Product Manager vs Product Owner: The Difference That is No Longer Controversial
What is the difference between product managers and product owners in software development companies?
The post shared by Producthubbpma demonstrates the vision of a product coach Kirsten Butzow and Pendo chief evangelist Eric Boduch. They emphasized the need to distinguish Product manager and Product Owner roles and proposed some interesting points to differ.
They admit that the PM and PO functions often can be performed by the same person effectively.
Here’s how they defined the roles:
Product Manager
- Involved in marketing activities to determine the product future.
- Represents the voice of customers
- Dives into the customers’ problems and tries to solve them, defines competitive differentiation
- Converts market data into requirements for engineering, etc.
Product Owner
- Provides daily support to engineering
- Helps engineering to ensure the product meets the market requirements
- Works on release management and users requirements
- Answers questions from customer representatives and so on.
The important thing is that when PM and PO roles cannot be separated, leaders must carefully allocate their time and set expectations accordingly.