📋 Capstone Track B — Run a Real Product Cycle (No Code Required)

The mission: take a real problem from your own life or work, and run it through a complete product cycle — research, planning, design, and pitch — producing the exact documents real product managers produce.

You’ll need: paper and pen (or any notes app), your free GitHub account, three humans willing to chat for 15 minutes each, and 10–20 hours over 2–4 weeks. Zero code.

Why this track matters: Module 19 said it plainly — product, coordination, and analyst roles are often the best doors for career-changers, and those interviews ask one question above all: show me how you think. This package is that answer: a real portfolio artifact for PM, business-analyst, and coordinator applications.

First: pick a real problem

Not an imaginary startup — a genuine annoyance from your life or workplace. The best capstones come from sentences like:

Small and real beats big and vague. Your domain knowledge (Module 19: it’s an asset) is exactly what makes this package impressive.

Write it as one sentence: “[Who] struggles to [do what], and today they cope by [current workaround].”

Milestone 1 — Problem statement + 3 user interviews (2–3 hours)

PMs don’t guess; they ask. Interview three real people who have this problem (15 minutes each — in person, phone, or chat). Use this script:

  1. “Walk me through the last time you [did the thing]. What actually happened?”
  2. “What’s the most annoying part? Why that part?”
  3. “What do you do today to cope?”
  4. “If a magic wand fixed one piece of this, which piece?”
  5. Then stay quiet and let them talk. (The gold is always after the silence.)

⚠️ Watch out: do NOT pitch your solution and ask “would you use it?” — polite humans say yes to everything. Ask only about their past behavior and current pain. Past behavior is evidence; predictions are pleasantries.

Write up one page: your problem statement (refined by what you heard) plus the three most surprising quotes.

✅ Checkpoint: at least one interview genuinely surprised you. If none did, you asked leading questions — interview one more person, asking only about the past.

Milestone 2 — 8 user stories, prioritized MoSCoW-style (1–2 hours)

Write eight user stories (Module 07 template: As a [person], I want [to do something], so that [reason] — covering at least two kinds of person). Then sort them with MoSCoW, a famous prioritization method whose name spells its four buckets:

Rule of thumb: if more than 3 stories land in Must, you’re building the car, not the skateboard. Re-read Module 07’s MVP section and be braver.

Milestone 3 — Wireframes of 3 screens (1–2 hours)

Sketch the three key screens on paper (or a free tool like Excalidraw in your browser — but paper is genuinely what pros use first). Module 07 lab rules: the home screen, the “doing the main thing” screen, the “it worked” screen. Label every button. Photograph them.

Milestone 4 — The MVP cut-line document (1 hour)

One page with a horizontal line across the middle. Above the line: what version 1 includes (your Musts, maybe a Should). Below: everything else, each with one sentence of why it can wait. This document is where PM thinking actually lives — deciding what not to build is the job.

Milestone 5 — One-page design doc (1–2 hours)

Assemble the pieces using the Module 07 lab template: problem → proposal → user stories → version 1 → explicitly-not-in-version-1 → screens → open questions. Keep it to one page. The open-questions section is the professional’s signature — include at least two honest ones.

Milestone 6 — A test plan for the MVP (1 hour)

Channel Module 09. For each Must story, write: how you’d check it works (the happy path), two evil cases (what if the user enters nothing? types 3,000 characters? taps twice? loses signal mid-task?), and what “pass” looks like. One table, one page. A PM who thinks about failure before launch is a rare and hireable creature.

Milestone 7 — A real project board (1–2 hours)

Make the work visible, like a real squad (Module 18):

  1. On GitHub, create a new public repository named after your project (e.g. shift-scheduler-product-pack). Upload everything: interview notes, stories, wireframe photos, cut-line, design doc, test plan. Commit as you go — the history shows your process.
  2. Open the Projects tab → New project → choose the Board layout. You get the classic columns: Todo → In Progress → Done.
  3. Break version 1 into tickets — one card per user story or work chunk, titled like work orders: “Design the shift-swap flow”, “Write copy for reminder message”. Add each card, then convert the important ones to issues (each card’s “…” menu → Convert to issue) so they live in your repository too.
  4. Place the cards honestly: research and planning cards you’ve finished go to Done. Look at that — you’re mid-project, and the board proves it.

✅ Checkpoint: a stranger opening your repository can understand the problem, the plan, and the state of the work in five minutes — without you in the room. That’s the whole test of PM communication.

Milestone 8 — The 5-minute pitch (1–2 hours)

Write (or record on your phone — braver, better) a five-minute pitch:

  1. The problem — with a real interview quote (30 seconds).
  2. Who has it and what it costs them (1 minute).
  3. The MVP — the skateboard, and what you deliberately cut (2 minutes).
  4. How you’ll know it works — what you’d measure (1 minute).
  5. The ask — what you’d need to build it (30 seconds).

Deliver it to one human. Their first confused question is free consulting — fix that part of the pitch.

âś… Definition of done

✨ Stretch goals (optional)

When done: add yourself to the Showcase — link the repository. This package is interview-ready; Module 19 told you what to do with it.