build a product portfolio?
  • Yes. The course includes applied product work that can help you build examples of product thinking, such as product analysis, customer research, personas, product descriptions, roadmaps, launch plans and product metrics. These deliverables can support resume, LinkedIn and portfolio updates.
  • What types of products does the course focus on?
  • The course focuses primarily on digital products such as software platforms and applications while also introducing frameworks that apply to physical and technology-enabled products.
  • How long does the course take to complete?
  • The course is designed to be completed in 15 weeks.
  • Is the course online?
  • Yes. The course is fully online with a blend of self-paced learning and live virtual sessions.