Product Owner Vs. Product Manager: What's the difference

Rapidr

Last updated on 16 Mar 2024 • 9 min read

In the dynamic world of product development, two key roles often emerge as critical drivers of success: the product owner and the product manager. While their titles may sound similar, there are distinct differences in their responsibilities and focus within the product development process. Understanding these nuances is essential to optimize their product strategy and execution.

Whether you are a seasoned product professional looking to refine your understanding of these roles or someone new to the field seeking clarity, this article will provide valuable insights into the distinctions between product owners and product managers.

In this blog post, we will compare product owners and product managers, shedding light on their unique roles, responsibilities, and contributions to the product development lifecycle.

What is a Product Manager?

A product manager is a professional responsible for a product's strategy, development, and success throughout its lifecycle. Their primary focus is understanding customer needs, market trends, and business objectives to define the product strategy and product roadmap.

They act as the bridge between the business, customers, and development teams, aiming to deliver a valuable and successful product that meets customer needs and achieves business objectives.

Key responsibilities of a Product Manager:

Product Strategy: Product Managers define the product strategy by considering market trends, customer needs, user feedback, competitive landscape, and business goals. They identify opportunities, establish product goals, and align the product roadmap with the overall business strategy.
Market Research and Analysis: They conduct market research to gain insights into customer pain points, preferences, and behaviors. Product Managers analyze market trends, competitive offerings, and industry developments to inform product decisions.
Product Roadmap: Product Managers create and maintain the product roadmap, which outlines the prioritized features, enhancements, and initiatives over time. The roadmap helps prioritize and communicate the product's direction to stakeholders, teams, and customers.
Requirements Gathering: They collaborate with customers, stakeholders, and cross-functional teams to gather requirements and translate them into clear and actionable product specifications. Product Managers define user stories, use cases, and acceptance criteria to guide the product development process.
Cross-Functional Collaboration: Product Managers work closely with cross-functional internal teams such as engineering, design, marketing, sales, product ops, and customer support. They foster collaboration, communicate the product vision, and ensure alignment and shared understanding across internal teams.
Prioritization and Trade-offs: Product Managers make informed decisions on feature prioritization and trade-offs based on customer value, business goals, technical feasibility, and resource constraints. They balance short-term needs with long-term strategic objectives.
Product Development Oversight: They provide guidance and direction to the development team throughout the product development process. Product Managers collaborate with engineers and designers, answer questions, clarify requirements, and ensure the product is developed according to specifications.
Release Management: Product Managers oversee the release process, ensuring that the product is delivered on time and meets quality standards. They publish product changelog and coordinate with engineering and operations teams to plan releases, manage dependencies, and address any issues that arise.
User Feedback and Iteration: Product Managers gather customer feedback, conduct usability testing, and analyze data to gain insights into user behavior and identify areas for improvement. They use these insights to iterate on the product, enhance its features, and optimize the user experience.
Product Performance Evaluation: They monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) and evaluate the product's success against defined metrics. Product Managers analyze data, conduct market research, and gather feedback to improve the product and drive its growth continuously.

Overall, a Product Manager is responsible for guiding the strategic direction of a product, ensuring its successful development and delivery, and continuously improving it to meet customer needs and achieve business objectives.

What is a Product Owner?

A Product Owner is a role within Agile software development methodologies, commonly associated with Scrum. The Product Owner represents stakeholders' interests and acts as a liaison between the development team and the business or customer. They are responsible for maximizing the value of the product and ensuring its successful delivery.

Key responsibilities of a Product Owner:

Product Backlog Management: The Product Owner is responsible for creating, prioritizing, and maintaining the product backlog—a dynamic list of features, user stories, and tasks. They continuously refine and prioritize the backlog based on feedback, changing requirements, and business priorities.
Requirement Elicitation: The Product Owner collaborates with stakeholders, customers, and the development team to gather requirements. They engage in discussions, interviews, and workshops to understand user needs, capture feedback, and translate requirements into user stories or backlog items.
User Story Definition: The Product Owner decomposes high-level requirements into actionable user stories. They work closely with the development team to ensure the stories are well-defined, include clear acceptance criteria, and provide sufficient details for implementation.
Prioritization and Planning: The Product Owner determines the priority of items in the product backlog based on customer value, business goals, and development team capacity. They engage in sprint planning sessions to select and commit to a set of backlog items for the upcoming sprint.
Sprint Execution and Communication: During the sprint, the Product Owner collaborates closely with the development team, providing clarifications, answering questions, and guiding the implementation. They are responsible for ensuring the team's understanding of requirements and maintaining a shared vision.
Acceptance and Validation: The Product Owner reviews and accepts completed user stories or backlog items during the sprint. They validate that the work meets the acceptance criteria, aligns with customer expectations, and delivers value.
Stakeholder Management: The Product Owner serves as a critical point of contact for stakeholders, providing updates, collecting feedback, and managing expectations. They engage in regular communication to ensure stakeholders are informed about the product's progress and upcoming releases.
Decision-Making: The Product Owner makes critical decisions regarding feature implementation, scope changes, and prioritization. They balance competing demands, manage trade-offs, and make informed decisions to maximize the product's value.
Product Vision Alignment: The Product Owner works closely with the Product Manager or other stakeholders to align the product vision and roadmap with the development team's activities. They ensure the team's work aligns with the larger product strategy and goals.
Continuous Improvement: The Product Owner participates in sprint reviews, retrospectives, and feedback channels such as Slack, Intercom, feedback widgets, community feedback forums, and support tickets to continuously improve the product development process. They identify areas for enhancement, gather insights from user feedback, and drive iterative improvements.

It's important to note that the Product Owner role focuses primarily on the tactical execution of the product development process within the Agile framework. They collaborate closely with the development team and are responsible for backlog management, requirement definition, and ensuring the team delivers a valuable product increment with each sprint.

What's the difference between a Product Manager and a Product Owner?

It's worth noting that in some organizations, the roles of Product Manager and Product Owner may be combined or split differently based on the organization's structure, size, and development methodology.

The specific responsibilities and expectations can vary, but overall, the Product Manager tends to have a broader strategic focus. At the same time, the Product Owner is more closely involved in the development process and ensuring successful delivery.

The roles of a Product Manager and a Product Owner can vary depending on the organization and context, but here are some general differences between the two:

Product Manager:

Strategic focus: Product Managers are responsible for defining and driving the overall product strategy, vision, and success. They consider market trends, customer needs, and business objectives to shape the product roadmap.
External-facing: Product Managers often engage with stakeholders, customers, and market research to understand customer pain points, gather feedback, and identify opportunities. They work closely with cross-functional teams, such as marketing and sales, to ensure the product's market fit and success.
Broader scope: Product Managers take a holistic view of the product lifecycle. They consider various aspects such as product-market fit, competitive landscape, pricing, marketing, and long-term growth.
Roadmap ownership: Product Managers own the product roadmap and make strategic decisions about what features and initiatives to prioritize based on user segments with feedback management tools. They balance customer needs, technical feasibility, and goals, making businesses more customer-centric.

Product Owner:

Tactical focus: Product Owners are primarily focused on executing the development process and ensuring the successful delivery of the product. They work within an Agile framework, such as Scrum, and collaborate closely with the development team.
Development team interface: Product Owners act as the interface between the development team and stakeholders. They work with the team to define and prioritize user stories, participate in sprint planning, and provide guidance throughout the development cycle.
Internal-facing: Product Owners primarily focus on internal stakeholders and work closely with the development team to ensure a shared understanding of requirements, clarify questions, and provide timely feedback. They may also collaborate with the Product Manager to align on the overall product vision.
Backlog management: Product Owners are responsible for managing the product backlog, which consists of user stories, features, and tasks. They prioritize the backlog items, ensure they are well-defined and estimated, and adjust priorities based on feedback and changing circumstances.
Iterative decision-making: Product Owners make real-time decisions during development, such as accepting or rejecting completed work, reprioritizing backlog items, and adjusting requirements based on evolving needs.

It's important to note that in some organizations, one person may assume both the Product Manager and Product Owner roles, especially in smaller teams or startups. In such cases, the responsibilities of both roles may overlap or be combined to fit the organization's needs.

The specific distribution of responsibilities can vary, but the general distinction lies in the strategic focus and broader scope of the Product Manager compared to the tactical execution and development focus of the Product Owner.

Product Owner vs Product Manager Salary

The salary for Product Owners and Product Managers can vary significantly based on location, industry, experience level, company size, and individual skills. Salary ranges for these roles based on industry research and market trends in the United States:

Product Owner Salary Range: $60k - $150k per year

Product Manager Salary Range: $70k- $180k per year

It's important to note that these salary ranges are approximate and can vary significantly based on factors such as location and industry. Salaries tend to be higher in metropolitan areas and industries such as technology, finance, and healthcare.

Is a Product Owner the Same Thing as a Product Manager?

No, a Product Manager and a Product Owner are not the same things, although there can be some overlap or combination of responsibilities in specific organizations or situations. Let's highlight the key differences between the two roles:

	Product Manager	Product Owner
Role Focus	Strategic	Tactical
Responsibilities	Overall product strategy, market research, roadmap, stakeholder alignment, product vision	Backlog management, requirement gathering, user story definition, prioritization, sprint execution, stakeholder communication
External-Facing	Yes, engages with stakeholders, customers, and market research	Primarily internal-facing, representing stakeholders within the development team
Scope	Broad, considers market trends, competition, and long-term product success	Narrower, focuses on the immediate development cycle within Agile methodologies
Decision-Making	Strategic decisions, feature prioritization, and trade-offs	Tactical decisions during sprints, accepting completed work, scope changes
Collaboration	Cross-functional collaboration with multiple teams, including engineering, design, marketing, and sales	Close collaboration with the development team, clarifying requirements, and ensuring shared understanding
Roadmap Ownership	Owns and defines the product roadmap	Does not own the roadmap but contributes to it by prioritizing backlog items
Stakeholder Management	Engages with stakeholders at various levels, including executives and business leaders	Engages with stakeholders primarily at the team level and represents their interests
Market Research and Analysis	Conducts market research, and identifies trends, customer needs, and competition	Primarily gathers feedback and requirements from stakeholders and customers
Vision Setting	Defines and communicates the product vision	Aligns the team's work with the overall product vision
Long-Term Focus	Considers long-term product success and growth	Focuses on short-term goals and immediate development iterations within Agile frameworks

It's important to note that while there are distinctions between the roles, the specific responsibilities and task distribution can vary depending on the organization, product, and development methodology in use. The table provides a general overview of the key differences between a Product Manager and a Product Owner.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the comparison between Product Owners and Product Managers reveals that while their roles may overlap, they have distinct responsibilities and focus areas within the product development process. Understanding these differences is crucial for organizations seeking to optimize their product strategy and for professionals aiming to excel in these roles.

While the roles of Product Owners and Product Managers may differ, their collaboration is essential for achieving product success. The Product Owner provides valuable insights and feedback to the Product Manager, ensuring that the product vision and roadmap align with the development team's capabilities and customer needs.

Effective collaboration and communication between these roles lead to a shared understanding of the product's goals, enabling the team to deliver exceptional results. Learn how to incorporate customer feedback into your product development process helpful for both product managers and product owners:

Set up a Customer Feedback System
Collect Actionable Feedback from Customers and Teammates
Analyze, Prioritize, and Categorize Feedback Data to Make Sense of It
Act and Have a Specific Product Evolution Plan
Announce New Features and Product Updates

Rapidr helps SaaS companies set up a dedicated place to keep track of different types of customer feedback, improve their product while listening to their customers, and use product-led strategies to grow their SaaS.

Sign up and set up a complete customer feedback system to inform and enhance your product development process with product owners and product managers.