In this Thursday masterpiece I will be lying to you like a gas meter, but since I’m an honorable fibber I will confess every time I do that.
So, Internet is full of articles, trainings, courses etc. telling about the scope of Project Manager and Product Manager positions, very often they are being compared with description of similarities and differences. I don’t want to sound like a broken record and explain that over and over again, but I thought that it might be cool to talk with those of you who decided to build IT career and now choosing between those two so alike yet so divers options. What is best for you exactly? Yes, yes, I’m talking about you!
As a person who was working on both positions many years I decided to share my vision.
But in order to come to this, we still need to cover what Project and Product managers do.
Oops, that was my first lie: you will need to endure a bit of broken record))))
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Here’s what Forbes saying about those 2 professional ways.
Project managers work on projects through all stages, so they have set responsibilities from beginning to end to make sure their projects succeed. Project managers’ responsibilities include the following:
Establishing parameters and managing each logistical element of a project
Planning, defining the project’s scope, managing resources, executing various steps and bringing the project to a close
Monitoring a project from start to finish to anticipate potential challenges ahead of time and solve problems as soon as they occur
Ensuring that a project stays on budget by actively monitoring and reallocating funds as necessary
Maintaining effective communication with those involved in the project
Product managers take on a broad but high-level role in product development. They ensure a product develops according to its vision and meets the needs of customers who will use it.
Product management often involves:
Creating a roadmap for a product by determining what users need and establishing priorities to determine when elements of the project should be built
Setting defining metrics to help determine a product’s success
Monitoring performance, changes and new features to ensure that the project stays within the set parameters for success
Conducting research and market analysis to maintain a high-quality product
Working with cross-functional teams to implement strategies that result in a successful product
Well… If you ask me, I wouldn’t say that Product Manager is “broad but high level” role and Project Manager is not… It’s more depending on particular person who acts on the position. If you want to know what you manage and not to turn into slide machine, you need to roll up your sleeves and go into the details (but not to micromanage! this is a sin!).
According to my experience, if we talk about every day tasks, then looking for differences here would mean to split hairs — daily routines look like twins. It’s more about strategic perspective.
Project manager works in the scope of particular project. Let’s say, you have System A which you need to integrate with System B, and this is being treated like a project (big fat expensive corporate integration, you know). In this case a guy working as Project Manager will be covering all of the aspects of this activity starting from initiation and right till the project goes live, hyper care period is over and integration is taken care by support team. At this moment our hero gets bonus and going into the dawn whistling away. Many more projects awaits over the corner…
Product Manager is a different beast. This guy literally gives birth and raising IT asset as a child. At the moment when System A is integrated with System B and it’s time to breath out and put everything on support rails, Product Manager stays there and holds the fort. All changes, all problems till the decommission request itself go through him. He covers full lifecycle, yet he also could get a “post go-live cigarette”)))
And here’s another lie you can catch me on. Of course, traditionally they say to you that there are much more differences even on every day routine basis you can find between those two guys.
Yes, we can mention that when they say about Product Manager everything is usually done with AGILE, while Project Manager could work both in AGILE and Waterfall (every day routines differ), we can agree that Project manager is more concentrated over resource/budget management while Product Manager is looking after product functionality etc.
There are also those 2 Glassdoor articles saying about the varying paygrades for both positions:
Here’s how much Product Manager does
And here’s how much Project Manager does if we look in their statistics.
However, according to my and my colleagues experience, point I highlighted above is the main one, everything else is secondary and not guaranteed.
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Ok, but what’s best for you? Which position you should reach?
If playing videogame you don’t stop until you finish it, no matter how much it will take as only completion brings you satisfaction, and even after you finished you like to replay it once more, but this time try another race, world, civilization (you name it), Product management fits you better as you will have your own solution you will grow from the scratch and you will be taking care of it (even in the most routine aspects, when everything is already clear as day and tedious as… rainy day) until its lifecycle is over.
And vice versa, if you feel like it takes too much effort and time to defeat final boss and you want to explore what’s in there on another cartridge, then you’re more Project management guy. It doesn’t mean that project managers can’t complete anything, but those guys constantly seek for new emotions and might be bored faster. Those guys are better for short distances, they give their maximum at sprint (in our case project), they might be worse at marathon.
All in all, it’s worth to try both positions in your career as they are close and then decide.
I hope this advice will help you;)