What is The Difference Between a Product and a Project Manager?
Though with similar names, Product Managers and Project Managers have essentially different jobs. To avoid confusing them, we must understand their context and responsibilities.
First, it’s important to know the difference between a product and a project.
A product is something offered to a market to solve a problem, fulfill a need, or even a want. For example, a retail store wants to increase their sales. After doing a market research, they notice many of their customers are buying products online from other stores because they don’t want to spend time going up to the store during the day and would rather buy it from their homes. Following that trend, the store decides to develop a website that attends to those wants and needs. That website is the product.
Product development has multiple stages and involves many of a company’s departments (such as marketing, sales, and development) to get it launched and keep it running successfully. A big part of the process is constantly assessing customers' responses to design updates, and, once the product no longer attends the market’s needs, it gets discontinued. As the strategist behind the development of a product, the Product Manager draws a roadmap to make that idea marketable and allow it to come true.
In contrast, a project is a process drawn to develop a stage or a specific feature of a product. Drawing from our example, one of the projects included in the retail website could be developing a chatbox where customers can speak live to company representatives in case they have an issue or complaint. That project would require its team to figure out how to code that box, including features –such as a send button, a “subject” section, a pre-chat menu– that best attend to their clients’ needs. So, basically, a project is part of the development of a product, and there can be many of them throughout a product's lifecycle. The Project Manager, in that case, is the defender of the execution. A team facilitator.
Therefore, Product Managers and Project Managers deal with essentially different parts of product development. While the former focuses on a product’s lifecycle as a whole, the latter deals with the work within specific phases and processes. Planning versus execution. As described by their titles, both positions manage their teams to reach a desired goal for the product, but the Product Manager is constantly analyzing the market’s response, redrawing the development work roadmap to fit consumers’ needs and the Project Manager, much more technical, has a set list of tasks to be accomplished.
More specifically, a Product Manager is good at monitoring data, trends and planning for the long-term. Their responsibilities include understanding what the product should have to be successful in the market, outlining the steps to reach those desired elements, drawing a timeline for those steps, and, once the product has been released, measuring its success by analyzing how consumers felt about it. Then, they start that process all over again, envisioning the product’s future. Of course, as their title describes, their job requires constant communication and coordination with other teams, such as project teams, to make sure development is going according to plan.
Following the Product Manager’s requests, the Project Manager leads a team to update or create a feature within a deadline. Their job requires a deeper technical understanding of product development and the specific feature to be developed, as they need to delegate tasks, answer the team’s questions, report the status of the project to stakeholders (such as the Product Manager and project sponsors), assess and support the solution of any development issues and practice the best use of resources –including labor hours– to make sure the project is executed within its budget.
Depending on the software development methodology prefered by the Project Manager, the work will flow differently. An Agile-driven Manager will, for example, shape their work on individuals and interactions by constantly adjusting delivery according to clients’ and the team’s feedback. And if that Manager works with Scrum, they will divide delivery in time-limited cycles, assessing the teams’ performance and lessons learned at the end of each of these periods.
When aligned in their goals and values, Product and Project Managers work in harmony for the success and evolution of a product that attends the markets’ trends, needs, and expectations. If your company is looking to implement these roles or wants support to develop a product, feel free to contact us at hello@vinoly.tech . We are a fully remote team that specializes in Project and Product Management delivery operations.
