Product Manager vs Product Owner

Product Manager vs Product Owner

1. Introduction
2. Product Manager vs Product Owner – High Level
3. Day-to-Day Responsibilities of a Product Manager
4. Every Organization
5. Should You Hire, A Product Manager or Product Owner
1. Hire A Product Manager If…
2. Hire A Product Owner If…
6. When To Hire A Product Manager
7. Should You Become a Product Owner or Product Manager

Introduction

If you’re here (Hi 👋 ) then you want to understand more about the difference between a Product Manager and Product Owner. Perhaps you want to know if you should hire one or the other, perhaps you’re interested in a career change and don’t know which is right for you… By the end of this post you’ll be able to:

• Know the difference between a Product Manager and Product Owner
• Know how to articulate the difference to others using the free resources below
• Know the roles and responsibilities of a Product Manager and Product Owner
• Know how a Product Manager and Product Owner fits into an organization to support its goals
• Know if you should hire a Product Manager or Product Owner
• Know if you should become a Product Manager or Product Owner if looking for a career change

Product Manager vs Product Owner – High Level

Unfortunately like most things in life the roles & responsibilities of a Product Manager or Product Owner aren’t black and white. Every organization is different and every organization is different overtime depending on where it is in its life, startup, small business or large enterprise. Depending on where an organization is in its life cycle will have a dramatic effect on the different roles if they exist and their responsibilities. However…

Generally speaking a Product Manager is more strategic and outward facing and a Product Owner is more tactical and inward facing. So what does that mean?

If you think about a software company the “outside” or outward facing direction of the organization is the customers be that B2B or B2C. Whereas the “inside” are those creating the software, the engineering and design/UX teams. If a product organization is making software for the same company, just consider the users external. The same can be true for hardware as well, except the engineering team might be considered the manufacturing team.

The Product Manager defines the direction and vision of the product through research that aligns with the organization’s goals and strategic direction. The Product Owner works more closely with the development team to execute the vision set by the Product Manager.

Just because the Product Manager defines the direction and vision of the product doesn’t mean the Product Manager should toss the requirements over the wall, the two need to be in sync.

The Product Manager needs to ensure the Product Owner understands the needs of the market to ensure they build the right solution and avoid wasting time, resources and money. The Product Manager also needs to ensure feedback from customers both positive and negative are feedback so they can work with the engineering and design/UX to resolve issues.

The Product Owner needs to ensure they work with the Product Manager to prioritise the work to ensure they are delivering the highest value to the market first. The Product Owner also needs to ensure they are communicating with the Product Manager about changes to timelines if there are issues so the Product Manager can set expectations both internally and externally

Day to Day Role & Responsibilities of a Product Manager

By now, you should start to have a clearer idea of what the traditional roles and responsibilities of both a Product Manager and Product Owner are.

Every Organisation Is Different

As mentioned above every organisation is different depending on where it is in its life.

The type of agile practice can also further determine what a Product Manager and Product Owners does. Example: a team practicing Scrum will typically have a Product Owner to help the engineering team quickly iterate through sprint based upon feedback and user testing. However, if the team doesn’t have a Product Manager then the Product Owner will often end up taking on those responsibilities.

If a team isn’t using Scrum and are doing kanban or something else the Product Manager may end up prioritising the work for the development team.

Should You Hire A Product Manager or Product Owner?

You may be wondering, “Should I hire a Product Manager or Product Owner?”, “Why can’t the Product Manager/Owner do both roles?”

While both roles are similar in nature, they both help define what should be built by the engineering team, you typically don’t want one person to cover both roles. The simplest reason is the volume of work is too much to focus on any given task to provide high quality work.

If you have one person fill the roll of a Product Manager and Product Owner they won’t be:

• Spending enough time with customers to understand their problems
• Spending enough time understand the market and competitive landscape
• Spending enough time with engineering and design/UX to truly define what the best solution to meet the markets needs through writing user stories and acceptance criteria
• Spending enough time testing the solution to ensure it meets the acceptance criteria defined

All of the above will result in poorer quality products which will lead to wasted time, resources and money.

Again there are expectations to the rule, one that comes to mind is start ups. Typically start-ups can ill afford a Product Owner so much of the responsibilities fall to the Product Manager, such as prioritizing the backlog with the aid of the engineering manager/lead. This tends to be OK given the constraints the organization has with resources and how the development team is likely to be smaller and require less management/help.

Hire A Product Manager If…

• You need someone to understand the needs of the customer
• You need someone to understand the market and the competition
• You need someone to own the vision of the product
• You need someone to be the face of the product to the customers and market

Hire A Product Owner If…

• You already have a Product Manager, and they are not spending enough time on the above.
• You need someone to work with engineering to define the solution to a market problem.
• You need someone to define the user stories and acceptance criteria for engineering.
• You need someone to work at a tactical level to help unblock the engineering team.

Click here to learn more about hiring a Product Manager and here to learn more about hiring a Product Owner

Become A Manager or Product Owner?

So, should you become a Product Manager or Product Owner? Again this depends on which of these sounds more appealing to you?

Product Manager

• Working with customers to understand their problems
• Defining the direction of the product
• Working with executive leadership to help achieve the organisation’s goals
• Doing presentations at conferences, to customers or to sales
• Being the face of the product
• Looking to become a CEO or CPO (Chief Product Officer)

Product Owner

• Work with engineering to design and build software or hardware
• Working with design/UX
• Working with internal stakeholders (engineering, dev-ops, IT) to achieve the customer goal
• Being the technical go-to guy/girl on the product
• Looking to become a CTO (Chief Technology Officer)

While the above isn’t an exhaustive list of roles and responsibilities, it should help you decide if you’re more outward-facing or more internally technically focused.

Summary

To sum up, the main difference between a Product Manager and a Product Owner is that a Product Manager is more strategic, outward facing from the organization and understands the customer and market problems through research. The Product Owner is more tactical and inward facing to the organisation and helps the engineering team (along with design/UX) define the solution to the market problem defined by the Product Manager.