A Product Manager is Not a Project Manager - Brief Analysis of Product Management

I was sitting in the back row, right angle of the university room in central Paris. A new course was about to kick off this semester: Product Management. I had already been exposed to this role during my Notion consulting work. The definition of a product manager is quite blurred for many of us. Is a product manager the same as a project manager? If not, what are the differences? What does a product manager actually do?

I sat down and took my laptop out of the backpack. The room was full of people wearing surgical masks and acting like civilized human beings with the locus of attention on the stage of the room, where a Google product manager and a panel of product managers in tech were standing, and after a while sitting.

A product manager is not the same as a project manager. A *product *manager is responsible for the coordination and successful launch of products and features, no matter how. Product managers—ideally—do not handle the way in which the product is “shipped”. That’s the job of a project manager and the engineering team. Product managers set a why, a direction, and a what, a description of what the product can look like. Project managers manage the daily todos and organize the practical daily work for the engineering and design team.

Product managers are generalists, in most cases—although the nature of a product manager depends highly on the type of product/industry they are in. The more technical the industry/product, the more useful technical knowledge is. But product managers do not need to code or build the product themselves. That’s the job of engineers. Product managers are the link between engineers and leadership. Their job is to pay careful attention to customers’ needs. The best product is one that addresses customers’ needs in the most effective and precise fashion. Product managers carry out careful customer analysis. That is a crucial component of a product manager’s endeavor. Customers are at the center of every product—and the organization as a consequence. Often, the top leadership may forget this fact and err on the economical optimization side of things. The product manager has the responsibility and ability to bring everyone back to the customer and outline what the customer actually wants based on the research conducted. That is an essential role.