Transition to PM
What are the possible pathways to take for a BA transitioning into Product Manager role?
Any courses/guidelines will be helpful.
You need to show more proactiveness at your current workplace. Increase scope of your responsibilities, maybe communicating this to your manager will help.
Courses as such won’t help as PM role is very context driven. In case you still feel, go for any free courses on Coursera. Maybe engage with PMs in your org and take some cues from them.
Is it so that the growth of a PM is stunted in professional services company compared to a product based company?
Yes & No
No - In early years of career, it might not impact plus exposure to different areas is helpful.
Yes - Intrinsic nature of the role needs “ownership experience”. In a services firm when u work for customers, they won’t give that kind of ownership exposures for obvious reasons. So, it might block the growth.
Courses aren't necessary imo. Shouldn't be too difficult to go into PM from BA. Biz acumen and analytics skills which I assume you already possess are much needed in PM.
Work a bit on structured thinking, problem solving and user empathy and make sure to display these and you'd be sorted.