A big difference between Product Manager and Project Manager

Not all employees understand the difference between the work of the Product Manager and Project Manager. Let’s understand the concepts and why it is so important to differentiate them.

The success of a company, including an IT-company, largely depends on how well its organizational structure and internal communication are built. However, market practice shows that not all employees understand the difference between the work of the Product Manager and Project Manager. Let’s understand the concepts and why it is so important to differentiate them.

The executive, he is the manager, of the product

The Product manager is responsible for management decisions that will make the product successful. Accordingly, this manager to some extent affects the profitability of the entire business. This is an important organizational role, especially in technology companies. The Product manager determines the strategy, action plan, and part of the characteristics of the product or product line. In addition, the position of Product Manager may include responsibilities for marketing, profit, and loss forecasting.

Such managers provide the profound product expertise needed to make strategic decisions. They often analyze the market and competitive conditions, determine the unique value of a product, and perform many other functions, including communication between engineering, marketing, sales, and support teams.

If you combine all the tasks of the Product Manager, the following basic areas will be identifyed:

• product concept and strategy;

• planning of stages of creation/construction and terms of release of a product;

• generation of ideas, their combining, and selection of the most relevant;

• upholding the value of the product at all stages of its production;

• market analysis and creation of a unique offer, which the company embodies in the product.

“Maximum productivity is achieved under three conditions: clarity, focus, and concentration. As soon as you understand what your most important tasks are, you must fully and completely concentrate on each of them, until you make them 100 percent successfully. “

Brian Tracy, founder of Brian Tracy International

Project Manager — who is it

Project managers play a key role in planning, implementing, monitoring, controlling, and completing projects. They are responsible for the full scale of the project, the team that works on it, the resources, and for success or failure.

The responsibilities of the Project Manager include numerous tasks that vary depending on the stage of the project itself. In particular, the stages assume that the manager has knowledge of time management ,cost and quality management. Also it is knowledge of human resources, risks, etc.

Therefore, effective project managers need more than just technical knowledge. At least, they must have the skills, such as leadership, motivation, communication, organization, prioritization, problem-solving, and adaptability.

Thanks to the literature and various online courses, those who want to improve these project-management skills, can even do so for free. There are also paid comprehensive programs in business schools that train highly effective project managers.

“You learn the fastest in three cases — up to 7 years old, in training, and when life has pushed you into a corner.”

Stephen Covey, American Leadership, Life Management Consultant, Lecturer and Organizational Management Consultant

Technical assistants to managers

The multiplicity of tasks of product and project managers lead to the idea of ​​the need to access the right tools that will make a system of all these tasks. Yes, we are talking about the appropriate software. It helps to build a road map of the project, to work correctly with a large number of ideas, in other words to manage a backlog, etc.

For small companies there are planners, task books, cloud thought generators, data analysis programs, and other programs that are often easy to become familiar with.

When products and projects are implemented in an organization with a complex internal structure and a large number of employees involved, it is better to turn to specialized integrated solutions, where there are many functions to simplify a number of tasks.

In particular, there are the following software products for different stages:

• business process modeling;

• management information systems (KPI / MTP);

• customer relationship management (CRM);

• project management (PM);

• enterprise resource planning (ERP);

• BI — Business Intelligence;

• assistance in building the QMS;

• document management;

• corporate portal;

• budgeting systems;

• accounting;

• HRM systems, personnel accounting systems;

• functional-cost analysis.

“Most people are more likely to stay with the old problems than commit oneself to finding new solutions.”

John Maxwell, Lead Leadership Expert, Founder of EQUIP Group and The John Maxwell Company

Thus, although the difference between the Product Manager and Project Manager is large, both specialists work to achieve one goal — successful and long-term business development.