GoPractice! Simulator - Training review

Data-driven product management training Simulator by GoPractice is so good it deserves a review article.

My main goal for this online training was to get hands-on skills for mobile games analytics. I wanted to improve our games monetization and user experience.

What got me hooked?

1. Testimonials
   • There are good reviews from people working at Zeptolab, Facebook, TechCrunch and other big-name companies. This gives you a good idea about the quality of the training. For me the feedback from the founder of Deconstructor of Fun was most convincing.
2. This training uses Amplitude to teach you product analytics
   • At work I am using Leanplum for event-based analytics. So, I figured that training which uses similar analytics tool will be beneficial.
3. Curriculum
   • Course starts with basics like retention and goes quite deep into A/B testing, evaluation of the feature potential and ASO.

What’s the time commitment?

Landing page of the training says, “If you spend one hour a day, it will take you about 1-1.5 months to complete the course.”

In my case it actually was way longer: flu, vacay,.. well, you know, life happens.

To be precise, I spent 2 months and 16 days to complete the course. Median learning session for me was 1:08:30 and total time commitment 39:37:09. So, it’s actually reasonable to say you gonna spend around 1-1.5 months to complete Go Practice if you do it 1 hour a day.

What you get?

1. Tons of hands-on exercises
   • Guys at GoPractice took phase ‘learning by doing’ quite serious. You have to understand the topic and make calculations – usually in Google Spreadsheets – to get the right answer and access new material. You can’t move to the next topic before you complete previous one. By the time you finish the course, you have over 20 ready-to-use and adapt for your own needs Spreadsheets. That is, next time you will need to estimate the audience or LTV of your app, you don’t have to start from scratch.
2. Instant feedback
   • That feels awesome that you get an instant “Well done!” or “Not exactly” feedback. After choosing the answer and pressing Enter you immediately get some feedback:

   

3. Course gives you a full picture about digital product management. Most useful topics and ideas for me were:
   • Getting user feedback as early as possible. I liked a lot the topic about user testing. It has a lot of insights on how to conduct user interviews.
   • A/B test instead of getting things for granted
   • App Store Optimization is not a rocket science. And, Go Practice gives more than enough information on how to do it on your own
4. Real-world examples
   • Course provides many real-life examples, market benchmarks, stories of successful products. The cherry on top is that many of them are for mobile games.
5. General idea of questioning everything
   • After spending ±40 hours working on this training, you gain very valuable skill of avoiding assumptions. It helps you shift away from this should work to let’s test this hypothesis mindset.

   That is, next time you won’t fall for Müller-Lyer illusion [1] and get a ruler instead of jumping to conclusions:

How can it get better?

1. Graded assignments
   That would be awesome to get even more practice, work on some bigger projects and get human feedback as well. Here’s an example of how this worked in Codecademy Intensive on website development: https://github.com/dmytronayda/colmar-academy/issues

2. Product management competitions
   After completion of the training that would be great to get your hands dirty working on product challenges for real or fantasy customers. Kaggle competitions are way too complex but can give an idea of what I mean: https://www.kaggle.com/competitions

3. Progress e-mails
   Weekly emails should not be too intrusive. I like contribution reports from Google Maps Local Guides:

Summary

All in all, Simulator by GoPractice! is the incredible resource to learn about growth and data-driven product management. This is a simulator not a typical online course! You write and read emails, analyse data in Google Sheets or Excel, make research. Besides super valuable course material Simulator provides many extra reading and video suggestions. So you can continue learning more even after finishing online training.

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Sources:

1. Kahneman, Daniel. Thinking, Fast and Slow (p. 27). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.