Product Owner vs. Product Manager: What’s the Difference?

Googling the term “product owner vs product manager” pulls up the following related questions:

Google search results for “product owner vs. product manager” (Source)

This quick search tells us that businesses have a lot of questions about product owners and product managers—two of the most important Agile project management roles for a product team, also known as an Agile team, Scrum team, or squad.

The bad news is that many small-business teams deal with these questions by simply ignoring them. There is a perception that Agile teams have more important things to do, such as attending Sprint planning meetings, which overshadows creating a business culture that’s consistent with Agile values.

This can have dire consequences.

Small and midsize business (SMB) teams with poorly defined Agile roles won’t have the right people in decision-making positions. This will lead to team accountability issues, low project quality, and costly delays.

Instead, SMBs looking to build successful Agile teams should begin by clearly defining Agile roles—in this case, that of product owner and product manager.

In this report, we’ll explore the differences between the roles and help you understand when your small business should use them.

Product owner vs. product manager: Similarities and differences

The differences between product owners and product managers can be summed up as follows:

• Product owners are team-facing. They’re accountable for ensuring that the team delivers high-quality products to end users, within the agreed upon time-to-market deadlines.
• Product managers are customer-facing. This role is responsible for doing market research, understanding customer requirements, and creating the product vision for the organization.

However, the roles overlap when it comes to understanding their responsibilities.

• Product owners must understand customer requirements. Their core responsibility is to understand and present key customer requirements to the team as a prioritized list of product backlog items. They also coordinate with the product manager to write the user story, capture customer feedback, and participate in product demos.
• Product managers must engage with the team. They regularly participate in Scrum meetings to sketch out wireframes and solutions with the team. That’s because they need to define the long-term product vision and work closely with the team to prioritize activities that help them achieve this vision.

Now, let’s look at the differences in more detail. This chart from Gartner’s “How to Staff the Product Owner Role” report (full content available to clients) breaks down the differences based on key factors.

Know when to use a product owner or a product manager

There are various factors that determine whether your business needs product managers, product owners, or both. For instance, businesses practicing Scrum generally don’t have a product manager because the Scrum Guide makes no mention of such a role.

Product management expert Roman Pichler explains this saying that product managers were considered antithetical to Agile when the Scrum Guide was released in the 1990s.

Why? Because back then, product managers were responsible for creating the 1,000-page market requirement documents and extensive project plans. But Agile practitioners now consider these processes inefficient.

Regardless, Agile has come a long way, and small businesses follow other frameworks besides Scrum. Many businesses today have created a strategic distinction between product managers and product owners:

• Product owners help the dev team build the product. Product owners are more or less default to Agile project management. You need a product owner, even if you have a single development team working on short-term projects and regardless of whether or not you have a product manager.
• Product managers discover what products to build. You need product managers in growing businesses where multiple teams (DevOps, UI/UX etc.) collaboratively build the product. Gartner notes in its “Moving From Project to Products Requires a Product Manager” report (content available to clients) that a project manager or Scrum product owner isn’t the right person to fill this role.

Here’s a table of recommendations to help you understand the need for these two roles in your small business:

What skills are needed for a product owner vs. a product manager?

Let’s talk more specifically about the skills Gartner says is needed for each role:

Product owner skills:

(full content available to Gartner clients)

• Interpersonal skills. The person in the product owner role must be able to build trust across teams—from clients and customers to engineering teams and senior management.
• Communication skills. The product owner must communicate with transparency and consistency to various stakeholders across the business.
• Collaboration skills. The product owner must balance the customer needs with the wider needs of the organization, and be able to collaborate with product managers to accomplish goals.
• Design thinking. The product owner must use hypothesis-driven development to drive innovation.
• Empathy with customers. The product owner must anticipate the needs of customers and translate that to new product features.

Product manager skills:

(full content available to Gartner clients)

• Research experience. A product manager needs to understand market needs and customer preferences.
• Leadership skills. A product manager must set the long-term vision, or product roadmap, as well as define and prioritize outcomes to show success.
• Presentation skills. A product manager must then sell that product roadmap vision to the larger organization.
• Technical knowledge. A product manager must work with developers and engineering teams to turn the vision into a product and add features that accomplish goals.
• Collaboration skills. The product manager must work across the organization with stakeholders and other teams to accomplish outcomes.

As you can see, there is certainly overlap between the two roles, but there are key differences that make each role unique.

Define roles today so you don’t lose out on productivity

It’s clear that most small businesses need a product owner. On the other hand, product managers are more necessary for growing businesses adding more products.

Determining the right Agile roles for your business is crucial. As your team gains clarity on their roles and responsibilities, they can collaborate better and make decisions more quickly. These are the essential traits of high-performing Agile teams.

Once you determine the roles you need, empower your team by streamlining inefficient processes and using the right tools. For instance, establish a project stakeholder management strategy to help product managers engage and manage stakeholder expectations more effectively.

Likewise, empower product owners with the right Agile project management tools that will help them plan sprints and track team goals.

For a better understanding of which Agile solution, such as Scrum software or a Kanban tool, is ideal for your business, make an appointment today for a free, no obligation consultation with a software advisor.

Last but not the least, here’s a list of reports we created to help small business like yours manage Agile projects more effectively: