We do have business managers even today. What is so different from the Product Owner?
By: Sevil Topal
Tags: Scrum, Product Manager, Product Owner

What is a Product Owner? What are the differences between a Product Owner and a Project Manager? Isn’t a Product Owner some kind of an Agile Project Manager? — these questions posed on the basis of comparison are very common in the context of projects in the software industry.

Before we dive into an overview of the differences between a Product Owner and a Project Project Manager, let’s start with the conclusion first, which is: The Product Owner is not an Agile Project Manager. There is some overlap between the role of Product Owner and the position of Project Manager, however, being a Product Owner is very different from being a Project Manager. In this blog, we’ll dive deeper into the topic: “Product Owner vs Project Manager”.

Picture by https://medium.com/the-value-maximizers

What is a Product Owner?

The key responsibility or the purpose of the Product Owner's role is to “maximize the value of the Product”. The Product Owner is one person (not a committee) responsible in the Scrum Framework for maximizing the value. The way the Product Owner maximizes value is by continuously making choices about what to built and what not to built in the Product. In order to do so, the Product Owner is also responsible for the product vision and for managing the Product Backlog and stakeholders.

What a Product Owner does

Some examples of what a Product Owner should do include:

To be accountable for the success or failure of the product;

To provide unified direction to the product;

To provide visible and sustained support for the product;

Maximizing the Value of the Product for customers, users, and the organization. This means that a Product Owner actually owns the product. The Product Owner is the person who is responsible for making sure that the product delivers as much value as possible.

actually the product. The Product Owner is the person who is responsible for making sure that the product delivers as much value as possible. The Product Owner is also responsible for Product Backlog Management . This includes activities such as clearly expressing Product Backlog Items, ordering the items in the Product Backlog to best achieve goals and missions and ensuring the Product Backlog is visible , transparent , and clear to all, and shows what the Scrum Team will work on next.

. This includes activities such as clearly expressing Product Backlog Items, ordering the items in the Product Backlog to best achieve goals and missions and ensuring the Product Backlog is , , and clear to all, and shows what the Scrum Team will work on next. The Product Owner is responsible for Stakeholder Management, in order to align everybody around the product vision and (business) goals and objectives to achieve. This also includes inviting the right (key) stakeholders to the Sprint Review, discussing the current status of the Product Backlog, next targets and objectives, likely delivery dates and progress made, during the Sprint Review as well as tracking the total work remaining (at least every Sprint Review) for the Product, creating forecasts and making this information transparent for the stakeholders.

The Product Owner is much more than a traditional business manager in two aspects:

1. Continuous engagement with the team: The Product Owner respects the fact that the future cannot be predicted. They adopt empiricism to continually get clarity and refine the product. They are on the constant lookout for every opportunity to maximize the value of the product. They continually work with the team to help them understand the product needs and get the best value out of their work.

2. Ultimate authority of the team’s scope of work: The Product Owner leverages the dedicated Development Team to continually shape the product and uncover new knowledge. So, it is essential that the team should only be working on their product needs. The team should not be “switching the context” of their work due to any external authorities directing them to do “some other” work. So, the Product Owner is the ultimate authority on what the team should work on next. Even the CEO of the organization cannot request the team to work on something else. Anyone wanting to add something to the product must go through the Product Owner.

What is a Project Manager?

Now that we have explored the Product Owner role, let us move on to the “vs Project Manager” part of this blog. So, what is a Project Manager? And what are his/her responsibilities? Looking at some of the well-known Project Management methodologies, such as PM-Bok or PRINCE2, we find the following:

The Project Manager manages a project on a day-to-day basis and is the only one with this day-to-day focus on the project. As a result, this role can never be shared. The Project Manager runs the project on behalf of the Project Board within specified constraints and liaises throughout the project with the Project Board and Project Assurance . The Project Manager usually (preferred by PRINCE2) comes from the customer. They are responsible for all of the PRINCE2 processes except for the Directing a Project and Managing Product Delivery process. Source: https://prince2.wiki/roles/project-manager/

In addition to the definition above, a Project Manager is also responsible for Project Support and Team Management, in case there are no team managers in the organization. This means that a Project Manager will manage (the work and performance of) individual team members on a daily basis.

What a Project Manager does

The role/job of being a Project Manager is a very broad one. There are many tasks and responsibilities related to the Project Manager role. Some of these include:

Creating and managing the business case;

Managing changes and change requests (to Scope, Time and Budget);

Managing the project organization;

Creating and managing project plans, including the Project Initiation Document, Project Plan, Gantt Charts, and others;

Tracking and measuring project/team progress;

Managing quality;

Identifying, tracking, and managing project risk;

Delivering administrative services for the project;

Advice and guidance on project management tools or configuration management

Top-3 responsibility differences Product Owner vs Project Manager:

A Project Manager is not accountable for the success or failure of a product. He might be held accountable for the failure of the project, but that is in the sense of Scope, Budget, and Time mostly. In a Scrum context, however, a Product Owner would be ultimately accountable for the Products’ success. So a Product Owner is accountable for the success of a product, but also for the value and outcomes resulting from the execution of projects if that way-of-working would apply. In a project setting, the Project Board (the project Executive) would be accountable for the product and outcomes, not the project manager. The Project Manager creates, manages, devices, and distributes work-packages amongst team members. The Project Manager also manages the scope for the stakeholders. So, the Project Manager has a requirements / content-related responsibility. A Product Owner doesn’t manage those details. A Product Owner does not manage work packages, people, resources, materials, or others. He just makes sure there is an ordered and understandable list of work (Product Backlog), which the self-organizing Development Teams can use. It was mentioned earlier that both the Product Owner and the Project Manager are responsible for the Iron Triangle’s elements of Time, Budget, and Scope. This is true. A big difference we see though is that Project Managers are mostly concerned with managing these elements in their day-to-day practice. This is quite different from Product Owners though because they are focused more on delivering value. Product Owners typically measure customer satisfaction, revenues, product usage, the total cost of ownership, etc. So a huge difference between Product Owners and Project Managers, is that Product Owners focus on delivering value, whilst Project Managers focus on controlling Time, Budget, and Scope.

This chart from Gartner’s “How to Staff the Product Owner Role” report

After so much Scrum, you deserve a short break.

Do you know the Silicon Valley series? Below is a short scene.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ps4nSgyieIw

Resources:

Scrum Narrative Book

https://www.gartner.com/en/documents/3869111

Product Owner vs Project Manager by the value maximizers