What the program covers
Course Program
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Week 1: How the web actually works
Client-server model, HTTP basics, what happens between a click and a page load.
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Week 2: APIs without the jargon
REST vs other approaches, request-response cycles, reading API documentation.
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Week 3: Databases and why structure matters
Relational vs non-relational databases, what queries do, how schema decisions affect product features.
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Week 4: Authentication and access control
How login systems work, tokens, sessions, and why these matter for product security decisions.
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Week 5: Back-end in the product lifecycle
Sprint planning, technical debt, estimates, and how to have more grounded conversations with your dev team.
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Week 6: Practical review and Q&A
Participants bring real cases from their work. We work through them together.
About this course
If you sit in meetings where engineers talk about databases, APIs, and server logic and you mostly nod along, this course is for you. Not to make you a developer, but to make you a more effective collaborator.
Who runs into this problem
Product managers who write specs that developers push back on. Analysts who wait days for data queries they could request more precisely. Business owners who cannot evaluate technical estimates or spot when something seems off.
What the course covers
We go through how servers actually process requests, what a API does in plain terms, and why database structure affects product decisions. You will also learn how to read basic technical documentation without a translator.
A note on expectations
You will not write code here. The goal is reading comprehension and better questions, not syntax. Most participants say the biggest shift is feeling less lost in sprint planning meetings.
After this course I stopped asking engineers to explain everything from scratch. I started asking the right questions instead.
Format and pace
Six weeks, two sessions per week, each about 75 minutes. Homework is light but consistent. You need a laptop and curiosity, nothing else.