Ok, so how many times has this occurred: someone asks you what you do for a living and you tell them that you are a Product Manager and they fire back at you “Oh, so you manage projects?”. Grrr, it’s really no fair – the two disciplines are really have nothing in common. Well wait a minute, maybe they do. No, no they really are different. Dang it. What’s the difference between the two?

A lot of the confusion comes from the simple fact that the two jobs do share a lot of things in common. However, never fear, they really are completely different no matter what your friends or your boss tell you. In a nutshell, the differences fall into three different categories: scope, execution, and results.

Scope: A project manager has the somewhat enviable benefit of having the hope of there existing clear cut boundaries that define what he/she is responsible for. They are responsible for a project that uses resources, has a schedule, and has a clear set of deliverables. A successful product manager on the other hand has a less defined job of creating a successful product. The product will be driven by no so much a set of requirements, but rather a customer need which may be fickle and change over time. A product manager has to be able to see through requirements and determine what the root cause of the customer’s issue is and create a product that solves that.

Execution: The project manager is responsible for basically reporting on the status of the project and he/she has a whole host of tools to do this with. However, the product manager is not responsible for designing the product. In fact the product manger does not have to be a subject matter expert – they can mange projects that they know nothing about the underlying technology. A Product Manger on the other hand desperately needs to know everything about how the product works. They need to know the motivation behind every design decision so that they can explain it in non-technical terms to a customer. A product manager is going to have to be able to sell (something a project manager never has to do) his/her product to others both internally and externally.

Results: How is a project manager judged? If a product follows a set schedule, delivers what was requested when it was promised and does not exceed its budget, then it is considered to have been a success. Basically, the less attention a project attracts, the more successful it is deemed to have been. The product manger on the other hand is expected to have created a product efficiently (similar to a project manager’s project), but has the additional burden of having to be successful no matter if it is delivered to an internal or external customer. If the product is a runaway success and gets lots of vocal praise from the customer than the product manager is deemed to have done a good job.

Yes, there are a lot of similarities between the jobs. However with due respect to both project mangers and product managers, you can’t switch them around and expect success. Product Management really does require a special set of skills – it’s an art, not a science.

Have you ever been confused with a project manager? Does anyone in your family really understand what you do for a living? How do you get along with project managers – are you friendly or bitter enemies? Leave a comment and let me know what you think.

Tags: project, project management, product management, IT Product manager, product manager jobs

Related posts:

1. AccPM Poll Results: Who gets more respect where you work Product Managers or Project Managers? The question this past week was “Who gets more respect...

… leadership. Sorry in advance for this rant, but I’ve just about had it with product managers who spent their time whining and complaining that nobody listens to them. Pretty much across the board I’ve seem organizations where IT Product Managers get less respect than Rodney Dangerfield (on a good day!). In talking with these Product Managers, I think that I’ve heard just about every excuse that you could imagine: “it’s really an engineering company and I’m not an engineer”, “they don’t work well with women”, “most of the team is in India and they think differently”, “this is a low priority project”, etc. To which I say, just shut up already. The time for Product Mangers to feeling sorry for themselves is over – nobody has time to listen to them anymore.

What’s wrong with all of these complaints? The accusing finger of blame is pointing in the wrong direction: it’s not everyone else’s fault, it’s the Product Manager’s fault. Yes — I’m blaming the Product Manager, get over it. We really have done a lousy job of clearly defining who we are, what the qualifications to be Product Manager are, and just exactly what value we bring to the company. Who can blame everyone else for not respecting us?

What’s Wrong With Product Managers?
Most (98%) of Product Managers don’t understand the #1 rule of being a Product Manager: you are the CEO of your product. I really don’t care if anyone told you that you were (normally they don’t); however, they sure are going to hold you responsible if it fails so you may as well grab the reigns and start to drive that product wagon because if you don’t, then nobody will.

A good 75% of Product Managers then go on to mess up Rule #2 of being a Product Manager: it’s all about the people. Do you know what the difference between a project manager and a Product Manager is? Scope. A project manager has a clear start and finish to a project and gets to lose him/herself in tracking the progress of that project. A Product Manager operates on a higher plane and needs to ensure that the world is ready for the product once the project manager is done. Oh, and that the product that was created was the right product with the right features.

What To Do?
So what is a Product Manger to do? Let’s keep this nice and simple — show some leadership. A Product Manger can’t “manage” because nobody works for them. Instead, a Product Manger needs to inspire those that he/she works with in order to have them work on those items that the Product Manager needs to have done. IT staff, finance staff, marketing folks, etc. all need to come together and do work at the request of a Product Manager for whom they do not actually work. The only way that this can be done successfully is for the Product Manager to set an example of leadership by showing the team the correct way forward. This means that the Product Manager needs to have great interpersonal skills, lots of time and patience, and the ability to simplify complex product status in order to communicate it to many different parties.

How hard can this be? It turns out that it is very hard. There are lots of different Product Management courses out there; however, there is precious few courses on Product Management leadership. Maybe it’s time that Leadership becomes the new focus for all Product Mangers…

Tags: IT Product manager, leadership, project, CEO

Related posts:

1. Breakeven Analysis Is A Product Manger’s Secret Weapon Product managers know that how they price their products can...
2. AccPM Poll Results: Who gets more respect where you work Product Managers or Project Managers? The question this past week was “Who gets more respect...

The job of product management often takes on a program management flavor when it comes to keeping track of how the development of a new product is coming along. It’s probably important that I come right out and say that product management is a completely different job than program management; however, the two worlds do intersect when it comes to tracking product development. How an IT product development project is tracked is one of the ways that you can distinguish between a good product manager and a bad one.

So what’s a product manager to do? More often than not, I’ve found myself having to create a means to track the status of a project that is creating my product. Often this project will include external firms, internal development, marketing, sales training, etc. As anyone with an IT background can tell you, there are countless ways to track a project like this; however, too many of them are cumbersome, awkward to use for IT products, and don’t really do a good job of answering the questions that you (and your management) will be asking.

Physical File Folder w/ Sticky Notes: In all honesty, I have several IT product management friends who successfully use this system. They are all females and I’m not sure if this has something to do with why it seems to work for them. What I do know is that when I’ve tried to use it, it’s been a complete disaster. This systems only requires you to put all pertinent information into a single file folder and then carry it around with you at all times. Critical information such as dates and contact info can be written on Post-IT notes and stuck on the inside of the file folder. Forget PDAs and laptops, if you know where your info is, you can answer just about any question quicker than your competition. The downside of this system (for me) is that it’s not visual — you can’t tell where things are by looking at a summary of the information. Additionally, you need to occasionally spend time and resort/organize your folder in order to make sure that you have up-to-date copies of everything. I always run out of time to do this and then the whole thing just falls down.

Microsoft Project: everyone in IT likes this tool (at least deep down). We like it because it’s complicated enough that we feel like if we feed it enough information it will tell us what to do. I have seen some very detailed Project plans; however, I’ve never really seen an IT project successfully use this tool. Much of the tool’s functionality does not pertain to an IT project. One of the big problems is that very few people seem to have copies of Project and so you end up sending out PDF versions of the plan. Then you get busy, the plan doesn’t get updated, and things fall apart.

Microsoft Excel: This is my weapon of choice. Everyone seems to have a copy of this application so you can share files and folks can make changes to it if needed. There really is no learning required in order to be able to use it. As a committed visual learner, I use Excel to make lots of colored progress charts. More often than not, I color in cell by cell to show the status of a given set of tasks. When the colored rows are stacked on top of each other, then you can quickly see the overall project status. Oh, and this can easily be copied into PowerPoint presentations to be used at the next mandatory product status meeting.

So there you have it, three different ways to track the status of an IT development project. There is no one perfect answer and what works for one may be different from what works for others. In the end, it’s just important that you have a system that allows you to quickly answer the questions that you know are going to be coming your way.

Tags: Excel, Microsoft Project, project, status chart, tracking

Related posts:

1. Is Microsoft Planning On Having Blue Light Specials? Put yourself in the shoes of a...
2. AccPM Poll Results: Who gets more respect where you work Product Managers or Project Managers? The question this past week was “Who gets more respect...