It’s easy to feel overwhelmed when trying to decide which courses will actually help you upskill and move your career forward. The internet is bursting with options, and if you work in Product, it’s not always clear which ones are worth your time or your money.
As a Product specialist, you’re often expected to be a jack of all trades. One moment you’re deep in a technical discussion with engineers, and the next you’re on calls with sales, marketing, finance, or subject matter experts. That mix is what makes Product such a dynamic and rewarding field, but it also makes it dangerously easy to believe you need to master everything.
The truth is, while domain knowledge can be useful, it shifts from project to project. It shouldn’t be the centrepiece of your development plan. Instead, make deliberate choices about where you want your career to go and invest your effort and resources into becoming exceptional in that direction.
For example, you might decide to focus on being a non-technical product manager, someone driven by discovery, growth, optimisation, and commercial insight. In that case, your energy is better spent improving your skills in A/B testing, analytics, and customer research. But even if you’re not diving into code, you still need to understand how things get built.
Here’s a scenario you’ll face often as a Product Owner:
You’ve created a roadmap packed with exciting features. Now what?
- How many of those features are realistically deliverable with your current resources?
- How long will development take for that “must-have” feature?
- Are there dependencies or sequencing issues you need to manage?
- What trade-offs are you willing to make?
You’ll collaborate with developers to get answers, but you still need to speak their language well enough to interpret and communicate those insights to other stakeholders.
Now that I’ve covered the mindset part, let’s look at the practical side, specifically, the courses that helped me develop into a stronger, more confident Product consultant.
International Diploma in Business Analysis
Rating 9/10
This diploma is made up of four core modules:
- Foundations of Business Analysis
- Requirements Engineering
- Business Analysis Practice
- Modelling Business Processes
After completing these, you’re eligible for a final oral exam. Pass that, and you walk away with the full diploma.
I took this course early in my career, before moving into Product Management, and I still see it as the bedrock of my professional development. It doesn’t just prepare you for a Business Analyst role; it gives you a toolkit of structured thinking and problem-solving techniques that translate beautifully into Product work.
A huge part of Business Analysis is the ability to capture, elicit, and clearly communicate requirements. Those same skills are vital as a Product Manager. If you can’t explain your requirements clearly, the wrong things get built and projects stall.
Even if you already feel confident writing requirements, this diploma helps formalise your approach and introduces industry standards like BPMN and UML. It’s the kind of structure that elevates your day-to-day work from “getting things done” to “getting the right things done.”
Lean Six Sigma (Black Belt)
Rating: Depends on your goal – 10/10 for fundamentals, 6/10 for Product relevance
This one’s tricky to rate. For Product specialists, Lean Six Sigma isn’t always a direct fit, but for building core business skills, it’s a solid 10/10.
Think of it like martial arts: you don’t start with the black belt. You work your way up, yellow, green, then black; each level adding more detail, rigour, and challenge. Most people don’t need to go all the way; the Black Belt is mainly for those who want to specialise in process improvement or operational excellence.
The earlier levels introduce the origins of Lean and Six Sigma, how they merged into a formal methodology, and the principles of:
- Streamlining workflows and reducing waste
- Using Kanban and flow management
- Identifying and preventing bottlenecks
- Performing root cause analysis
- Applying value stream mapping
- Understanding the Voice of the Customer (VoC)
- Managing projects using the DMAIC framework (Define, Measure, Analyse, Improve, Control)
You can already see the overlap with Product Management; these tools help you identify inefficiencies, validate problems, and optimise delivery.
The Black Belt, however, dives deep into statistical modelling and advanced data analysis. It’s fascinating but niche. I earned my ISO-accredited Black Belt at a point when I was still exploring where to take my career, and while I don’t use every tool today, the structured way of thinking it taught me still shapes how I run teams and assess problems.
AWS Solutions Architect Associate
Rating: 20/10 for a technical role
Let’s start with the basics. The AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner exam is a 40-question multiple-choice test that covers the fundamentals of cloud computing and core AWS services. It’s perfect for anyone who wants to understand the basics well enough to hold their own in technical conversations.
If you’ve ever sat in a meeting where engineers throw around terms like VPC peering or IAM roles and felt your brain buffering, this course helps with that. I’d already worked in a cloud environment for three years before taking it and still found it worthwhile. I scored 38/40 (not that anyone’s counting), and for the cost, time, and effort involved, it’s a complete no-brainer.
Now, if you want to go deeper to understand not just what AWS services do, but when and why to use them, the AWS Solutions Architect Associate is the real game-changer. It bridges the gap between product and engineering by teaching you how to:
- Compare services and make trade-offs based on architecture and cost
- Choose the most efficient design for a given business requirement
- Speak fluently with engineers and architects without needing to code
This was easily one of the hardest certifications I’ve taken. It took nearly two years of on-and-off study before I felt ready. The challenge lies in the nuance: most questions have multiple technically correct answers, but you have to pick the best one based on context, just like making product decisions where several options can be “right.”
By the time I sat the exam, I was confident with core AWS concepts like compute, storage, networking, security, and serverless. Passing was rewarding, but honestly, the learning journey was the real payoff. It’s what transformed my understanding of how modern cloud products are built and operated.
Professional Scrum Product Owner ||
Rating: 7/10 for beginners, 5/10 for seasoned professionals
These are the first two levels of the Scrum.org Product Owner certifications. I completed the first course early in my career and passed the second more recently.
The theory is solid. You’ll learn the principles of Agile delivery, the mechanics of Scrum, and what “good” looks like when teams and organisations truly embrace those practices.
In reality, anyone who’s lived through an Agile transformation knows it’s rarely that clean. Many organisations operate in what’s called Wagile (a hybrid of Waterfall and Agile, where teams claim to work iteratively but still cling to stage gates, fixed roadmaps, and endless status calls).
If you’re new to Product, Agile, or Scrum, these certifications can be helpful. They give you vocabulary, structure, and credibility on a CV. But the best way to understand Agile isn’t from a slide deck or a multiple-choice exam, it’s through experience. Watching how a skilled Scrum Master or Product Owner runs their team teaches you more than any certification ever could.
TL;DR: Great theoretical grounding for newcomers, but for experienced professionals, the real learning happens on the job.
Wrapping it up
Upskilling in Product isn’t about collecting badges or chasing every new certification that pops up on LinkedIn. It’s about understanding why you’re learning something, and how it fits into the kind of Product professional you want to become.
Every course I’ve taken, whether it was business analysis, process improvement, cloud architecture, or agile delivery, has added a different layer to how I think and work.
If there’s a takeaway here, it’s this: be intentional. Choose learning that aligns with the direction you want to grow, not just what everyone else is doing. The best investment you can make isn’t in a certificate; it’s in deepening the understanding that lets you deliver better products, make smarter trade-offs, and collaborate more effectively.