Product manager vs project manager can help you understand the major differences between these two important roles in product development. Product managers are responsible for ensuring product success ensuring all important metrics while project managers are responsible to ensure completion of the project.
In many scenarios we often take these two roles as similar with no major distinctions due to major overlaps in their working ensuring project success. Let us go over the complete differences between product managers vs project managers in this article.
Who Is a Product Manager?
Product manager is a professional who is responsible for defining the product vision, strategy and the complete roadmap to the end product. They ensure that everything in the product is being developed based on the market needs, customer requirements, pain points, business goals and expectations.
They also indulge in activities like customer feedback, identifying opportunities, analyzing competitors, and setting priorities for development using backlog, and more. They collaborate with cross teams on project i,e. Designers, developers, marketers, and sales. This helps them translate their ideas into actionable features.
- Product managers are responsible for ensuring product success from ideation to product delivery and more.
- They track KPIs and ensure customer satisfaction with proper revenue and customer engagement.
- They ensure the product is aligned with the company goals.
- They focus more on “what” and “why” during the product development.
Read More: Problem Solving Products: How to Find the Best Ones to Sell
Who Is the Project Manager?
Project Managers are professionals also known as PM who manage, plan, execute and complete projects. They are generally responsible for ensuring the completion of the project within a defined scope and budget. They create a complete detailed plan, allocate resources, manage risks, and ensure that all major milestones of the product are met.
The primary goal of a product manager is ensuring delivery of product on time while ensuring proper quality and allocating team members with separate tasks to keep the project going ahead.
- They ensure that the product is completed successfully following the set budgets and deadlines
- They coordinate with cross teams and assign them tasks and deliverables to ensure proper work flow during development.
- They ensure that the product is completely structured according to the plan.
- They focus more on “How” and “When” of a project
Product Manager Vs Project Manager: Main Objectives
Product managers and project managers roles are very similar but share significant differences based on their objectives within the organisation. Let us know.
Product Managers Objectives
The main goal of a product manager is to identify the right product to build based on market research, common pain points, trends, and business goals. Product managers aim to solve real customer problems by creating products which are useful and usable for the targeted customers.
The product must also support the business objectives and revenue growth. Product managers manage backlog, set roadmap and guide the development team throughout the process and stages.
Project Manager Objectives
Project manager ensures the on-time delivery of the project ensuring all deadlines are met. They keep count of budget allocations and resources to be used efficiently and projects are completed within budget.
They anticipate potential risks, resolve issues and maintain smooth communication to keep the project on the track. Their job is to implement the plans laid for a specific goal.
Read More: Top 70+ Project Manager Interview Questions and Answers
Product Manager Vs Project Manager: Key Overlap
People who are familiar with both these product manager vs project management job roles often find some of their responsibilities overlapping between each role.
- Product managers focus on what needs to be built and project managers ensure that it is delivered on time.
- Product manager communicates the product vision while project manager takes an update on progress, risks and delivery timelines. They collaborate together to keep teams aligned.
- They align in release planning, sprint scheduling, launch coordination, and more.
- Product managers address market related issues and workflow issues.
- For ensured success coordination between both professionals is important as it ensures balance, scope and quality.
There might be times when product managers dig deep into the details of the product development which was the responsibility of the project manager.
Product Manager Vs Project Manager: Roles and Responsibilities
Product manager ensures the product market fit and prioritises users satisfaction. Project managers ensure on time delivery of the project while managing all the budgets and resources allocated.
Product Manager Responsibilities
- They identify the right product to build and define a compelling product vision by conducting proper research, user needs and goals of the business.
- They tend to solve real customer problems by creating useful products to address users’ pain points.
- They prioritise features, manage the backlog, and set a well planned roadmap to guide the overall development team.
- They define the product strategy and oversees all product needs from development to release
- They gather data, create product roadmaps, and prioritise launches.
- They are responsible for product success and they ensure it by correcting failures, meeting sales objectives, source materials and more.
Project Manager Responsibilities
- The project manager’s main responsibility is ensuring timely delivery of the project within the defined timeline and budget.
- They ensure that the resources are used properly and the project gets completed within the decided budget amount.
- They take measures to mitigate risks and issues to maintain smooth communication to keep the project on track.
- Their job is to ensure the complete product development plan is executed successfully.
- They use software to keep track of the tasks and schedule.
- They make sure teams are collaborating well and staying motivated.
- They create and maintain all major processes of iteration and changes in the project.
Product Manager vs Project Manager: Skills Required
Check some of the major skills required by the product managers and project managers below.
Product Manager Skills
- Marketing assessment
- Market and user research
- Product strategy and vision
- Basic knowledge of design i,e. UX
- Data analysis
- Price modeling
- Basic business knowledge
- Communication
- Problem solving
- Decision making
Project Manager Skills
- Project planning
- Project scheduling
- Task management
- Budgeting
- Risk management
- Time management
- Communication
- Tool Proficiency
Product Manager Vs Project Manager: Difference Table
Let us check a simple overview of all major differences between product manager vs project manager roles.
| Product Manager | Project Manager |
| Product managers are more involved in researching and ideation of the product. | Project managers break down initiatives into tasks and ensure timely completion. |
| They set product vision into action. | They plan complete project delivery timeline |
| The main goal of a product manager is to build the right product to solve users’ problems. | The project manager’s responsibility is to deliver the product efficiently and on time. |
| They are responsible for communicating vision to the stakeholders. | They allocate project resources to product teams. |
| They create and maintain roadmaps for products. | They communicate progress to stakeholders. |
| Their success depends on customer satisfaction, product adoption and revenue. | Their success depends on timelines, reports, assignments, tasks and more. |
| They gather feedback and perform user research | They build effective planning to build the project and consider user impact directly. |
| Jira, Trello, Analytics, productboard are some of the popular tools used by product managers. | Asana, Jira, Gantt charts, MS projects, and more are some of the tools used by project managers |
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Product Manager Vs Project Manager FAQs
Q1. Who is a product manager?
Ans: Product manager is a professional who is responsible for defining the product vision, strategy and the complete roadmap to the end product. They ensure that everything in the product is being developed based on the market needs, customer requirements, pain points, etc.
Q2. Who is the project manager?
Ans: Product Managers are professionals also known as PM who manage, plan, execute and complete projects. They are generally responsible for ensuring the completion of the project within a defined scope and budget.
Q3. Which is better: Product manager or project manager?
Ans: Product managers take higher level decisions than project managers while ensuring the complete success of the product and product market fit. This makes it a slightly better role than project manager.
Q4. Can a product manager be a project manager?
Ans: A product manager can take the role of a project manager as many of the skills required in both these roles are similar. It also depends on the requirement of the specific company and their domains.
