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Product Owner vs. Project Manager: who's in the lead?

6 points by bndr 4y ago

ldjb 4y ago
Note that roles can vary hugely across different organisations. Where I work, what this article calls a "Product Owner" would be called a Product Manager. And what the article calls a "Project Manager" is similar to what we would call a Product Owner. We also have Project Managers who oversee delivery across several products.
- bndr 4y ago
  Good point. I made a note in the article to mention that there are a lot of different definitions of the roles, but usually, the definitions are the same, just a different naming convention.
ipaddr 4y ago
Project managers manage projects for stakeholders. Product owner is the biggest stakeholder. "cannot survive without the other unless" A project manager cannot function well with no stakeholders because they would have no vision on what to build. A product owner doesn't need a project manager but using one adds automation. The lead is everyone the developer, pm or owner depending on who is asking. The product owner reports to management.. they see this person as the lead. The product owner sees the pm as the leader and pm sees the lead/senior developer as the lead. Each person leads some aspect that someone above leads
greatgib 4y ago
Product owner was supposed to be the real customer or at least internal customer before the great takeover of agile concepts by companies.
- rhaway84773 4y ago
  I miss when we had a PO and PM with clearly defined roles. Then we had to go Agile, and suddenly we replaced a useful PM with a pointless Scrum Master, whose only role was to try and not play a role as much as possible. Of course, “Agile” failed, so the only solution was to become even more Agile with SAFe, so now to the Scrum Master you add pointless release train engineers to make sure the scrum master was doing even less than they were doing before. Now that SAFe is failing I’m dreading to see what useful role they will replace with something completely useless as they go even more Agile, because Agile failing simply means we weren’t doing enough Agile.
  - fatnoah 4y ago
    My company started with a PM acting as Project Manager, Product Owner, and Product Manager. That was a necessity due to size, but as we've grown we're starting to build those out into distinct roles, and the positive impact it's had on the process is beautiful to behold.

6 points by bndr 4y ago

ldjb 4y ago

Note that roles can vary hugely across different organisations. Where I work, what this article calls a "Product Owner" would be called a Product Manager. And what the article calls a "Project Manager" is similar to what we would call a Product Owner. We also have Project Managers who oversee delivery across several products.

bndr 4y ago
Good point. I made a note in the article to mention that there are a lot of different definitions of the roles, but usually, the definitions are the same, just a different naming convention.

ipaddr 4y ago

Project managers manage projects for stakeholders. Product owner is the biggest stakeholder. "cannot survive without the other unless" A project manager cannot function well with no stakeholders because they would have no vision on what to build. A product owner doesn't need a project manager but using one adds automation. The lead is everyone the developer, pm or owner depending on who is asking. The product owner reports to management.. they see this person as the lead. The product owner sees the pm as the leader and pm sees the lead/senior developer as the lead. Each person leads some aspect that someone above leads

greatgib 4y ago

Product owner was supposed to be the real customer or at least internal customer before the great takeover of agile concepts by companies.

rhaway84773 4y ago
I miss when we had a PO and PM with clearly defined roles. Then we had to go Agile, and suddenly we replaced a useful PM with a pointless Scrum Master, whose only role was to try and not play a role as much as possible. Of course, “Agile” failed, so the only solution was to become even more Agile with SAFe, so now to the Scrum Master you add pointless release train engineers to make sure the scrum master was doing even less than they were doing before. Now that SAFe is failing I’m dreading to see what useful role they will replace with something completely useless as they go even more Agile, because Agile failing simply means we weren’t doing enough Agile.
- fatnoah 4y ago
  My company started with a PM acting as Project Manager, Product Owner, and Product Manager. That was a necessity due to size, but as we've grown we're starting to build those out into distinct roles, and the positive impact it's had on the process is beautiful to behold.