Any phase · Craft
Answer your own questions with data (SQL basics)
Being able to run a simple query means you can check a hunch in minutes instead of waiting for an analyst. You don't need to be an expert.
About 5-10 hoursEvergreenLast reviewed 5 November 2026
Who this applies to
- Skills it builds
- Data and measurementTechnical and AI fluency
- PM types
- All
- Product types
- All
- Starting points
- All
- Ways of working
- All
- Experience
- All
- Size of organisation
- All
Steps, by experience
Beginner (under 1 year)
- Learn what a table, a row and a column are.
- Practise SELECT, WHERE, ORDER BY and LIMIT in a free interactive course.
- Learn COUNT, SUM, AVG and GROUP BY.
- Ask an analyst for read-only access to a safe copy of your product's data.
- Answer one real question each week, and check the result with an analyst.
Intermediate (1 to 4 years)
- Join tables to answer questions across users and events.
- Build simple funnels and cohorts yourself.
- Save useful queries so others can reuse them.
Experienced (5+ years)
- Review your team's key queries for mistakes in definitions.
- Agree shared definitions, such as active user, with data teams.
- Coach PMs to answer their own questions safely.
Who can do this
Owner: Product manager
Can be delegated to
- Data Analyst: Give access and check early results
Reviewed by: Data Analyst
Tool examples
- Looker
- Explore saved views before writing your own queries.
- Power BI
- Check your query results against an existing report.
- Claude
- Ask an AI assistant to explain a query, then check it yourself.
Definition of done
- Basic course completed
- Read-only access set up
- Three real questions answered and checked
Common pitfalls
- Querying live production databases
- Trusting a result without checking definitions
- Stopping after the course