Organizations often confuse these two terms – probably because they see product evaluation, innovation, and ultimate development as a holistic endeavour. In fact, there are important differences between a product manager and a project manager in skills and task responsibilities.
Startups and small companies typically have a small team to handle all aspects of business operations, and staff members must wear many “hats.” Such businesses focus on earning their places within the ocean of competitors out there.
They develop content marketing strategies that improve their SEO; they develop branded URLs that make them easier to find; and they conduct the research that selects the right social media platforms, customer personas, and value propositions that must be promoted. What they often do is combine the positions of product/project manager. This is a necessity during the early stages. As a business grows and expands its product line, it will need to split these positions, each with very specific and very different roles to play.
Let’s unpack the roles and responsibilities of these two positions.
The Product Manager
In short, product managers are visionaries. They must have a deep understanding of the niche market, the target customer’s ever-changing needs and wants, and then make recommendations for modifications of existing products and the development of new ones. In short, it is their job to find the product-market fit for any contemplated initiatives. Exactly how this is accomplished requires the following task responsibilities:
1) Use of Data Science: While this is a relatively new phenomenon, data science allows product managers to gather relevant information from the oceans of data on the web. By asking the right questions, product managers can get answers related to competitors’ activities, target customer behaviours, and trend predictions.
2) Data must then be translated into reports and recommendations to upper management so that key decisions can be made regarding future product/product development activities, along with projected KPI’s that will make such development worthwhile.
3) Build a Project Management Team: Once a product modification or innovation has been chosen, the product manager must put together a project team to ensure that the changes/innovations are actually accomplished. This entails identifying a project manager who will then be responsible for bringing the product initiative to fruition.
4) Bring all of the Players on Board: It is the product manager’s responsibility to ensure that all departments in an organization understand the “what” and the “why” of product development, especially the marketing and sales departments.
5) Presentations/Communication: Product Managers generally report to C-level executives within their organization, if the enterprise is large with a corporate structure. They must translate their research and recommendations into written presentations to these individuals. These will involve written communication skills that provide documentation of case studies, market analyses, analysis of competitor activities, and roadmaps for product development, to name a few.
Further, they must communicate decisions made to others, they must provide progress reports as the product manager reaches determined benchmarks.
Because product managers are more research-involved, they often have to improve and fine-tune their written communication skills and may seek outside resources. One key resource will be online writing services review websites that can point in the right direction.
It is important to note here that there is also a difference between program management vs. product management. A product manager is not a program manager. Program managers have a larger scope of responsibilities. They look at overall organizational goals and focus on the long-term goals of an organization. They evaluate the interconnectedness of products and product proposals as they relate to those long-term goals. Product managers focus on specific, shorter-term goals of customer product needs and how to meet them.
The Product Project Manager
Once it has been determined by a product manager that there must be a modification of an existing product or the development of a new product. Once the decision-makers have agreed, it is time to plan for the product development. This means that a team must be put into place to achieve that new product modification/development goal.
The product project manager is responsible for putting together a team that can achieve the product management goals as well as use the appropriate project management software tools for that management. They become a bit of a product program manager on a limited scale, based upon the specifics of the development process so that it meets the larger organizational goals that have been communicated to them. Here are the primary tasks responsibilities of the product project person.
1) Work with Product Manager on the creation/implementation of a product development roadmap that ultimately involves lots of other departments – marketing, sales, customer support in terms of meeting needs and demands, and more. The project manager must understand goals for the product development if they are to manage their team and the process correctly.
2) Design a plan for product development that will result in a viable product that meets product management goals. This plan will include the following:
(a) Development of specific objectives for the product development project.
(b) Planning the process for project completion, including accumulating team members, defining scope, cost, and timeline, and reporting of benchmarks to stakeholders.
(c) Executing the project. This includes such tasks as delegating responsibilities to team members, maintaining a regular schedule of communication among those members, even daily scrum meetings if necessary, seeking resolution of issues as they arise, and ensuring that everyone is on-task according to the timeline and tasks that have been established.
(d) Monitoring and adapting to change. Product development rarely goes exactly as planned. When changes need to be made, it is the project manager’s responsibility to report to stakeholders, certainly the product manager, so that everyone is apprised of those changes and the need for them.
(e) Team management that keeps members focused, productive, and happy. Given that many teams work remotely, especially during these pandemic times, team-building can be difficult. Yet, the product manager must take specific steps to maintain high morale.
(f) His responsibilities also include communication – with his team members, with the product manager, and other stakeholders. As the product manager, the project manager may be a bit unskilled in the clear, simple communication that may be necessary. Taking a look at some of the best essay writing services that offer business communication writing, resources, and editing may be helpful.
A Simple Example – Change in Business Model
A product manager has conducted the necessary research and determined that the organization should move into a new product delivery model, let’s say, a subscription-based system, as opposed to a single purchase model. The research has shown that some of their strongest competitors are experiencing success and greater profits and that the current and potential future customer bases see the value of such a convenience. He has developed a presentation for the decision-makers, and the initiative has been approved.
Now it is time to develop this new business model. A product project manager is selected and charged with actual development. He, in turn, selects the appropriate team members, defines the goals, sets the timelines, delegates the specific responsibilities, and selects the project management tools to be used. From this point forward, his responsibility is to monitor all progress, made adjustments as necessary, keep the team focused and productive, and deliver the final results on time. Those results will probably include such elements as new website design, coding and programming for ordering and checkout, a new database management system, and new content for both the site, social media platforms, etc. This will be a team with diverse skills and talents. And the final product will involve careful checking for glitches, testing for a good user experience, as well as a full review to correct grammar errors and remove any plagiarism issues.
There is a Big Difference
This information will give you what you need to know about product management and project management. And it should be easy to see the differences in the roles and responsibilities of each position. It is the rare individual who can fulfil both roles as a company grows and expands its product line.
From healthcare, banking, and finance, to entertainment, gaming, and IoT tech, there will be a continuing and growing need for product managers – visionaries who can sift through the data, determine customer needs and make recommendations for both product modifications and new product development.
At the same time, there are skills specific to project managers – the ability to take a product idea, acquire the team that can translate that idea into reality, and see that this is accomplished according to a timeline and a budget, while maintaining control of production and team member morale and productivity.
All mid-sized to large enterprises need to ensure that they have separated these positions out. Doing so will result in a far more efficient and productive product development environment.
