Some organizations can’t translate their product vision into fully-functioning product features because of a lack of understanding about the roles of a product owner and a product manager. Whatever you choose to call it, the process involves a regular session where product owners and other stakeholders meet to discuss the items in the product backlog. Outdated user stories and tasks are removed, new user stories are added, and the backlog is ordered in terms of priority.
If a new idea is proposed during the product development process, it’s the product manager’s job to manage these suggestions. This sometimes includes making difficult trade-off decisions that go against the original product vision. When this happens, the product owner must trust that the product manager is making the right calls for both the company’s and the customer’s benefit. After the product vision is established, the product manager oversees the development process leading up to the release date. If roadblocks occur, it’s their job to prioritize which features need to be included to fulfill the project’s intent.
Responsibilities of the Product Owner
They write requirements and user stories, manage the product backlog, and answer questions that the engineering team has about what should be built next. On agile teams, the product owner manages sprints and participates in retrospectives. They communicate the planned features and needed functionality to the development team. Instead of building or maintaining the product roadmap, they work to support the product strategy set by the VP of product or the product manager. Understanding these differences is crucial for organizations seeking to optimize their product strategy and for professionals aiming to excel in these roles. A product manager is a professional responsible for the strategy, development, and success of a product throughout its lifecycle.
- It also includes product marketing, product vision, project management, and the handling of a product backlog.
- But it’s the product owner who relays this information to the development team to put it into action.
- When you have a deep respect for the unique skills that the product manager and product owner each bring, the building process goes much more smoothly.
- Surveys help you gather information about the problems customers face, the features they’d like to see next, and which product elements are not working for them.
Project managers tend to be strategic, while product owners tend to be tactical. To ensure things are being built right, delivering individual value, and providing more with less, product owners need to have great decision-making skills. The product manager is data-influenced, experiment-driven, and customer-centric. On top of that, a product manager aims to be right as often as possible and needs to understand what is required to reach expected outcomes. The product manager has an external focus and is the single point of contact for managing the relationships with the business and customer.
Product owner roles and responsibilities
In Scrum and Agile terminology, blockers are issues that halt progress and delivery until they are resolved. Impediments are issues that slow but do not stop the team’s progress. Bugs typically don’t impede work on a feature, and may actually prioritize that work. As a result, they can identify potential outcomes of following certain themes or strategies for their product(s). They also analyze the value of the customer in any given market, ensure the product meets customer needs, and support the sales process. Empowered by a prioritized team backlog, the product owner defines the iterations to realize the stories, tracks the progress of the delivery, and accepts the iteration increments.
In this article, we’ll dive deeper into the product owner vs. product manager scenario and detail the differences of each role in product management. The product manager is responsible for discovering what users require and why, prioritizing what to build next, and rallying the team around a product roadmap. To ensure the right things are built and expected outcomes are realized, the product manager needs to have great decision-making skills. Decisions should be supported by data around innovation, strategy, and market conditions. Both the product manager and the product owner are critical to the success of the product. The definition of these two roles is often debated and the terms are sometimes used interchangeably.
Project Manager vs Product Manager: The Difference Explained
The product owner leads the development team’s implementation efforts. They work closely with the product manager and other members of the product team to determine which features the development team will tackle next. They may also work with UX to define detailed requirements and create mockups.
They link the “why” to the “what” — making sure that everyone understands how their work contributes to the broader goals and initiatives. It’s important to note that the Product Owner role focuses primarily on the tactical execution of the product development process within the Agile framework. They collaborate closely with the development team and are responsible for backlog management, requirement definition, and ensuring the team delivers a valuable product https://wizardsdev.com/en/vacancy/product-manager/ increment with each sprint. For the purposes of exploring the differences between product owners and product managers, the following description may be the most helpful. Because the Scrum framework was created to guide the work of a software development team, the product owner role tends to focus on what a software development team and scrum master expects their product person to do. You can see this focus in the definition of product owner in the Scrum Guide.
Product Owner vs Product Manager Summary
A step-by-step guide on how to drive a scrum project, prioritize and organize your backlog into sprints, run the scrum ceremonies and more, all in Jira. In order to do that you have to build and maintain a direct, meaningful connection with your organization’s customers. The success metrics include NPS (Net Promoter Score) of the product, product conversions, revenue generated for the business, and the overall churn experienced by the business. Moreover, the product manager is accountable for establishing and tracking product metrics to validate expected outcomes or pivot when required. 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. Rather than answering the above questions individually, let’s take a very high-level view of these roles in a traditional versus agile environment since that’s where the confusion usually starts.
They must be armed with the knowledge of the product and be skilled in explaining it to customers. Here’s a curated list of 14 product management podcasts that every PM, novice or seasoned, should have on their playlist. I know a junior product manager that is nearly universally respected by her team even though initially many of its members would have traded her in for a more seasoned leader given the choice. She took each person on the 30-person team out for coffee and listened to them. Broadly speaking, though, a good product manager will spend his or her time on a handful of tasks. As Marty Cagan explained, the mistaken notion that you can learn all you need from a CSPO class has led to some poor product management.
How Product Roadmaps are Evolving
One of the keys to great product management is empowering your team to make their own decisions by creating a shared brain—or a way of making decisions and a set of criteria for escalating them. When someone asks a product manager a question about a decision they could have made themselves, nine times out of 10 it’s because that person doesn’t have enough context to make the decision themselves. If you’re just starting a product management job, take the first couple of months to talk to as many customers as you can. Specific responsibilities vary depending on the size of the organization.
The position and title can be officially assigned or simply understood throughout the organization. The Scrum Guide requires the product owner to make decisions about product features independently and without oversight. The organization also must wholeheartedly accept the product owner’s competency within their domain.