Product Owner vs Project Manager

Product Owner vs Project Manager, what’s the difference? Seems there is none, as many orgnizations just rename roles from one to the other. The cases of renaming that I’ve seen, were one way from Project Manager to Product Owner. That’s a pity as both are distinct roles which require different profile to fill the roles with quality.

What the role names reveal?

What is a product? There are many definitions out there, for now let’s refer to a product as something that creates value for users (ideally more than just one). One the other hand, what is a project? There are slightly different definitions also, but let’s see wath the PMI offers: „A project is temporary in that it has a defined beginning and end in time, and therefore defined scope and resources.“ and „… a project is unique in that it is not a routine operation, but a specific set of operations designed to accomplish a singular goal.“ So we have some major difference in the nature of a product or project: creating value on the produc side, a fix start and end date, defined scope and resources and a goal on the project side. Owner vs Manager, that’s a little clearer by definition if we look at the dictionary: Owner = a person who owns something. Manager = 1) a person responsible for controlling or administering an organization or group of staff. 2) a person regarded in terms of their skill in managing resources, especially those of a household. Another major difference, ownign something or controlling and administering. With the names alone it seems not much common gound and by far not enough to make project managers to product owners (or the other way around) just like that. Product Owner seems more of a entrapreneural kind of profile with own visions and goals. Whereas a project manager needs good skills in execution a mission towards someone elses goals.

Do Product Owner and Poject Manager have work in common?

Well, that depends on the activities or tasks that come with the roles. As a Product Owner you create a product vision, as a project manager there is no equivalent.

The vision is then broken down to a roadmap or just topics, epics or whatever you want to call it. Breaking down the work is one of the first activities for a project manager, though the break down is done in much more detail. Creating a project plan for the time between fix start date and fix end date requires level of details than creating a product roadmap. Skill wise, the Product Owner role requires more visionary thinking, validating assumptions, testing the waters and less detailed planning and scheduling.

Once the initial steps are done, communication with stakeholers, sponsors and others starts. Good communication requires a good plan or strategy, where I would actually see a lot of common ground for both roles. What you have learned in terms of communication in one role could easily be applied in the other.

The same is valid for stakeholer management, with one big difference from my point of view. For a product owner, the most important stakeholders are the ones who turn the product vision into a product. The project manager ususally has other priorities regarding stakeholders.

Coming to regular way of working once the project is setup or product is roughly defined, there is much difference in daily work. Project Manager need to keep control, have regular reportings and managae potential risks accordingly to stay in time and in budget. A Product Owner usually deals with a much higher degree of uncertainty. Product discovery, creating and validating assumtions and hypothesis, getting early and regular feedback from real users are routing activities for a Product Owner. In this field the skill sets and working style differs essetnially.

One last aspect I have to bring in is, that Product Owners are part of or work with self-organizing and cross-funtional teams (as the role is often used in agile envrionments). Especially self-organization doesn’t work with someone who manages „resources“. So there is also a different requirement in working style and leadership skills.

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The list could continue the deeper I would dive into details, but I guess that’s already enough to be aware of the distinct roles. Staffing decisions should be made conciously depending on what you want ot achieve, a successful productt or achieving a goal within given constraints. Both are important roles for the success a project or product and both are not fun if people who take them are not actually matching.