One point of confusion for many people looking to get into product management is over the various product-related job titles that all sound very similar. You may have heard of roles such as Product Manager, Product Owner, Project Manager and Program Manager and thought to yourself what exactly are the differences between them. In this post we will break down each of those titles so at the end, you have better understanding of which positions you want to apply for.
1) Product Manager
Usually when you hear about product management, this is the role that most people are referring to. There are many definitions for what product managers do on the Internet (all of them are correct to a certain extent) but my definition is someone who delivers products from ideation to launch by working across the product development lifecycle. This includes but is not limited to: performing user interviews, working with designers on wireframes and mockups, putting together the product roadmap, grooming the backlog, leading a development team, communicating to cross-functional team and leveraging analytics to make decisions.
This is important to call out that product managers across different firms and industries might be focused on different areas. For some companies, their PMs might be more focused on the customer discovery piece and talking to users whereas at other companies, their PMs might be more focused on working really closely with the development team. It all depends. It is your responsibility during the interview process to ask questions and figure this out so you can see if it aligns with what you are looking for.
2) Product Owner
Product owners have some overlap with product managers but the biggest difference is that while product managers are more strategic and diverse in their responsibilities, product owners are more tactical and focused on execution and delivery. POs generally are concentrating on prioritizing the backlog, writing requirements and working closely with the scrum team to deliver stories on time. Rarely do POs do any customer discovery work like conducting user interviews or think about the long term product vision.
Again depending on the company, the roles can be blurred. Especially at smaller places, the product owner can have more strategic duties and vice versa. However at larger, more established firms, the roles and responsibilities between a product manager and product owner are usually much more clearly defined.
3) Project Manager
There is a somewhat common misconception that product managers and project managers are the same, especially since PM can refer to both. This is completely false. Product managers and project managers are two completely separate roles with much different responsibilities. Project managers, at a high level, are responsible for planning, organizing, and overseeing one or more projects for an organization while ensuring they are on time, within budget, and in scope. They are not really product oriented in any way as product managers are. As someone who did a lot of project management when I was in consulting, it involved a lot of status meetings, weekly status decks and tracking risks, actions, issues, and decisions.
As a product manager, there may be a few instances where you are acting a project manager in terms of following up with stakeholders around deadlines and deliverables but it really shouldn't be the bulk of what you are doing.
4) Program Manager
Program managers are very similar to project managers except they operate on more of a bird's eye view. As the name implies, program managers oversee a program or an initiative which are a series of multiple interconnected projects. So while project managers are responsible for delivering a particular project on time, within budget, and in scope, program managers are responsible for the overall success of all the projects in the program and help support the long-term growth of the business.
The ONLY EXCEPTION is for Microsoft. For some reason at Microsoft, program managers are actually product managers.
If you are interested in breaking into product management or are having trouble landing interviews and/or offers, please schedule a free call via the Contact page. We would love to chat and see how Product Manager Dojo can help.
Commenti