I have worked in the digital space for more than 15 years now, and although I have held quite an array of titles, one I have not had yet is that of product owner. This does not mean I have never had the responsibility of a product owner; it just means that my product ownership has fallen under titles such as “Head of Digital” or “Chief Project Officer”.
To truly understand both roles, and their differences, we first need to define and explain each position.
Role: Project Manager
The official definition of a project manager is:
“the person in overall charge of the planning and execution of a particular project.”
And that is actually a very good representation of the role. As a project manager, you are initiated right at the beginning of a project, and are technically supposed to be the first hire. However, as most modern digital projects require a substantial amount of Business Intelligence to be done before the true project planning can start, there may be instances where a BI is employed before the project manager.
In other cases, the project manager is tasked with the business intelligence, allowing them to get a far deeper understanding of the project they are about to build (In my experience, this is actually quite a time saving choice, as if the PM does the BI, they understand not only the project, but also the industry, clients and competitors of a project far better). In fact, the only reason to hire a business intelligence analyst before a project manager is purely a matter of cost, as a BI analyst is substantially cheaper than a full scale PM.
Once the business intelligence has been gathered, the project manager will take this information, build a project timeline, technical specifications, key performance indicators, risk factors and in modern cases using agile development, the iterations to be built by the programming team. Once this is done, the project manager will sit down with the whole team and layout all of these things, preparing for them to start development.
The project will then be built and tested, bug fixes applied, and once it meets the requirements of the project manager will be deployed (although in agile, this can happen throughout the project). Once the project is fully deployed, and the project manager has completed their full role in the project, they are released from their position, allowing them to search for other projects to manage.
Role: Product Owner
One of the many definitions of a product owner that I could find (this one courtesy of Wikipedia):
“The product owner, representing the product’s stakeholders and the voice of the customer, is responsible for delivering good business results.”
To be honest, I actually was under the impression that a product owner was a slightly different role, however, based on my research, my general concept of what a product owner is was somewhat correct.
A product owner is responsible for ensuring that a technical product meets the needs and specifications of project stakeholders, including internal users and external customers. They have a lot of control over the direction that the development team will take during each iteration, as they are the person responsible for having their hand on the pulse of end users of the project / product being produced.
Although product owners have control over the direction of the development, they do not hold the power of dictating how technical solutions are delivered, but rather ensuring that there is consensus among the team for the technical solution provided.
Product owners represent the business and custom side of the project, and their primary task is ensuring that commercial goals are met through development.
What is the Difference?
Above we have the basic gist of what both roles entail. Before I started this article, I honestly thought that there were major differences between these 2 roles, however, the deeper I have dug into them, the more I come to realize that a Product Owner is essentially the role of Business Intelligence Analyst and Project Manager rolled into one.
What does this mean for differentiating them?
Well a project manager is still very much a global term for someone who is responsible for the planning and execution of a project, regardless of the industry, type of project or specialization required.
A product owner on the other hand is a very specific digital term used for the person responsible for the business side of technically developed projects. They should have a solid understanding of both the technical aspects of a project, as well as the commercial aspects, allowing them to mediate between stakeholders and development teams. Product owners work in an agile environment, where the product backlog and user stories are controlled by them.
Technical Control
One of the biggest differences is the amount of technical control that each one has.
A project manager has complete technical control over their project, including infrastructure, database, programming and server structure.
A product owner needs to understand the technical structure of the project, however, they have no control over it, as they are not supposed to dictate how technical solutions are delivered.
Responsibility
A project manager is responsible for the complete project development from end to end, including planning, execution and delivery.
A product owner is responsible for ensuring that the user stories in a project are prioritized based on business and customer needs.
This leads to a disparity between the responsibility of the project manager (complete responsibility) and the product owner (responsibility for the functionality and the order in which it is delivered).
What this means is real world terms is that a project manager could quite easily slip into the role of product owner, however, the inverse is not true. Product owners do not necessarily need to have the understanding of the complete project management cycle to do their job effectively and efficiently, meaning a great product owner is not necessarily a good project manager. Whereas a great project manager can be a great project owner.