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 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!!!

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.

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

As founder of Seazen.fr, a click & go platform for the use of solar boats in the French Riviera, I wanted to learn about Software Management Processes and Agile.

I found in this Mook useful learnings. Not only theoretical but also practices.

I was impressed by the quality of the training content. There are 3 levels of MCQ during the videos, after the module and after the courses. Most of the questions are different, you never have the feeling of copy pastes. This is a lot of work I imagine.

The peer review is a great concept both for having a feedback from your peers and for learning from the other works.

The videos were high quality, even with interactive videos trees.

The only issue is on the peer reviews for the course 6. As I progressed there were less peers work available for my correction. As a consequence, it took more time to get the certification despite the fact I already finished the specialization.

Bravo to University of Alberta

Guillaume

I've been waiting for the end of the Capstone project to review all courses of the specialization. I want to check how they interact and how would the concepts be applied. I couldn't be more satisfied! This specialization is very complete and focused on the main topic "Software Product Management". Although there are several additional resources for us to deeply analyse a concept that interest us, the overall course gives you the necessary view of all options available without becoming to generic. I really recommend this specialization and congratulate all the team involved on developing this course. Thanks!

This is an excellent course setting. The feeling of actually interacting with your Engineering teams and stake holder through first hand interactions via simulated decision tree events, digging into the requirements elicitation phase, excellent study material and video tutorials and opportunity to review and receive feedback from experienced peers was a great feeling. There's so much to SPM learn for a novice and learning it the right way first time is important; and this definitely was an amazing learning experience.

Generally speaking, this was probably the best course on software product management that I know of. The level of engagement required from the students was well worth the time spent. The topics learned were really important and it provided a good insight into the finer details of a potential software project.

Excellent specialization that has been masterfully planned by the University of Alberta, with educational and pedagogical resources of excellent quality !! The methodology they use, plus their content and the experience of their tutors, make it a great experience of knowledge and learning.

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.

Capstone was very well put together and by far the highlight of the course! Amazing job by the course developers to create such an interactive finale to the course that brought together all the concepts into a real world simulation!

Loved the capstone project. So much nice details and situations which you experience in a product managers daily business. Also a nice opportunity to apply the tools and methods you learned in the courses of the specialization.

Here is my review of the course: https://medium.com/@marinasini/test-drive-software-product-management-specialisation-by-university-of-alberta-coursera-a5b5b03e2a12?source=friends_link&sk=6202b4eee6fc249ef1d534e50779129e

Excellent capstone project, it gives you a little insight you need in things that can happen in an agile project. From my experience in earlier agile projects, I would say this portayal of how things work is accurate!

The is one of the most gruelling capstone projects I have worked on. Beats the physical deal in some aspects if you ask me. Definitely worth the time and effort invested

Specialization totally fits in my current needs as IT Product owner in corporate environment, but there is not so much theory and practice for startups product owners.

Great course with lots of good material and assignments. Video content gives a thorough insight to the different subjects and makes it easier to complete assignments.

The course was extremely help to understand software production management, agile principles and how to run projects successfully in agile methods. Thank you.

Fantastic course with a lot of interactive material to practice the principles of agile development. A lot of effort put into it, it is definitelly worth it.

Excellent practice for all the material learned in the specialization. Great effort to simulate real life situations in software product management.

A lot of effort went into making this course interactive, engaging, fun and very useful in practising our skills in real world practical situations.