Product Owner vs. Project Manager

A product owner is someone who has the responsibility to maximize the value of a product, while a project manager is someone who manages a project on a day-to-day basis.

Product owners maximize a product's value by continuously making choices about what to build and what not to build into a product. They are accountable for the success or failure of a product. Some of their duties include providing direction for a product, supplying resources and authorizing funding, and giving visible and sustained support to a product.

A project manager is tasked with many different responsibilities for a given project, such as creating and managing the business case, and managing changes and change requests as they relate to the scope, time, and budget. They are also in charge of tracking and measuring the project team's progress, and managing the overall quality of the project.

Here are the key differences between a product owner and a project manager:

• Product owners need to be entrepreneurial, visionary, and decisive

• Project managers need to be well-versed in time management, negotiating, and risk management

• Product owners have to be accountable for the success or failure of their product

• A project manager creates, manages, divides, and distributes work packages amongst team members, and manages the scope for the stakeholders, while a product owner does not do any of these tasks

• Project managers are mostly concerned with managing these elements in their day-to-day practice