Product vs. Project

What is the difference between product and project management?

Some people think they are one and the same, and I can understand that — there’s indeed overlap between what product managers and project managers do in an organization.

I’m all about embracing the overlap and not being precious about role boundaries, but there’s power in knowing what distinguishes both disciplines.

Product management is about strategy

Product management is about discovering a product that is valuable, viable, usable, and feasible. Its success is the success of the product itself. The approach to achieve this success is not pre-defined — that’s when strategy kicks in.

It typically involves these steps:

1. align on a product vision, its goals, and metrics (or set them, if they aren’t clear already)
2. research and collect initiatives to achieve those goals
3. prioritize those initiatives and decide about what gets built, based on research and user testing
4. measure the success of the initiatives by checking if the metrics that define the goals were reached
5. re-iterate back to step 1

Project management is about tactics

Project management comes into play after the “what gets built” got decided by product management. It’s about building the product. Its success is the accomplishment of delivering it on time and budget. The approach to achieve this success requires coordination, delegation, and leadership — that’s when tactics kick in.

It typically involves these steps:

1. break the strategic product plan down into actionable, task-oriented items
2. estimate their effort and plan timelines
3. navigate interdependencies, team dynamics, and one-off challenges
4. monitor task completion to assure the deadline is met
5. deliver and go back to step 1

A product manager is a project manager too

There’s a big difference between product management and project management. And yes, product management is at the heart of a product manager. But it doesn’t mean there’s not a project manager inside a product manager.

A product manager is responsible for the whole product development cycle. He needs to go into execution mode at some point and wear his project management hat. He might be more or less active depending on the company and team, but project management is a skill he needs to master. It’s what keeps the trains moving.