This programme is organised by competency, because that’s how PMs who are serious about growth diagnose their own gaps. Five core competencies build the operating muscle of a product leader ready for the next level, each feeding one of three real projects. AI is woven through every competency as the way modern PMs work, never as a standalone module. You finish with a portfolio that proves how you think.

The shape of the program

Five competencies. Three projects. One Demo Day. AI throughout.

• Competency 1, Product Sense (Strategy & Judgment), feeds Project 1
• Competency 2, Building Skills: Rapid Prototyping & Validation, feeds Project 2
• Competency 3, Product Analytics & Measurement Judgment, feeds Project 2
• Competency 4, Stakeholder Management, feeds Project 3
• Competency 5, Product Launch & Storytelling, feeds Project 3
• Demo Day, the full case study, presented live

A note on AI, and on Build Lab

PM Accelerator teaches you to operate as a senior PM, using AI fluently across every competency; it does not teach deep AI agent building, that lives in PM Build Lab.
This keeps the two clean. PM Accelerator builds judgment; Build Lab builds shipping mastery, and any learner who wants to go further in building with AI agents is routed to the Build Lab.

Product sense, business acumen, and the judgment to make defensible calls under ambiguity. The anchor competency. Everything else is execution. This is the thinking that decides what is worth executing. Senior PMs are paid for judgment, and this is where it’s built.

Users: knowing who you build for

• Design research scoped to a specific product decision, not a general knowledge gap
• Conduct user interviews that surface genuine pain rather than confirm assumptions
• Frame and target your users: who they are, who they are not, and which segment to serve first
• Move from raw qualitative data to decision-ready insight

Market: understanding the landscape

• Run a competitive analysis that reveals strategic positioning gaps, not just feature differences
• Size a market with TAM, SAM, and SOM in a way credible to a founder or investor
• Frame a product opportunity in commercial terms that connect user pain to business potential

Vision, differentiation & product decisions

• Articulate a product vision that gives the team a direction worth committing to
• Define what makes the product genuinely different, and defend it
• Make AI-era product decisions: when to build AI into the product, build vs. buy, AI as a feature vs. AI as a moat
• Recognise when the right move is expansion and when it’s a pivot

Prioritisation, roadmapping & business alignment

• Apply prioritisation frameworks to make a defensible call when data is ambiguous and stakeholders disagree
• Build a roadmap that communicates priorities to different audiences without becoming a promise
• Connect strategy to business goals through prioritisation, roadmapping, and the metrics that prove progress
• Communicate what you are not building in a way that builds rather than erodes trust

Shipping faster, testing earlier, and earning credibility with the people who build alongside you. A PM who can ship a working prototype without an engineering team is a different kind of PM. But the senior skill isn’t just building. It’s aligning builders and selling the vision to the people who fund it.

Building prototypes with AI

• Build a working prototype using AI-powered tools without writing code, and put it in front of real users in the same week
• Choose the right tool for the job across Claude, Lovable, v0, Gemini, and Replit
• Write a product prompt detailed enough to generate a usable first build, then iterate to a shareable URL

Aligning with devs and designers

• Work with engineering at a level of technical fluency that builds credibility rather than friction
• Translate a prototype into a brief designers and developers can run with
• Use a prototype to align the team on intent before anyone writes production code

Presenting prototypes to founders

• Present a prototype to founders and senior stakeholders in a way that earns a decision, not just a reaction
• Frame what the prototype proves, what it does not, and what you need next
• Document what worked, what did not, and what changes in the next iteration

Quality & pre-launch validation

• Define clear acceptance criteria for a feature so the team knows what “done” means
• Identify edge cases and failure modes before the build, not after
• Run a structured pre-launch check on your prototype, covering primary flow, edge cases, and error states, before putting it in front of users
• Hold a credible conversation with engineering about test coverage and quality risk without overstepping into QA

Measuring what matters and reading data critically, tool fluency in service of judgment. The senior analytics skill isn’t knowing a tool. It’s defining the right metric, interrogating a dashboard rather than trusting it, and diagnosing why a number moved without grabbing the first explanation. Tools are the substrate. Judgment is the skill.

Measurement judgment

• Define the right success metric for a product at its specific stage, and defend the choice
• Build a metrics framework that gives your team signal rather than noise
• Diagnose a metric moving in the wrong direction without defaulting to the first obvious explanation
• Know the limits of your data, especially when traffic is too low for a valid experiment

Tool fluency (hands-on)

• Product dashboards: read and interrogate product analytics in Mixpanel or Amplitude
• Traffic & source tracking: understand acquisition and channel performance in Google Analytics
• User behaviour: use heatmaps and session insight in Hotjar to see what users actually do

Leading without authority, across the team, the business, and yourself. Junior PMs manage tasks. Senior PMs manage people, politics, crises, and themselves. This is the competency that most often decides whether a PM gets promoted, and the one least taught anywhere else.

Technical team alignment

• Build trust with engineering through technical fluency and clear, honest trade-off conversations
• Align the team on intent and priorities without resorting to authority you don’t have
• Discuss quality, test coverage, and release risk with engineering as an informed partner, not a bystander

Business alignment with founders and senior management

• Build a stakeholder map that reflects real influence dynamics, not the formal org chart
• Communicate up: lead with the implication, support it with evidence, respect their time
• Manage expectations on scope, timelines, and trade-offs before they become conflict

Marketing and cross-functional collaboration

• Partner with marketing, sales, and customer success as genuine collaborators, not downstream recipients
• Bring cross-functional teams into product decisions early enough that they can act on them

Crisis management

• Lead through crashes, failed timelines, and the politics of sunsetting a product
• Navigate stakeholder conflict with a structured approach that preserves relationships and moves the product forward

Managing yourself

• Develop a personal strategy for your first 90 days in a new role or at a new level of seniority
• Manage your own focus, energy, and credibility, the senior PM’s least-discussed responsibility

Shipping without chaos, and telling the story that makes the work land. A launch is where product meets the market, and where PMs are judged. This competency covers both the operational craft of launching and the storytelling that determines whether anyone notices.

Building a launch plan

• Build a launch plan that sequences the work and assigns clear ownership across functions
• Design a launch that marketing, sales, and customer success can actually execute

GTM alignment

• Align on go-to-market with marketing and sales so the launch lands as one motion, not three
• Produce the briefs and assets each function needs to do their part

Managing failed launches and timelines

• Handle a launch that slips or underperforms without losing the team’s trust or your own credibility
• Run an honest post-mortem that produces decisions, not blame

Storytelling for PMs

• Tell a product story that makes stakeholders, users, and hiring managers care
• Build a portfolio case study that demonstrates how you think, not just what you’ve done
• Position your experience and background as PM assets rather than qualifications to apologise for

A performance, not a class. Each participant presents their complete PM case study to the cohort, facilitators, and a guest reviewer from an African or diaspora tech company. Direct, hiring-quality feedback follows every presentation.

What you leave with

• A complete PM case study presented to a real audience with clarity and composure
• Direct feedback from a practicing PM or product leader currently working in the market
• A demonstration of end-to-end product thinking across research, strategy, execution, and reflection
• A portfolio piece, interview feedback, and one clear development priority for the next stage of your career

Three projects. Each one builds on the last.

• Project 1: Market Intelligence Brief. Choose a real problem in an African or emerging market. Conduct user research with at least three real people. Run a competitive analysis. Use AI to synthesise findings. Frame the commercial opportunity with a business case. You leave with a structured one-page brief covering problem statement, market sizing, competitive gap, proposed product direction, and business case.
  
• Project 2: Build & Validate. Take the Project 1 problem and build a working prototype using Lovable, v0, or Replit. Put it in front of three real users. Document what worked, what didn’t, and what changes next. You leave with a live prototype URL and a one-page validation summary.
• Project 3: Full PM Case Study. Combine Projects 1 and 2 into a complete, shareable case study. The full arc from problem identified, through research conducted, business case built, prototype shipped, users tested, and what comes next. Formatted to Treford’s portfolio standard and ready to send to a hiring manager or present in an interview.

These aren’t exercises. They’re evidence.