25.1 Putting It Together

Congratulations! You've made it through all the program's content. Take a moment to celebrate the effort and dedication that got you here. Well done!

Now it's time to apply what you've learned to your final capstone project. Unlike previous capstones, this time there are no scenarios to choose from—the topic is completely up to you. The idea is for each student to focus on a company, product, or industry that would be beneficial for their individual job search. This capstone involves a lot of work, so make sure you choose something that would pay off in an impressive portfolio piece and a good story to tell at your next job interview—maybe even with the company you focus on here!

You'll start by analyzing the company or industry of your choice, leveraging the skills you developed throughout this program to gain a comprehensive understanding of the company, products, market, competitors, audience, vulnerabilities, and growth opportunities.

Then you'll dig into your product of choice, come up with a vision for valuable product enhancements, user test your ideas, and consider technology and other limitations. Finally, you will distill your product vision into a succinct presentation. Ready to begin?

Pick your target

This time, you get to select the company or product to focus on. You can approach this in a number of ways. You can use this opportunity to dig deeply into a company you're interested in working for. Investing significant time in understanding their product and market will put you at a huge advantage when interviewing with them (just remember to be humble when you do and acknowledge that you still don't have access to internal data).

If you don't have a specific "dream company" in mind, use this capstone to deeply analyze a company that's representative of an industry that excites you or that you are very familiar with. Industries where you already have direct experience with users are the easiest ones for you to aim for as you break into product management. Employers will appreciate your knowledge and expertise in the industry, and you'll have an easier time getting interviews.

A third option is to pursue your own innovative product idea. Can't sleep at night because of a product idea you think the market badly needs? Do you wish you knew all you know now when you tried and failed to launch a startup? Use this capstone to investigate and validate your business idea, or in other words, jump into product managing it! You'll gain an excellent story for future job interviews that demonstrates your innovation, passion, and creativity.

Whatever product you choose, consider how much you'll be able to access company or industry data and have hands-on access to the product. If the product is impossible for you to explore—for example, because it's an expensive B2B tool with no free demo accounts—you might not have enough access to explore it deeply. Ideally, you want to choose a product or company where you can have access to a combination of anecdotal information (such as user experiences or interviews with company executives) and quantitative data (like demographic breakdowns of users or data on the tool's site traffic). Having data will contribute to a more meaningful analysis. And, as in past capstones, you will be interacting directly with users, so make sure to choose something where you can gain access to potential or actual users.

Taking off the training wheels

Before you get started, read through all of the instruction checkpoints for this capstone. A lot will be left up to your interpretation here. The instructions provided are a general guide through the steps, but there will be few hard requirements of deliverables. This project will be as impressive as you make it, so make sure to use this opportunity to the fullest!

Not all the tasks and questions posed in the instructions will be relevant for every product. For example, privacy and security issues are quite different if you're focusing on a healthcare app versus if you've chosen to focus on the Yelp website experience. In addition to the product and industry, your own strengths will also play a role in what you choose to focus on. If you're more technical, have a decade of experience in a specific industry, or bring a strong business sense to product management, your approach and final presentation should cover core product management activities while also showcasing your strengths.

This somewhat open-ended assignment is representative of what you'll soon experience as a product manager. You'll need to determine what's the best approach for your product. Be sure to review your plans with your mentor, and discuss how to best utilize this capstone to advance your career goals and showcase your unique skills.

There will be some required steps, but most of the instructions to follow will include suggestions and pose questions for you to consider. You will need to do the following steps:

• Identify the problems faced by users of the product you selected
• Map out a strategy for your product to successfully address those problems
• Digest these findings and present them in an engaging presentation (~30 minutes)
• Create a two to three page takeaway document summarizing your work

Your final goal is to deliver a presentation that encompasses the chosen product's business, design, and technology considerations. You'll submit the slide deck and speaker notes for this presentation, along with the written takeaway summary (a document presentation that attendees can "take away" to remember your main points).

For the purpose of this exercise, imagine that the audience for your final presentation is outside investors that are determining if you will get funding to do the work you propose. Provide them with the context of your company, the industry, the product's strengths and weaknesses, how it engages users, the user problems you've identified, and your proposal for addressing those problems.

Your slide deck, notes, and written summary document will be evaluated according to the following rubric. To pass, you must have no Needs Revision scores, and no more than two Proficient scores:

Evaluation Criteria	Exemplary	Proficient	Needs Revision
Provided an overview of the market and the product	Thoughtful overview with relevant highlights that establish a strong foundation for the presentation.	Generic summary of the market and product. Relevant information missing and/or overview did not tie in well to the rest of the presentation.	Significant aspects of the product and its market are missing. Overview is unclear or very thin.
Showed a grap of the company and product strategy	Effective and insightful summary of the most important factors in the company and product strategy that is correlated to market opportunity.	Sufficiently conveyed the main elements of company and product strategy. Could have been more clear and/or offered insights from deeper research.	Missed significant strategic factors about the company and product, or presentation was difficult to understand.
Demonstrated an understanding of product users and competitive landscape	Thorough and insightful analysis of product users and competitive landscape. Identified product opportunities and innovative approaches.	Covered basic elements of product users and competitive landscape. Didn't communicate new, personal findings or ideas.	Did not communicate an understanding of the product user and competitive landscape. Included inaccurate or poorly-researched information.
Executed and presented effective user research	Presented professional-quality user research and provided excellent summaries of the findings.	Included information from user research, but could be better. The quality of the preparation was unclear for survey, interviews, and/or usability testing of mockups.	Was not clear that firsthand user research was conducted. Presentation of findings from user research was unclear.
Identified and specified valuable product enhancements	Effectively tied research findings to innovative enhancement ideas. Ideas were well-specified and actionable for work with a development team.	Practical enhancement ideas. With additional refinement and PM coaching, they could provide useful product specifications.	Product enhancement descriptions weren't clear. Mockups and/or storyboards didn't provide enough guidance for developers to begin implementing features.
Synthesized broad research into an engaging presentation	Effectively distilled comprehensive research into an engaging and informative presentation. Made me intrigued to see the suggested work done.	Adequate summary of research. Communicated significant work, but there wasn't a clear product vision and actionable message.	Unclear on the depth of research conducted. Presentation could have been more cohesive. Did not demonstrate necessary PM communication skills.

Assignment

Read through all of the module's instructions, then choose a company to focus on during this capstone. Remember to consider your ability to access the actual product and its users. Focus on something that will serve you well in job interviews or when you turn this project into a summary for your PM portfolio.

Create a short description (up to one page) of the company and product you chose. Why do you think that choice makes sense for you? How will you find users to do research and testing with? What questions or ideas about this product do you already have?

You don't have to submit anything here, you will submit in the end.