Six weeks of AI training for product managers at Salesforce

The engagement

In spring 2026, HFI Institute, the global UX training and certification body, was engaged to build an AI programme for a team of product managers and UX designers at Salesforce. HFI brought in Fautons founder Waseem Bashir as the programme's AI expert instructor. He co-designed the curriculum with HFI's Abdul Suleiman and led the hands-on Claude sessions.

The result was “AI for Product Managers”: a six-week live programme for roughly twenty senior product managers and UX designers, delivered entirely online. Every session ran hands-on against the cohort's real product work. Real PRDs, real user feedback, real prototypes, rather than canned exercises.

The challenge

The cohort didn't need another AI overview. Product managers needed to use AI to build the evidence and ROI case for UX decisions, so they could show numbers instead of arguing from opinion. They also wanted enough fluency with AI tooling to hold real technical conversations with their engineering teams. And the programme had to land for everyone, because AI knowledge in the group ran from beginner to expert.

It also had to work inside a real enterprise environment. Content was built around Salesforce's approved tools. Where a better tool would change what participants could do, the instructors worked through the approval process to unlock it mid-programme instead of teaching around it.

What the six weeks covered

The programme opened with foundations: what separates a model from an agent, how context shapes output, and when to trust what AI gives you. All of it was taught on the participants' own material, like PRDs and survey data. From there it moved to the evidence work at the heart of the brief: structuring user feedback, building the ROI case for UX investment, and framing findings in language the business already used.

The middle weeks were the deep hands-on block: Claude and Claude Code in VS Code, working with full project context. Participants went from first prompts to working prototypes, then learned to turn one-off prompts into assets the whole team can reuse, like custom commands, shared skills, and git-based collaboration.

The final sessions pulled it together into an AI-assisted research workflow. Participants used AI to prepare usability testing, turn raw user feedback into structured findings, and iterate quick HTML prototypes, with a human in the loop at every judgement point. The aim was to prepare for human research, not to replace it.

Tailored week by week

Tailoring wasn't a slide swap before session one. A participant survey mapped AI knowledge, pain points, and tool access before the programme started, and the curriculum was rebuilt around what it found.

It kept being rebuilt. Between sessions the instructors ran content syncs to reshape the remaining weeks around what the cohort actually struggled with. Dense sessions were split in two. Abstract material was cut in favour of demo-heavy working sessions. Exercises were re-scoped so everyone could follow, whatever their starting level.

About the partners

Fautons delivers live, hands-on corporate AI training across the UK and online, from 5-person teams to enterprise rollouts. Programmes are built around each team's real tools and tasks, and led by practitioners who build with AI every day.

HFI Institute is a global UX training and certification body that has trained over 250,000 experience professionals, and delivers custom enterprise training for organisations worldwide. This programme was jointly designed and delivered by both partners.