Introduction
Every organisation or business ensures it upholds the two fundamental disciplines of project management and product management. Without these two, companies cannot operate thoroughly. This is why project managers and product managers play pivotal roles in the successful functioning of any organisation. Ideally, both project managers and program managers work for the growth and success of the company, but they do have quite different responsibilities. Although their primary roles are to manage projects and manage programs, respectively, there is more to it.
This article aims to provide a comprehensive overview of everything that you need to know about these two subjects, as well as the additional components that form the crucial elements of project management and product management.
What’s the difference between a product and a project?
A project is a sequence of activities that a team performs to execute tasks simultaneously to achieve a dedicated business objective. Projects are typically defined as time-bound undertakings that have a timeline attached to them, and people working on a project must adhere to it to produce a deliverable. Although considered temporary, a project often extends for months, particularly in the case of priority projects and employs all the necessary resources, such as manpower and funds.
A product can be defined as any commodity or service designed to resolve customer requirements or to furnish an outcome. In product management, a product may refer to any good or service that addresses the audience’s concerns at large or contributes to the welfare and growth of the economy. While not both, a product and a project are related; products often result from projects.
What is Project Management?
The process of ideating (strategising), organising, and supervising a project by keeping track of the tasks completed, utilising the allocated resources, as per the agreed-upon timeline and budget. In this, the project members come together to work towards a shared goal for the company. Project management combines advanced tools, techniques and technology with the expertise and skill sets of qualified individuals to deliver a project (a product or a service) efficiently.
Project Management Benefits
While every company prioritises project management, many organisations continue considering other ways to handle projects. However, here are some key advantages of project management that everyone should be aware of, especially if they are into project management or facilitating projects for external stakeholders or clients.
We have listed them right below:
- Customer-Centric Innovation: Regularly seeking feedback from customers about a product to ensure they are offered more value with every product or service they choose. By seamlessly integrating suggestions, ideas and insights from customer experiences with new, innovative techniques, the necessary additions are made to the product before it is launched for customer utilisation. To foster a productive collaborative environment with customers, project managers must understand the queries and concerns customers have regarding the functionality of a product or service so they can address them effectively.
- Market Agility: Properly undertaking project management enables teams to be highly responsive to new changes. Having a dependable project management system supports quick adaptation to new developments, as suggested by stakeholders or received from customer feedback. By promptly addressing those improvement areas, companies deliver high-value output, which helps the business grow rapidly. Additionally, this enables companies to remain relevant in the market for longer, as decisions are based on the studies of real-time customer data.
- Strategic Alignment: When an experienced project manager works in a company, they are responsible for aligning the roles and responsibilities of project members with the business strategy. Whether it is preparing documentation, closing priority tasks or collaborating with another team member to resolve an issue, strategically assigning tasks to team members according to their qualifications, skill set and expertise brings efficiency to the project, and deliveries get fast-tracked. Project managers are also strategic leaders who define objectives, design plans, and allocate the necessary resources for the successful delivery of projects.
- Collaboration Across Functions: With a structured project management plan and a team to lead it, collaboration becomes even more productive. Preparing things beforehand with a roadmap will help track the day-to-day tasks, in addition to providing details about the project timeline, deliverables, priorities, task status and more. This enhances collaboration across teams and promotes a healthy workflow within teams. Having a project manager who oversees every action within the team ensures minimal disruptions during the process and maximum output within the defined timeframe, without any possible chaos.
What is Product Management?
Product management refers to the process that leads the lifecycle of a product from its inception to the final phase, where the end product is delivered to customers. Product management involves a strategy that consists of research, knowing the product vision, development, product launch, promotion, seeking customer feedback and prompt optimisation to build products that meet business needs or address customer concerns. As product management is not confined to a single industry, it is present in various fields, including marketing, business, and information technology.
The Advantages of Product Management
Product management is a smart way to minimise the complexity of product development, as it establishes a clear vision for the product, enabling team members to work towards it effectively. Suppose a company has a well-set product management system, with a leader who knows how to pivot the project, it will promise seamless product delivery and ultimately, immense company growth.
A few of the advantages are listed below:
- Efficient Resource Utilisation: Every product manager plays a crucial role in planning out projects and ensuring everything works out as initially thought. This includes overseeing the allocation of resources to the team throughout the entire product lifecycle. They also ensure there is minimal wastage of resources during the process.
- Clear Direction: With a well-defined product management framework, companies can gain a clear idea and a roadmap to guide the product lifecycle, ideally from start to finish. This includes all the crucial stages of the product development process, such as conception, strategy, process, planning, development, testing and deployment. By following this roadmap, everyone involved in the project (assignment) knows what the next step is, when it should be taken and how to proceed.
- Mitigation of Risk: One of the fundamental aspects in product management is risk management. Every organisation ensures that it has an established risk mitigation strategy for unforeseen events and unavoidable circumstances. This involves identifying risks beforehand, assessing them, and discovering methods to prevent them from happening in the future. A lot of planning goes into this, wherein product managers, team members working on the product development, along with other members from senior management, discuss and find strategies and set up emergency plans to secure the product development process. This risk management blueprint identifies and mitigates any probable threats and risks throughout the product development cycle to ensure the successful completion of products.
- On-time Delivery: Like performance indicators and the timely closure of projects help measure the success of every project or assignment, the “on-time delivery” aspect in product management ensures that the final product is curated, reaches the customers at the right time and addresses their concerns without further delay. This is more than just a product management feature that not only defines the company’s accountability towards its customers but also demonstrates its professionalism and reliability towards them.
Below is a detailed table of comparison that features the core aspects and specifications involved in the roles of a product manager and a project manager. Refer to this for a clearer understanding of the two job roles.
Key differences between product management vs project management (Responsibilities,Skills)
| Product Managers | Project Managers | |
Key Responsibilities | ||
| Product managers are responsible for defining the vision for their product. This involves articulating a plan and strategising for it, keeping in mind the product’s future status. Additionally, product managers ensure a perfect balance with the marketing and development teams. | Project managers curate realistic plans for project delivery, taking into account the timeline, budget and resources required for it. It begins with defining the project scope, managing a team that understands its accountabilities and communicating everything clearly regarding the progress of the products to stakeholders. | |
Skill Sets and Knowledge Requirements | ||
| Strong communication skills, leadership ability, problem-solving, emotional intelligence, and analytical thinking are some of the fundamental soft skills required for the role of a product manager. In addition to that, they must also possess technical expertise, a deep understanding of business, data survey and interpretation, as well as knowledge of the market and its trends. | Leadership, communication, team building and collaboration, task management, time management, risk analysis and strategising, finance management, and regularly tracking project status are some of the key accountabilities of a project manager. They are therefore considered to be essential skills for the role. Additionally, being adept in data analysis, software and project management methodologies is crucial. | |
Market Understanding | ||
| Product managers have an in-depth understanding of the ongoing trends and developments in the market. They are aware of what the competitors are offering their customers and what they can distinctly provide with their products or services to stay relevant in the market. Accordingly, they design their strategies and produce workable plans that the team adheres to during the product lifecycle. | Project managers possess a thorough understanding of the projects and their disciplines. They supervise the projects comprehensively by assessing their target audience, analysing the behaviour of the revisiting customers, and proposing realistic strategies for project promotion. Their ultimate goal is to help the team achieve their targets, ensuring the business objective is met. | |
Prioritisation of Projects | ||
| For product managers, prioritisation is based on the urgency of the tasks as required by the clients or stakeholders. Projects are first studied, and then a reference documentation is prepared before the team starts working on the project. This provides them with a clear roadmap for how to start working on it, ensuring minimal disruption in the process. | Project managers receive and execute multiple projects of diverse segments, each of which requires a dedicated roadmap and alignment of responsibilities within the team. This evaluation of projects is conducted according to the client's requirements, complexity of the project, the resources and funds required for it and the prior groundwork involved. | |
| Strategic Approach | Team Coordination | |
| The strategy defined for the product is developed in a way that contributes to the overall organisation’s goals. This involves in-depth research and analysis of market trends, as well as an evaluation of customer needs and the resources available at that time for the product development. | For project managers, it is essential to form a team that clearly understands the business’s vision. For this, fostering team coordination, following a well-structured task flow, assisting the team throughout the lifecycle, and sourcing the necessary resources to the team are crucial. | |
| Roadmap Development | Resource Allocation | |
| Curating a roadmap for the product’s development involves envisioning the product and its features, as well as how it will benefit customers after launch. This includes demonstrating the attributes the product will have, following a thorough discussion with the stakeholders, members from higher management and the development team. | For any project to be completed successfully, multiple things must be considered. One such factor is ensuring the appropriate allocation of necessary resources throughout the project, whether it is in the form of manpower, equipment, or funds. After all, only when everything is aligned properly can a project's goals be clearly met. | |
| Cross-Functional Collaboration | Team Management | |
| Any sort of development, whether of a product, a service, or a technology, involves the inputs and insights of the enabler, designer and the development team. Having ideas and suggestions from a diverse team of collaborators and in-house professionals helps improve the development process and enables the successful delivery of products. | Managing a team is a crucial aspect of project management. Here, the project manager establishes a team once the deliverables are made clear as per the set goals. This is followed by identifying the right individuals for the role and forming a team to guide the project principles. These are some of the key responsibilities of a project manager. | |
| Long-Term Goals | Short-Term Deliverables | |
| Product managers envision long-term strategies to grow the product in the market, ensuring it builds popularity and utility among customers. Visioning long-term goals for the product involves conducting thorough market research, establishing reliability among existing customers, forming a trustworthy clientele, and ensuring the product fits the market standards. | Project managers look forward to keeping track of work status, daily reports, and progress charts to ensure that everything is well-aligned and contributes to the successful completion of the project. Project managers are primarily responsible for overseeing the regular work of the team members, ensuring clear communication and effective task delegation. | |
Product Management vs Project Management
Product management is the process that involves planning, development, launch (introduction), and ongoing management of a product or a service. All the crucial components of a product lifecycle are engaged in product management, and the product managers oversee the entire process. They are the ones responsible for ensuring that the product is delivered according to the customer's expectations. Whereas, project management implements skill sets, tools, techniques, and procedures to accomplish projects within a predetermined period. This follows a structured plan where team members work together towards a goal, and a project is piloted from start to end.
Key differences between product management and project management
We have provided a comparison table that will further elaborate on these two fields of study:
| Aspects of Comparison | Product Management | Project Management |
| Focus Area (Vision) | To work on the strategy of the product and manage its lifecycle (from developing a product vision to laying out the roadmap and ensuring seamless product delivery as per customer expectations). | The focus of project management is to deliver projects successfully, utilising time and resources diligently, to ensure the timeline is adhered to, and the budget remains in check. |
| Timeline | This includes two frameworks: the ongoing process of product development (ideation, development, and launch) and the product lifecycle (introduction, growth, maturity and decline). | The timeline for project management resembles a visual map that showcases every crucial project detail in order, including tasks to be completed, the targets to accomplish and deadlines marked for each. |
| Metrics of Success | Product acquisition, user satisfaction, product relevancy, its market share, and revenue generation define the success of a product. | The ultimate success of a project is determined by its completion within the predefined timeline and in accordance with the project scope. |
| Lifecycle | Involves managing product development from the beginning to the end. The stages of a product lifecycle comprise ideation, development, launch, growth, maturity and decline. | This incorporates five stages: initiation, planning, execution, monitoring and controlling, and finally, closure. And every phase helps provide a comprehensive plan to manage the project. |
Certifications of Product Management vs Project Management
It is said that for both job roles (product manager and project manager), holding a credential or certification is not mandatory. Though they might be a great addition to your experience portfolio, what matters the most is what you bring to the table with your prior knowledge and expertise in the field. But nowadays, having certain certifications from authorised bodies has become crucial to crack a job in the field of management. Companies currently rely heavily on these certifications and training before they hire an individual for any suitable position.
We have listed two popular credentials for the candidates planning to pursue either of the courses.
Project Management Certifications -
Several certifications are available for project management aspirants and professionals. However, we have described the two most popular and common project management certifications that experienced project managers or leaders can consider pursuing to get an edge over other applicants and coworkers in their company.
Certified Associate in Project Management (CAPM) -
A foundational certification offered by the Project Management Institute (PMI) for individuals who lack any prior knowledge of project management but are interested in being a part of this industry. With this CAPM certification, individuals can develop a fair understanding of the project management principles, theories, and processes across both agile and predictive methodologies.
Ideal for: Interested individuals who wish to initiate their journey into project management or those who want to earn a worthwhile certificate to establish their knowledge of the field.
Project Management Professional (PMP) -
The most widely recognised certification in project management, the PMP certification is a globally acknowledged certification from the Project Management Institute (PMI). Experienced project management professionals highly prefer it for their job role.
Ideal for: This certification is primarily preferred by experienced project managers, team leaders, and those from higher management, offering an additional boost to their already thriving careers. This credential authenticates their knowledge and expertise, making them highly competitive in the corporate world.
Product Management Certifications -
Many significant product management certifications offer comprehensive training to product management professionals, helping them to demonstrate their expertise in various aspects of the product development lifecycle, which includes development, specification, design, market assessment, and application, among others.
SAFe POPM certification -
The globally acknowledged certification, which stands for SAFe Product Owner /Product Manager (POPM) certification, is proposed by Scaled Agile, Inc. to authenticate an individual’s calibre in delivering value using Agile, Scrum, and Lean principles, within a Scaled Agile Framework, in a Lean-Agile enterprise. Individuals who pass the virtual MCQ examination with a minimum of 80% can earn this certification.
Ideal for: This certification delves into the in-depth aspects of product ownership, development and management and remains a perfect choice for product managers, product owners, product developers, and business analysts who are involved in defining and developing product features in an agile environment.
SAFe APM Certification -
This certification program is ideal for experienced individuals involved in product development, curation, and delivery. Designed mainly for project leaders and managers involved in product development who want to create customer-centric products from the ground up. This SAFe APM certification utilises scaled Lean-Agile principles to lead product development by integrating structure, strategy, and market demands to deliver practical products.
Ideal for: Professional product managers and leaders incorporating new techniques and technology to bring out a workable product development strategy comprehensively. This certification is perfect for individuals seeking to advance their careers in product development within a scaled agile environment by acquiring the necessary skills.
Product Management vs. Project Management: Salary and Job Growth
Here is a clear presentation of salary and career progression for your understanding. Please note that the details provided may vary depending on the individual’s location, industry, cost of living, demand, and market status. Additionally, the company’s status of remunerating employees also remains a significant factor in determining salary and job growth.
| Basis of Comparison | Product Management (Product Manager) | Project Management (Project Manager) |
| Salary Comparison | $1,24,000 a year - depending on the accountability, job role, and experience of the individual. | $93,000 per year - depending on the industry, level of responsibility, and expertise. |
| Job Growth | This career option is in high demand, with an increasing number of job openings emerging in every industry, and job growth is predicted to continue. | This job role promises high career growth with advancement in positions, provided the employees gain the relevant experience and skill set required. |
| Career Path | Associate Product Manager ⬇ Product Manager ⬇ Senior Product Manager | Project Coordinator ⬇ Junior Project Manager ⬇ Project Manager ⬇ Senior Project Manager ⬇ Program Manager |
Which is better for a career? Project management or product management?
Pursuing a career in either of these fields is not easy. Both career options are challenging, and the decision ultimately depends on the individual, including their background, qualifications, professional preferences, learning capabilities, and goals.
Project management can be a preferable option for those who enjoy focusing on the bigger picture, that is, the final delivery of a product or service. If you are skilled at planning things, know exactly how to navigate projects, have resolved project challenges from time to time, and have managed teams and their tasks diligently in the past, you can be the best fit for the role of a project manager.
Consider product management if you are eager to learn new concepts and the reasons behind specific events. If you are highly analytical, find new technologies and trends interesting, you may be a good fit for a product manager role. With this, you will observe the gradual progression of a product creation cycle through timely iterations before it gets launched in the market.
Conclusion: Product Management Vs. Project Management
Product management and project management are two distinct types of management, wherein the former involves overseeing the entire lifecycle of the product, from its inception, design, and development to ensure seamless and on-time delivery to end customers. On the other hand, project management involves managing and overseeing a project from its inception to its completion. This includes taking care of multiple aspects - from ideation and setting project goals, investing the right resources (such as manpower, equipment, and materials needed) to ensure the project gets a proper closure.
FAQs
Can a team have both a product manager and a project manager?
Yes, a team can have both a product manager and a project manager, as both roles have a set of similar responsibilities that complement each other. Both roles require strong communication skills and leadership attributes. Additionally, both the product manager and project manager are goal-centric and prioritise delivering high business value. A team with both remains a well-managed and regulated team. Many companies often seek individuals who can execute the responsibilities of both job roles.
Can a product manager also be a project manager?
Yes, a person can certainly be both, provided they have all the necessary skills to play both roles diligently. While some find this overwhelming, others think it does not make a huge difference. The only thing that should be known here is that they focus on different concern areas. For instance, for a project manager, the strategy and viability of a product are the most important considerations. At the same time, a project manager is primarily concerned with the roadmap leading to the development of the product. This includes allocating resources, preparing a schedule, and defining a budget.
Which is better, product management or project management?
No fact or figure accurately determines the superiority of a role, because it entirely depends on the individual planning to pursue it. For some, the role of a product manager or the responsibilities of product management might be enticing; for others, the job role of a project manager could be interesting. Therefore, it is all about where someone’s interest lies and what sort of career they envision for themselves.
To make an informed choice, think about the areas of management that you love knowing more about, or fields that you aspire to work in. Conducting thorough research and taking time to evaluate options before making a decision will help you choose thoughtfully.
What is the difference between agile project management and product management?
Agile project management is a defined management approach that uses sprints to develop products and relies highly on customer feedback to ensure continuous improvement in the process. These sprints are iterative cycles that are highly responsive to changes. The methodology used in this is Scrum and Kanban, where the product owner is accountable for delivering the highest quality of products. On the other hand, in product management, the entire journey of a product, from its inception to conceptualisation, is overseen by the product manager. Here, the vision of the product is aligned with business goals and customer requirements, before it gets materialised and delivered to the customer.
Is a product manager harder than a project manager?
None of the roles can be termed as “harder” or “challenging” because both roles require independent skills, and the work involved is also different. A product manager develops strategies, envisions long-term and simultaneous growth of the product in the market, and digs deeper into why things happen a certain way when products are produced. Whereas the project manager focuses on the methodology and how a project is to be handled, as well as when it should be completed. A project manager’s primary responsibility is to ensure that a project is accomplished as per the agreed-upon schedule.
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