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Product Manager vs. Product Marketing Manager vs. Product Owner

damilolaa.xyz

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Re: Product Manager vs. Product Marketing Manager vs. Product Owner

#11

Post by calciphus »

baxtr wrote: post #4

That reminds me of the time I was heading the Product Management department of a large company. We had so many discussion about what a Product Owner, Manager, Technical Product Manager is. Their role. Their responsibilities. Endless discussion with much feelings involved about respect, ownership and so on. Nowadays I am convinced that a great company just doesn't need any PMs. It is way better to empower the tech and…

That sounds like you had several people to do one person's job, not like it's a job that doesn't need to be done.

Solid UX people think like product people, but you either over-burden them, have them shift part of their roles off to others (research, user testing, etc),or do both jobs poorly. Good product people not also doing design, research, technical work, etc...they should be able to manage several teams / projects in a related area at once.

Re: Product Manager vs. Product Marketing Manager vs. Product Owner

#12

Post by grandvoye »

baxtr wrote: post #4

That reminds me of the time I was heading the Product Management department of a large company. We had so many discussion about what a Product Owner, Manager, Technical Product Manager is. Their role. Their responsibilities. Endless discussion with much feelings involved about respect, ownership and so on. Nowadays I am convinced that a great company just doesn't need any PMs. It is way better to empower the tech and…

The challenge I've had with that model is that as a company gets more complex, having someone whose sole job is to focus on the business technology interface is invaluable as people start to specialize. It's often more valuable to have engineers with (say) 6/10 expertise in the business and 10/10 expertise in their technology domain, working alongside PMs with 10/10 expertise in the business and 6/10 expertise in the technology. It's simply very hard to be 10/10 in both domains.

I agree that PMs are largely overhead in the early days of a company, provided that you have strong product-minded engineers/designers.

(Also just my 2c from heading a PM department / being a former engineer)

Re: Product Manager vs. Product Marketing Manager vs. Product Owner

#13

Post by fooblat »

Closi wrote: post #3

The difference between product manager and product owner is subtle enough that it doesn’t make too much difference in my experience. What’s a product owner at one company is a product manager at another and visa-versa. The one with marketing in the title is about marketing rather than product management.

For me the difference is stark.

At my last three companies it worked like this:

Product Manager is responsible for the product strategy and feature roadmap. They spend most of their focus on internal and external customers. They report up through Product leadership.

Product Owner is part of the engineering squad. They spend most of their focus on the engineers building the product. The PO works on refinement, prioritizes the backlog, runs the sprint planning and retros, and is the one who can decide if a sprint should be broken. They also keep stakeholders up to date on the progress of the squad. They report up through Technical leadership.

In my experience it is a rare person who can do both of these at the same time.

Re: Product Manager vs. Product Marketing Manager vs. Product Owner

#14

Post by midasuni »

Closi wrote: post #3

The difference between product manager and product owner is subtle enough that it doesn’t make too much difference in my experience. What’s a product owner at one company is a product manager at another and visa-versa. The one with marketing in the title is about marketing rather than product management.

In my company we use product owner and PO as it’s less likely to be confused with project manager and PM.

Re: Product Manager vs. Product Marketing Manager vs. Product Owner

#15

Post by latch »

putlake wrote: post #8
baxtr wrote: post #4

That reminds me of the time I was heading the Product Management department of a large company. We had so many discussion about what a Product Owner, Manager, Technical Product Manager is. Their role. Their responsibilities. Endless discussion with much feelings involved about respect, ownership and so on. Nowadays I am convinced that a great company just doesn't need any PMs. It is way better to empower the tech and…

Perhaps it works at your organization. I've been a PM where engineers and UX had no sense of ownership nor business sense. A PM's role is to understand what is important, how to prioritize, how to validate ideas fast, and how to avoid the tail wagging the dog (the tail could be UX, tech or your VP). If you have engineers and UX folks who can do this, more power to you!

If the product is something engineers and UX use, then they'll probably _want_ to be a PM. If it's something they don't, you might need a PM.

Having worked in both situations, many times, I'm pretty sure this is the most underrated factor in success. Companies where the staff doesn't use the product are facing a huge uphill battle. Oftentimes, this is inevitable and I think the only solution is a huge salary premium - but more often than not, these are the companies on the lowest end of the pay spectrum (double whammy spells near certain failure).

Re: Product Manager vs. Product Marketing Manager vs. Product Owner

#16

Post by skohan »

baxtr wrote: post #4

That reminds me of the time I was heading the Product Management department of a large company. We had so many discussion about what a Product Owner, Manager, Technical Product Manager is. Their role. Their responsibilities. Endless discussion with much feelings involved about respect, ownership and so on. Nowadays I am convinced that a great company just doesn't need any PMs. It is way better to empower the tech and…

I can't imagine how that would work at my current company. It's an IoT startup, and the hardware, firmware, software, and operations timelines all have to be coordinated to deliver on a tight release timeline. I can't imagine developers also having to take on the requirement and dependency management on top of building the actual product.

I've also worked at places where the P*M level seemed to mostly get in the way and just serve as a middle-man and information degradation layer between design and engineering.

Re: Product Manager vs. Product Marketing Manager vs. Product Owner

#17

Post by SimonPStevens »

baxtr wrote: post #4

That reminds me of the time I was heading the Product Management department of a large company. We had so many discussion about what a Product Owner, Manager, Technical Product Manager is. Their role. Their responsibilities. Endless discussion with much feelings involved about respect, ownership and so on. Nowadays I am convinced that a great company just doesn't need any PMs. It is way better to empower the tech and…

This is a good comment, but It's easy to generalise one specific experience that works successful and mistakenly think it applies universally.

You may be right within your company, but I can offer an alternative anecdote.

I work at a company that makes energy trading risk management software. It's complicated and niche, and the customers are varied and have very different mindset to develops and testers. We have traders, hedge funds, energy generators and retail suppliers all with different use cases.

We absolutely need a product manager who has the time to dedicate to understanding the customers needs, understanding the changing landscape of the market and understanding the competition. This is not something we can just expect a developer or tech lead to do through ownership.

I'm certain your way works for many though.

Re: Product Manager vs. Product Marketing Manager vs. Product Owner

#18

Post by harryf »

Having done all three roles either formally or informally (after 15 years development) the key thing a product manager has to do is follow Steve Blanks advice and get out of the building.

OK not in times of COVID but there has to be someone who actually talks to customers or potential customers in person and builds _qualitative_ opinions / insight into what really needs to be built and where the real opportunities are. And that’s not to knock analytics, surveys and various other forms of customer feedback ... it’s just if you’re not directly talking to customers product development becomes an echo chamber of unvalidated opinions about how the world works. And there’s always huge and surprising insights to be gained from direct communication with customers...

From there you have to sift out signal from noise and create product vision and priorities.

Doing this PM function well quickly becomes full time and conflicts with the job of being a PO and working closely with developers.

Re: Product Manager vs. Product Marketing Manager vs. Product Owner

#19

Post by DamilolaA »

fooblat wrote: post #13
Closi wrote: post #3

The difference between product manager and product owner is subtle enough that it doesn’t make too much difference in my experience. What’s a product owner at one company is a product manager at another and visa-versa. The one with marketing in the title is about marketing rather than product management.

For me the difference is stark. At my last three companies it worked like this: Product Manager is responsible for the product strategy and feature roadmap. They spend most of their focus on internal and external customers. They report up through Product leadership. Product Owner is part of the engineering squad. They spend most of their focus on the engineers building the product. The PO works on refinement, priorit…

Yeah. This is similar to my experience.

Re: Product Manager vs. Product Marketing Manager vs. Product Owner

#20

Post by DamilolaA »

harryf wrote: post #18

Having done all three roles either formally or informally (after 15 years development) the key thing a product manager has to do is follow Steve Blanks advice and get out of the building. OK not in times of COVID but there has to be someone who actually talks to customers or potential customers in person and builds _qualitative_ opinions / insight into what really needs to be built and where the real opportunities ar…

I agree but how do you keep abreast of this best practice in times of COVID? Product Analytics might just be the life saver.
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