Product Manager VS. Scrum Product Owner

May 9, 2008 by Artem Marchenko

Update: this topic continues at Product Manager and Scrum Product Owner.

This Saturday I am leaving for the US-based course on Product Management. So I thought it could be a good idea to share my thoughts on the difference between the product management and the Agile Product Owner (Scrum) or Customer (XP) role.

Background

I come from software development. I was an engineer, system analyst, engineer again, senior engineer and chief engineer of the department for a decade. During last several years I was learning and practicing Agile and especially Scrum as a local consultant, evangelist, propagandist and Scrum Master. As permanent readers might remember earlier this year I moved to Product Management hoping to be able to help with the effective prioritization issues and Product Manager position seemed to be the easiest path for playing the Scrum Product Owner role. I indeed became a co-Product Owner for a development team. However, naturally I started spending some time on figuring out the "general Product Management" as well.

Product Owner and Product Manager

Product Manager (PM) is supposed to represent the voice of the customer, Product Owner (PO) is supposed to be the single wringable neck of a project, the one who prioritizes requirements for the team from the point of view of the customer.

In my opinion these roles are overlapping and in many organizations can be equal. However, in general there is a minor, but important difference. Ideal PO spends much time with the team, is accessible for the team every day or even many times a day, while being able to understand and explain what the customer really needs. Ideal PM on the other hand spends much time with the customer or customer interfaces (e.g. doing web surveys) while being able to answer the team questions. It looks to me like two different perspectives on the same broad function - representing the customer interests in such a form that developers could effectively use it.

Double leadership

Depending on your organization, market, individual skills and many other details both roles can be performed by the same individual. In many situations though it can be difficult to find an individual skilled enough and having enough time to follow every customer thought while understanding the technical team dynamics. Then you get a two person leadership for the project: one person caring a bit more about the business priorities, another one - caring a bit more about the operative guidance. I've heard that it is the way they do projects in Honda, where each major project has a business leader and a technical leader.

Your opinion

What do you think? What is in the Product Management for you? Is there any value from PM for your team

P.S.

And by the way, if you know about some software or non-software related event happening in San Francisco between Saturday and Wednesday or in Austin on Thursday-Friday, please, drop a comment or send me a tweet @AgileArtem

Photo courtesy of decafinata @ Flickr

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