What is a Product Manager?

Today, I want to introduce yet another title to our vocabulary that doesn’t get used properly many times or at least is misunderstood.  “PM” seems to have many meanings these days.  We have Product Managers, Project Managers, and Program Managers.  This post will talk about the differences.

We have discussed the difference between project and program management and if you happened to miss it, you can read it again here.  However, what is this Product Manager stuff or did someone else just want to be called a “PM?”  These titles can get confusing to many, but they are different.

In my final days at HP, I was a Product Manager.  This included project management skills, program management skills, and business analysis skills.  Ultimately, I was the manager of everything that had to do with my product.  This included the product roadmap, customer service, and how the hell we were going to incentivize sales people to sell the damn thing.

While I worked remotely from my home, this role did include a lot of travel and communication with other groups.  There was manufacturing in Houston, TX, a data center in Dallas, TX, engineering in Fort Collins, CO and, of course, the manager I reported to in New England.  This is a role that requires a lot of coordination.

Oddly enough, I took this position because I had just gotten married in Texas and it didn’t require me to move.  My wife was the manager of the fault tolerant software engineering group in Austin, TX.  I guess this is where we use the phrase “best laid plans,” but welcome to life.  Now I live in South America, so you never really know where life will take you.

So, essentially, you own the product as a product manager.  Project managers execute the projects for your product or you may have a program manager who executes all the projects for your product.  That’s how all the positions work together.  However, if you are as lucky as me and have project/program management skills, you may not get these people and have to do it all yourself.

This is a common occurrence during economic downturns where lay-offs frequently take place.  In fact I once was working on 14 different projects at HP at one time and getting sleep was a real problem.  I didn’t even have a Manufacturing Engineer because they laid him off since I knew engineering.  Always remember, just because you have the skills to do something, doesn’t mean you can with the time you have.  There are only so many hours in a day.

Well, there you are.  Brought to you short, sweet and to the point like only we do here at Project Victories.  There’s no reason to make things complicated if they don’t need to be, but you do need to know what’s what so that you can perform properly.  As always, I hope you found this post useful and please Like, Share, and leave a comment if you did find it useful or not.

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