MASTER OF PROFESSIONAL STUDIES IN PRODUCT MANAGEMENT

A Scholar's Program for Industry-Oriented Research in Engineering

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Apply Now for SPRING 2025

Priority: December 13, 2024
Program Start: February 27, 2025
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Apply Now for Fall 2023

Space is limited and you are encouraged to apply early.  Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis until all seats are filled.

Why a Master of Professional Studies in Product Management?

Understand the keys to successfully navigating the roles and responsibilities of being a product manager to champion change with internal and external collaborators and influencers.

Learn how to truly know your target customer, your customer’s underserved needs, your value proposition, your product feature set, and your user experience, then integrate this knowledge into product and market requirements and positioning plans.

Translate product ideas into tangible assets by creating wireframes, 3D renderings, prototypes, and minimum viable products (MVPs) to test assumptions and validate customer interests.

Develop techniques for designing and modeling for fast feedback and idea sharing, system optimization with open architectures, validating functions and verifying performance, and leveraging and enabling the system designs, platforms, and ecosystems.

Embrace modern product leadership to form and motivate product teams, and grow organizations that can both discover and deliver products at scale.

The Job Outlook for Product Managers

#3

Best Jobs in America

Source: Glassdoor

29%

Annual Growth in Job Openings

Source: linkedin

128,000

Jobs Posted for Product Managers

Source: linkedin

$196,548

Average Salary in the U.S.

Source: Glassdoor

Faith DeFreitas photo

Faith DeFreitas

Concert AI
The program provides a meticulously designed curriculum tailored to equip you with the essential skills to navigate every aspect of product lifecycle management.
- Faith DeFreitas, Concert AI
The program provides a meticulously designed curriculum tailored to equip you with the essential skills to navigate every aspect of product lifecycle management.
Lei Zhang photo

Lei Zhang

Microsoft
I gained valuable insights and developed a strong foundation in product management. I deeply appreciate the teaching and guidance that significantly influenced my academic and professional journey.
- Lei Zhang, Microsoft
I gained valuable insights and developed a strong foundation in product management. I deeply appreciate the teaching and guidance that significantly influenced my academic and professional journey.
The skills gained from the program allowed me to confidently build and refine products and processes in my own business as well as prepare me for success in any future role.
- Casandra Fazio, Digitas
The skills gained from the program allowed me to confidently build and refine products and processes in my own business as well as prepare me for success in any future role.

A World-Class Education, Delivered Online

The MPS in Product Management combines online experiences with award-winning faculty, self-paced coursework and connections with the University of Maryland community to link innovators from around the world. Offered through the convenience and flexibility of our 100% online learning environment, our program has been specially crafted to offer high-quality, interactive collaboration with worldwide.

Award-Winning Faculty and Corporate Experience

The faculty selected to serve in the master’s are accomplished leaders in education with national teaching awards to their credit. Furthermore, they are innovators themselves who have lived what they teach and appreciate the balance of academic theory and industry practice.

A Dynamic Online Platform for Learning and Collaboration

Our learning management system leverages best-in-class software with a focus on design and usability. Our course architecture leverages high-definition lecture videos, real-time video conference opportunities with faculty and students, and a comprehensive knowledge management system to connect and empower students.

Support and Resources During and Beyond Your Enrollment

We believe the learning experience is simply the foundation of your new venture activities. Beyond the support and resources provided while a student, we aim to manage a lasting network of alumni relationships that live far beyond the graduation date.

An Innovative Curriculum

Term I — Becoming a Product Manager

Purpose:

Discover how to deliver products that customers love, deliver value, and work for the business.

Courses:

"Fundamentals of Product Management" and "Strategies for Managing Innovation"

Description:

Learn the basics of customer discovery, product discovery, product delivery, and the core-context model for managing products through maturity. Explore how these change given the product adoption lifecycle and the market life cycle maturity, including how to detect which stage you are in and what types of strategies can be employed at each stage. Examine the processes of technological change and how firms can creatively recognize, screen, and evaluate tools and techniques to practice innovation.

Term II — Customer and Product Discovery

Purpose:

Discover if the problem is worth solving and explore solutions with early product prototyping by engaging the customer through proven discovery and validation techniques.

Courses:

"Business Modeling and Customer Validation" and "Data Analysis and Decision Making"

Description:

Customer and product discovery is the process of using ideation methods and minimum viable prototypes to discover and test product-market fit. This is best accomplished by using a sound product discovery process with validating tests that confirm your product-market fit. Knowing how to build and conduct tests for value, usability, feasibility, and viability are essential so you can lead products with data-driven decisions. These techniques and skills enable you to evangelize your product concept, and answer important questions about your product, including:

  • Is the value proposition compelling and urgent?
  • Can the customer actually use it to solve the problem?
  • Does the business model make sense for our business?
  • Can you build the business and technology in a scalable way?

Term III — Product Delivery

Purpose:

Enable business agility using design thinking and DevOps that empowers product teams to scale product innovations, delight customers, and capture market share.

Courses:

"Innovative Thinking" and "Managing Product Development and Operations"

Description:

With a strong product idea, the work to take that product to market at-scale begins. Doing this well means transforming the business and the customer experience. Design thinking drives this change through bias for action and a confident approach to innovating solutions that scale. Accomplishing this also requires DevOps principles for engineering, and empowering teams through modern product leadership for development and operations. Product managers must enable productivity and delivery by actively influencing the delivery pipeline to address scalability, reliability, performance, and maintainability.

Term IV — Gaining Traction & Influence

Purpose:

Gain traction through actively managing the customer journey while influencing stakeholders and negotiating business partnerships that drive growth.

Courses:

"Market Development and Commercialization" and "Negotiation and Problem-Solving"

Description:

With modern product frameworks in place, marketing takes on completely new dimensions. The rise of growth hacking means finding your optimal growth channel and driving customers into it. Therefore, the product is no longer just the features, but the entire customer journey. Meanwhile, negotiating a great business relationship can often leap a product or company an order of magnitude higher in customer access and acquisition, while reducing costs.

Term V — Managing Products at Scale

Purpose:

Lead product portfolios and innovations at scale with tailored product frameworks, lean budgeting, empowered teams, and aligned objectives and key results.

Courses:

"Financing the Product Life Cycle" and "Building and Leading Innovative Organizations"

Description:

As products scale and diversify across market segments, and vertically orchestrate as product suites, how do you keep innovating? Delivery and growth create momentum that push down on costs and people to do more with less. This is the greatest challenge for product leaders and heads of innovation. Learn how to establish product frameworks for flow, empower teams, leverage lean budgeting strategically for product value streams, manage long-term product teams and continuous employee engagement, and ensure that every aspect of the product work ties to business value, key financials, and the objectives and key results (OKRs).

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Apply Now for Fall 2023

Preferred Application Deadline: June 16, 2023
Final Application Deadline: July 28, 2023
Program Start: August 28, 2023
Start Your Application »

Space is limited and you are encouraged to apply early. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis until all seats are filled.