Product Management line, station 4 of 11
From Spec to Launch
Take a validated idea all the way to an adopted feature: specs people read, testable stories, design reviews, honest estimates, vendor contracts that protect you, and launches that end in a decision.
- 6lessons
- 3.5 hto read and do
- Intermediatelevel
- 6podcast episodes
Tools you'll use in this course
The lessons open these with a template ready. They work for your own job too, no course needed.
About this course
Most features fail between the idea and the doorstep. The spec goes unread, the acceptance criteria say "works offline" and nothing more, the design was only ever seen on a laptop, the vendor builds what the contract said instead of what you meant, and the launch is a date on a slide. This course teaches the methods strong product managers use at each of those steps, with templates you can copy into your own work.
You will write a working-backwards press release and FAQ and a one-page PRD, break it into user stories with Given/When/Then criteria that cover offline use, speed on cheap handhelds, permissions and audit trails, review designs with usability heuristics and accessibility checks, and work with engineers on ranges, throughput forecasts, scope trade-offs and technical debt. A full lesson covers outside vendors and agencies: statements of work, fixed price versus time and materials, change requests, UAT plans and sign-off, SLAs with severity levels, scorecards and handover.
Every lesson follows one feature at Mangrove Market, a fictional grocery chain: delivery claims in the Partner app, built partly by an outside agency, from the first press-release draft to the pilot, the rollout waves and the 30-day review. Each lesson has a podcast episode, practice tasks with model answers and flashcards, and the course ends with a capstone you can show in a portfolio.
What you will be able to do
- Write a PR/FAQ and a one-page PRD with measurable goals, explicit non-goals and owned open questions that engineers, designers and vendors actually use
- Write user stories with Given/When/Then acceptance criteria that cover edge cases and the non-functional requirements of operations software: offline, speed on cheap devices, permissions and audit trails
- Review designs against usability heuristics, hierarchy and accessibility, and give feedback a designer can act on
- Handle estimates as ranges, forecast from throughput, trade scope instead of quality, and keep technical debt visible
- Run a vendor engagement with clear SOW clauses, controlled change requests, UAT with entry and exit criteria, and an SLA with severity levels
- Plan a launch from pilot to every site in waves, with feature flags, tailored messages, training, support readiness and a dated post-launch review
Syllabus
6 stops, about 3.5 h in total. Each stop fills in when you complete the lesson.
Writing specs people read
A spec earns its keep when the people building the feature read it and make the decisions you would have made. This lesson shows you how to test an idea with a working-backwards press release and FAQ, turn it into a one-page PRD, and write goals, non-goals and open questions sharp enough that engineers, designers and vendors act on them.
PR/FAQPRD writingGoals and non-goalsOpen questions
User stories and acceptance criteria
A user story says who needs what and why. Its acceptance criteria say exactly when it is done. This lesson teaches you to write both, with Given/When/Then scenarios that cover the edge cases and the non-functional requirements that sink operations software: working offline, speed on cheap handhelds, permissions and an audit trail.
User storiesAcceptance criteriaNon-functional requirementsEdge cases
Design for PMs
You do not need to draw screens to ship a well-designed product, but you do need to judge them. This lesson gives you a repeatable way to review designs against usability heuristics, information hierarchy and accessibility, to give feedback a designer can act on, and to hand designs over to engineering with every state covered.
Usability heuristicsDesign reviewAccessibilityDesign handoff
Working with engineers
A PM and an engineering team make the same decision again and again: what to build next with the time there is. This lesson shows you how to ask for estimates as ranges, forecast from the team's real throughput, cut scope instead of quality when time runs short, keep technical debt visible, and run sprints, demos and retros that earn their time.
EstimationScope trade-offsTechnical debtAgile rituals
Working with vendors and agencies
When an outside company builds your app, the contract decides much of what you can change, test and fix. This lesson covers the parts of a statement of work a PM must shape, how fixed price and time and materials move risk, a change-request process that keeps scope honest, a UAT plan with sign-off, an SLA with severity levels, a vendor scorecard and a handover plan, with templates you can use tomorrow.
Statements of workChange controlUAT and sign-offSLAs and vendor management
Launching: pilots, waves and the review after
Shipping code is the easy part. A launch is everything that turns working software into changed behaviour: the right amount of effort for the change, a pilot with go/no-go criteria, waves with gates, messages in each audience's own words, training and support ready before day one, and a dated review that decides what happens next.
Launch planningRollouts and feature flagsPositioning and messagingPost-launch reviews
Capstone: Expiry dates at receiving: from spec to launch
A realistic project with a rubric and a model answer.
Final exam and certificate
10 questions drawn at random, 70% to pass.
Capstone project
Expiry dates at receiving: from spec to launch
Mangrove Market throws away stock that expires on the shelf because nobody knows the dates until it is too late. Head office wants store staff to record expiry dates when they receive goods on the Store app's handheld scanners, so the app can warn store managers before stock expires and suggest markdowns. An outside vendor will build the feature; Leila has drafted the screens; Ama's store will pilot it. Take the feature from idea to launch: write the PR/FAQ and a one-page PRD, write the stories and acceptance criteria (including a scanner that goes offline halfway through a receipt and a supplier who delivers cartons with no printed dates), review the design, write the SOW clauses for UAT and the support SLA, and plan the launch from Ama's store to all 320 stores.
You will hand in
- A one-page PR/FAQ and a one-page PRD with goals (baseline, target, date), guardrails, non-goals and owned open questions
- Eight to ten user stories with Given/When/Then acceptance criteria, covering the offline receipt, missing dates and the non-functional requirements
- Design review notes on Leila's receiving screens, with heuristics, severities and the missing states
- SOW clauses for UAT (entry criteria, exit criteria, sign-off) and the support SLA with severity levels
- A launch plan with the pilot in Ama's store, waves to 320 stores, training, support readiness and a dated post-launch review with success metrics
Check what you know
Already know some of this? Answer 6 quick questions, one from each lesson, and we will mark the lessons you can skim. It takes about 3 minutes and nothing is graded.
Questions
Do I need to finish the earlier product courses first?
Product Thinking Foundations is the recommended starting point, because this course assumes you can write a problem statement and know who your users and stakeholders are. Discovery and roadmap skills help, but every lesson here stands on its own.
Is this course only for operations and internal tools?
No. The methods work for consumer apps too, and the lessons use real examples from Amazon, Basecamp, Apple, Google and others. The worked example is an operations feature on purpose, because offline use, cheap devices, permissions and outside vendors are where many specs and launches break.
My app is built by an outside company. Which lesson should I start with?
Start with Working with vendors and agencies, which has ready-to-use templates for SOW clauses, change requests, UAT plans and sign-off, SLAs and scorecards. Then read User stories and acceptance criteria, because precise criteria are what make UAT and change control work.
Is the vendor lesson legal advice?
No. It covers the product parts of a contract that a PM should shape: scope, acceptance, change control, support and handover. Your legal and procurement teams own the contract itself.
Can I use the templates at work?
Yes. Every Do it section has templates in plain Markdown that you can copy into your own documents and adapt, from the PR/FAQ to the post-launch review.
Is it really free?
Yes. Every lesson, podcast episode, exercise, quiz, final exam and certificate is free. The labs and their templates for real work are free too. Plus and Premium add every lab challenge, weekly extras and a mentor on top, and they never lock the tools or the courses.
How long does it take?
Each lesson shows an honest time for reading and doing. Most people finish a course in two to four weeks at three or four hours a week.