Back To The Basics: Product and Project Manager
The differences, the commonalities, and everything in between
Hey, fellow Leader 🚀,
I am Artur, and welcome to my weekly newsletter. I am focusing on topics like Project Management, Innovation, Leadership, and a bit of Entrepreneurship. I am always open to suggestions for new topics. Feel free to reach out to me and share my newsletter if it helps you in any way.
This article aims to address some of the basics of Project Management and other leadership disciplines. It all began with an article about the nature of Project Management (link available below), and today I'll be discussing its rival, Product Management. Or is it truly a rival? Depending on the organization, neither Product Management nor Project Management may exist as distinct roles, with their tasks often fused. This can lead to some confusion, highlighting the importance of distinguishing between these different roles.
What is Product Management?
In the corporate world, it is important to have someone define a vision for a product or service, and then define a strategy to meet that vision. For making a vision a reality, it is key to gather data of all sorts. A textbook answer would be to gather quantitative and qualitative data (oh no, it already looks like a thesis for a PhD!). This data can come in the form of user metrics for existing products (adoption rate, features used, active users, retention or churn rate, etc.), or simply from user feedback in the form of testimonials that could provide some light on how to steer the product forward. It is also important to have some market data, which could potentially identify opportunities to develop the product in a given direction.
Overall, it is the Product Manager’s responsibility to gather data and, based on that data, define a strategy for a product or service. On Agile teams, this role is defined as Product Owner, who is the specialist for the given product or service. However, in reality, this position is diluted in some organizations and lacks the ability to truly define a vision and a path to achieve said vision.
The most visible work for a Product Manager is their work on the product backlog, which involves defining new features for the product or service, or prioritizing the backlog for the team to pick up new work. This position is key because outcomes matter more than execution alone, which means the team’s success is greatly dependent on the value they add to the product and how that value is perceived by the end user. Nobody cares about an extremely complex product that engineers are proud of building if nobody is using it.
What is the Relation Between a Product and a Project Manager?
Let’s start with the commonalities. Both positions have one focus: the product or service. The difference is the perspective, which is complementary. Both are leadership positions, and both can coexist in the same context, on opposite sides of the organization, or with a direct hierarchical link. This is where the messy part starts to happen. I have worked with Product Managers who were on the 'other side' of the organization, and IT was simply a tool. The product was more than a piece of software. It was a technical component of a greater product. However, I had led teams where the Product Manager had a direct hierarchical link to me. There is no definitive answer, since both positions might coexist in different ways in different companies, and even inside the same organization.
The core difference in perspective is where the dynamic duo of both positions lies. Simply put, the Product Manager focuses on the "What," "Why," and "Where":
What features should be implemented? What features will address the gap or problem? What will the UX (User Experience) and UI (User Interface) for this product be?
Why should we prioritize this feature instead of others? Why are users not engaged in this context? Why is this data pointing towards X or Y? Why is the user requesting a feature that isn't at the product's core? Why do we have bad or good user feedback?
Where should this product be placed? Which markets?
While the Project Manager is focused on execution most of the time, there are Project Managers who also put on the hat of a Product Manager. The Project Manager is typically more focused on the 'How,' 'When,' and 'Cost':
How will this product be developed? How will the team work with stakeholder X or Y? How will we address risk A or B? How is the effort estimated? How is the data gathered for the project plan? How will the team be structured?
When is the project supposed to be delivered? When will the project be delivered? And everything related to timelines.
How much will the product cost? What is the available budget?
The Project Manager also has a focus on the 'what' in the sense of scope definition, and making sure the project stays in control to avoid any surprises. However, the Product Manager is typically focused on defining the scope and ensuring the relevance of that scope in the end product. This is where some conflicts and some interesting dynamics are born between both roles, or an inner conflict in case both roles are assigned to the same person. Depending on the company, the split between the roles can be really messy. In the end, all that matters is that they get along and the PM is always right.
That’s it. If you find this post useful, please share it with your friends or colleagues who might be interested in this topic. If you would like to see a different angle, suggest it in the comments or send me a message.
Cheers,
Artur
Hi Artur, in my world the product manager is a department called product management or product strategy. They prepare the business case for a product development or a product upgrade. They go for approval of typically multimillion projects. At the approval a project manger, a budget, a timeline and product performance parameters are set. Now the responsibility is handed over to the project manager who has to deliver. After the launch of the product the responsibility switches back to product management who has to ensure with sales, that the projected profitability materializes in reality. This switch of responsibility is frequently debated, but since totally different competences are need for product planning and project management, there has been no better idea so far.
It's seems a very business orientated approach to Product/Project management. Is an interesting approach to have a switch between responsibilities depending the product phase.
In your opinion and based on your experience, what are the pros and cons of that type of setup?