Product Manager vs. Project Manager: What Each One Owns
What’s Inside
J. Scott has a client with Product Managers and Project Managers on the org chart. The Product Managers are in the weeds on technology, tools and timelines, waiting for the Business to tell them what to build. They can’t say in writing what the product must deliver or what the company will earn from it. So they send the Project Managers to gather requirements, take notes and herd the cats against a timeline.
The people are capable. The disciplines were never installed. Product Management and Project Management are professional disciplines, the same way medicine, law and electrical work are. You don’t become an electrician by attending a workshop on wiring. You practice to a documented standard until you can execute it reliably.
The cost lands in your portfolio. 70% of projects fail to deliver the outcome they were funded for, and about $109M is lost for every $1B in project spend. This guide shows what each discipline owns once it’s installed, so the return you funded has two owners.
- The standard every leader is held to. Ben Horowitz’s Good Product Manager/Bad Product Manager with the word “product” taken out. J. calls it the best definition of a leader he has ever read.
- What a good Product Manager owns. The vision, written before the Business asks, measured against Customer Satisfaction, Team Satisfaction and Profitability. And why the Outlook Product Manager never once asked you what you wanted.
- What a good Project Leader leads. The return on an investment, from the first interview to the delivered return. And why a good General Contractor is the model.
- Both roles side by side. What each one leads, decides, knows cold, is measured on and stays accountable for.
- Two failure modes, one cause. What happens when the Product Manager takes the how, and when the Project Leader writes the why.
- The one sentence that flips the default for your Tech Team.
Written for the executive who funds the work
You lead technology delivery at a company where the Business brings requests and the Tech Team builds them. You have smart people in both roles and at least one funded initiative that isn’t returning what it promised. This guide gives you the standard to hold both roles to.
Pass it to your Product and Project leaders too. It’s written so they can see themselves in it.
