[MUSIC] Hi, welcome to Coursera's Specialization on Software Product Management. I'm Ken Wong, Associate Professor in Computing Science at the University of Alberta and my expertise is in software engineering. Over the course of this specialization, it's my goal to turn you into a confident, certified Software Product Manager. If you're already a software product management specialist, well, then I'm here to make you even more awesome at what you do. [MUSIC] So some of you may have already been working on a software product of some kind. Thinking back on your experience, was it a success? Could the project have been done better? I bet most of you are thinking yes. This specialization will show you how to work with your clients and organize a team of developers to make better software products. So you already know projects can be done better. Think a bit for a moment about what you might want to improve in yourself as a Software Product Manager. Sure, there could be plenty of technical skills you can be better at, like specific platforms, languages and tools, but there's so much more. Let's explore that together. I've already mentioned that you'll be working with a development team. We'll be talking about this a lot more throughout this specialization. Select the people who you think typically compose a software development team, you may select more than one answer. A. Programmers, coders or developers. B. Clients. C. User interface specialists and graphic designers. D. Quality assurance specialists or testers. Every development team that you will work with will be different and unique. Normally, the development team is made up of coding muscle, graphic designers and testing personnel. So that means the most correct answers are A, C and D. Although you and your development team will be working very closely with clients, they are not normally considered part of the development team. So that would exclude answer B. Today, it takes the sustained work of many people with different skill sets to make great software products, but how should they be organized? What practices can teams follow to make the work more disciplined and less ad hoc? We're beginning to enter the realm of a Software Product Manager. Let's think about some other questions that should interest you. Can you work not just harder, but smarter? There are various issues. What if there are many team members to coordinate? What if there are lots of features to develop? What if the project is intended to last several years? How do we manage all that? And we can't forget about the problem we're actually trying to solve. That is, what does a customer really want in a software product? What about its quality? What do they expect? What processes and practices can we put in place to ensure that? Planning all this can be really tricky, especially with resource constraints. How do we handle the scope when time is limited? How do we deal with changes or avoid the scope of the project getting out of hand? For the clients, their needs might be uncertain and change over time. For developers, their rate of work could vary over time. There could be huge differences between the productivity of one developer versus another. How do we adapt to such variation? Questions like these are always on the mind of a software product manager. In this specialization, I'll teach you effective management techniques to deal with just these sorts of issues. These techniques will help you help your team produce better software. In particular, you'll learn about agile software development. Key factors for a great product are the people and process involved. You will hear more about topics like agile practices and planning plus topics like requirements, reviews and retrospectives. To start off, this introductory lesson has two modules. The first module highlights the importance and role of software product management. It also gives an overview of the whole specialization with its goals, structure and expectations. The second module introduces topics that will be covered in the courses as you move deeper into the specialization. Now imagine yourself the hotshot software product manager, you've got a good desk next to the window. Select the tasks that you think come along with the job. A. Interacting with clients. B. Managing and tracking development. C. Collaborating with the development team. D. Relaying information between the client and development team. E. Ensuring product quality. As a Software Product Manager, you'll be interacting with a lot of different people, including clients and development teams. You'll also be tasked with matching and tracking progress and development. It is also your duty to ensure the product works the way it's supposed to and validate that the product meets the needs of the client. However, as a product manager, you do not have to act as a messenger between the client and development team. You want to encourage them to communicate frequently. Therefore, answers A ,B, C and E are the correct answers. Let's start talking about making better software. A Software Product Manager needs to understand a number of viewpoints to achieve better software. One viewpoint aims to provide the right software product for the clients, but what does it mean to be the right product? This could mean a mix of many things. It meets their needs, it's easy to learn and easy to use. It doesn't waste their time and it looks nice. Basically, the clients are happy with it. If true, we say that software product is validated. In this specialization, you will learn about understanding users, how to elicit their needs and how to express software requirements. The second viewpoint aims to have the software product done right, but what does done right mean? Well, the software conforms to a specific design. And in turn, the design satisfies the stated set of requirements. If true, we say, the software product is verified. Developers can conduct reviews and tests to ensure that the requirements, design and implementation line up. Such activities try to catch defects earlier and improve quality. They want to avoid having the client see any defect in the released product. In this specialization, you will learn about processes to improve software quality. A third view point aims to have the project for the product managed right, but what does it mean to be managed right? Well, it insures that the other view points are met. The idea is to set up just enough process and suitable practices to organize the work of everyone involved. If true, we say that the software project is managed. Such activities ease communication and feedback, so that everyone is clear on the next steps. In this specialization, you learn about Agile practices, estimation, planning and monitoring. A software product manager needs to take a central role in these activities. To summarize, I've have just explained three viewpoints in achieving better software. Those are: the right product, done right and managed right. As you proceed through the specialization, you will become more confident in knowing and using these techniques to create better software products. These techniques include practices to ease communication and feedback, to better understand client needs and organize the work of your development team. Next, let's talk about the importance of software product management.
