How being a PM is different than being a PM or a PM

Don't Read This Article...

If you're already a ProDUCT Manager (PM) or ProJECT Manager (PM) or ProGRAM Manager (PM), you should skip this article (unless you feel like telling me why I'm wrong - adding value to the conversation for entrants into any of these roles). But seriously, which one wins the "PM" acronym? I say PMs win... I mean PRODUCT Managers ;) because it's my article, so I can say what I want ;). (note to self, ask LI Newsletter team for emoji support)

But fer reals - the reason I had this article idea listed a long time ago (sitting in a google doc unpublished for years) is that I pretty often hit two reasons to justify writing it...

Reason #1, I hear people refer to Product Managers as ProJect Managers, or Program Managers as PMs when others are thinking they meant ProDuct Manager, any other confusion between the three roles, (if you've done this, and the PM near you didn't correct you, assume they were biting their tongue to the point of bleeding). It's only mildly annoying - and not worthy of an article by itself... but,

Reason #2 might hit the threshold of worth sharing... that is, I get questions about what the PM(any) roles are from people/students a) entering university or the workforce trying to plan their potential future, b) thinking about new roles that may leverage their skills, or c) just being introduced to a PM(any) and trying to understand what they do (my kids, BTW, have fit into categories (a) and (c) at different points... . So - this article is meant to be MY answer - my VIEW on the Product Management (PM or PdM? ick) Program Management (PgM) and Project Management (PjM) roles - intended mostly for those people described above who haven't had experience on what the differences, similarities, and relationships are between the roles.

Self-Conscious Caveat...

The ideas here, like all my articles, is from my perspective and experience, and is not intended to be the definitive definition of each of the roles - not by a long shot. I didn't research wikipedia or job-description-pedia to write the definitive source of truth here. I'm just relaying my experience and understanding - and there are DEFINITELY some differences in how the roles are defined across companies and even across people in the same company (in the worst cases of role confusion). I'd be interested in your experience here if it's different than mine, if you feel inspired to share in the comments.

Let's Start With PMs.

ugh, I mean PdMs (that's so unnatural - I'm sticking with PM for proDUCT managers).

ProDUCT Managers take responsibility for the whole product - often from idea inception, through launch and even upgrade/improvement cycles or maintenance. This may sound over-stated - but in my experience, it's not... I said "take responsibility", not "do all the things". The PM is often the person with ultimate responsibility to launch (or fix or support) a COMPLETE product - a product which not only solves the target problem it was conceived to solve, but done in a legal way, communicated to the market well, designed well, engineered for speed and scale, maintained and supported, integrated with other products, viable financially, etc etc. The PM DOESN'T DO all those things, but they make sure all those parts fit well together, are prioritized and funded to the "right" level (judgement here), and fit into the overall strategy of the company from whence it came (I wasn't an English major, can you tell?). As a priority, they have to deeply understand the problem they aim to solve and the customers they are targeting who need that problem solved... then they need to deliver that solution - that proDUCT.

At MANY (most over a certain size?) companies, there are thicker responsibility lines drawn around the PM role, so that they might not be expected to go deep into things like Marketing, or Financial Budgeting (as examples) - as there are teams (Marketing, Finance) who do those things directly - but the PM generally SHOULD care, understand, agree and be a strong participant in those processes - and most importantly MAKE CONNECTIONS between those things and all the other things required to successfully bring a product to market and maintain viability.

At most tech companies, the emphasis for PMs (proDDDuct) is launching NEW products... Right or wrong, that seems to be how tech PMs lean - into development of new products, or significant improvements - versions - of existing products. And even tech products which have been around for a long time - like Google Sheets, launched June 6, 2006 (gulp) - has proDUCT managers today, still understanding the customer needs and improving and supporting the product (thank you).

Perhaps you can make the analogy of the PM as the General Contractor (and please don't read into that if you have had bad GC experiences ;) - but the idea is, they make sure ALL the things get done to create a viable... house, or... other... thing... that... holds people... or..... you get the idea.

Now a key thing is: not all products that have PMs are technical solutions (duh) - not every product is an app, software or hardware. But tech product management is where my experience is... and rumor has it, there are non-technical products in this world. Those products have had product managers (PMs) long before technology products were popularized. If you work in CPG (Consumer Packaged Goods) as a product manager, your product might be a soap brand, a frozen food brand, a shoe line, a financial solution for retirees, etc etc. While I have minimal experience in non-technical product management (although there is this non-technical side-hustle), one thing I have noticed is that many non-technical PMs SEEM to lean more into Brand and Marketing than us tech PMs. Not right or wrong. - but perhaps with highly competitive, but less differentiated or complex products, the brand really IS the product...?

So, if PMs - ProDUCT Managers - focus on the WHOLE PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT process - Defining, delivering and then managing and improving a PRODUCT - don't they need to manage proJECTS too? Don't they need to create and manage a proJECT plan?

Let's talk...

Enough about PMs - what about PMs? (I mean ProJECT Managers)

ProJECT management is very targeted at creating and managing project PLANS and the activities that are in those plans to completion. ProJJJJect Management is a very specialized skill - using tools, methods, techniques and skills which are very focused on that activity of creating and managing those plans - and often herding easily distracted felines - AND PEOPLE. ProJJJect Managers (can you tell I don't like using PjM here? looks too much like PaJaMas) have learned very specific skills - and combine those skills with very strong organization, analytic, interpersonal and communication skills to activate (often large) groups of people, often across many cross-functional teams, to reach a common, DATE-BOUND TARGET. Their most well-known physical (digital) tool is the beloved Gantt Chart of course. "Disciplined" and "Well-organized" and "Persistent" are a few adjectives that describe some of the most effective proJECT managers I've worked with (not to mention "wonderful").

The projects which proJECT managers pursue can be related to achieving practically ANY goal - building a house, planning a highway, running an art show, making a new app. ProJECT managers remain very focused on the PLAN and the PROGRESS and the DEPENDENCIES - but they aren't by definition responsible for the design of, or market success of, the end product itself.

So what about the proDUCT manager - don't they care about the proJECT plan to get the thing built? YES. And don't they often actually take responsibility for the creation and execution of that proJECT plan? YES! but that project plan creation and management is just one part of defining, designing, planning and launching a PRODUCT. The PROJECT planning is definitely a key part of what needs to get done during product development, but it’s only one aspect of the product development effort - and many proDUCT managers - frankly - are not great proJECT managers (hi self). PROJECT Managers have very specific skills - and there are even educational certifications to help you learn or prove your skills as a great proJECT Manager.

Many PMs are also PMs

As we said earlier - the proDUCT manager doesn't DO all the things to get a product built or launch it successfully - but they take responsibility and team up with others who have the skills to design it, engineer it, market it, measure it, etc... In the case of proJECT management, some product managers ARE ACTUALLY OFTEN required to take on the difficult tasks of creating a plan, managing all the deliverables, keeping all the people involved coordinated to a common goal. And when they're lucky - particularly in large organizations - they get to partner with a specialist (like with other specialist skills needed to build a proDUCT) - a proJECT manager partner to make sure the thing gets done according to a semi-predictable plan. This is a godsend, particularly for complex products which require many sub-teams, or integrations with other products, or partners. Many companies use the scale of the effort - the sheer size based on the number of engineers required - to determine if a ProJECT Manager (or Technical ProJECT/ProGRAM Manager - more on that later) should be assigned to the team.

Quick side note - when I interview ProDUCT managers, I try to quickly assess whether they have the skills and interest in the proJECT management tasks. If they do, they'll be more versatile for different-sized product efforts, and if not, they'll have to really shine in the other skills to become a successful proDUCT manager.

With a proJECT manager partner, the proDUCT manager can focus more on all the other parts of the product development effort - most critically defining WHAT the product is, and helping the team that has to build it (software engineers in the case of software products) understand and prioritize the different parts of what they're building - and preparing the rest of the organization, and the customers, for that product to land successfully in the market. This is a good time to introduce.....

You Guessed It - another PM (enter proGRAM managers)

ProGRAM managers, in my view (I expect this one to be the most controversial, but since nobody reads this far down, I feel safe space ;) can be defined in two ways:

1. Take responsibility for an initiative that requires coordination across many functions of an organization, potentially including partners, customers and the industry within which the product lives. A good example of a PROGRAM in this category would be Product Internationalization. A Program Manager for this effort is focused on developing a successful set of processes to internationalize one or more products - as an overlay to the actual development of the product itself. They're not creating new products per se - they're developing methods to help that product be used internationally.
2. Take responsibility for an initiative to LAND a product successfully to a given market or customer segment. Two good examples of PROGRAMs in this category would be introducing Google Classroom into schools to measure it's value, or bringing a new Virtual Reality learning product to schools... Yes, real examples, with a major hat tip to Jennifer Holland, who cleared the way for the success of Google Classroom (and Expeditions) products with her ProGRAM management leadership. A Program Manager for efforts like this partner closely with product teams, but their focus is on more specific outcomes, often in what we label Go To Market (GtM) activities which often tie closely with marketing and sales. They help LAND the product.

Defining, Building and Launching (or "Ramping" in LinkedIn speak) a product is not enough. Like rockets, you don't just launch it, you have to LAND IT. (hat tip to David Thacker, who associated this language to the activities we were doing on the GSuite team for our most successful education and other product efforts). Perhaps BOTH the categories described above fit into that "LAND IT" outcome... which is why I love to use it.

There are definitely companies who map these three PM roles completely differently - rumor has it that LinkedIn's parent company, Microsoft, is one of those companies... SO if that's where your perspective comes from, please educate me and others on the comment thread here!

NOTE: the TPM role - Technical Program/Project Manager - typically goes even deeper into engineering-specific requirements (hence the Technical prefix), planning and execution, and helps engineering teams directly manage technical development processes - with additional skills like infrastructure planning, Agile/Scrum process, QA test planning, etc. In some ways you can associate the TPM role with that first definition of the ProGRAM manager role - where the TPM is focused on landing the product into a complex technical environment and helping engineers make sure the solution fits into an infrastructure plan among many other products, and meets service level expectations, and is delivered in a way which is predicable.

Three PMs walk into a bar...

• proDUCT: This bar is so sticky... What if we created a surface for bars that...
• proJECT: Hey bartender, one bourbon, one scotch, one beer please.
• proDUCT: seriously - imagine if bars were made of something that didn't get sticky!
• proGRAM: yeah, and bars all across the globe will just replace their current bar tops?
• proJECT: uh - ok - ping me when you have funding
• proDUCT: <walks over to couple down the bar> Hi! What do you think of this bar surface?
• normal person: icky and sticky. wish someone would fix that...
• proDUCT: <back with JECT and GRAM> Check it out - I did all this research, and everyone wants this sticky bar thing fixed!
• <3 hours later>
• proDUCT: I sold management on this concept of "No-Ick BarTops", got funding for14 material engineers and 3 designers. PRD is written. this thing is moving!
• proJECT: hey bartender, 3 bourbons, 3 scotch, and a water for our friend here.
• proJECT: I'll go create a plan and help the engineers develop some milestone deliverables... [then I'll start a job alert for companies that don't blindly approve drunk PMs]
• proGRAM: Hey Bartender, can you give me the contact info for the owner of this bar - I need to talk to her about what it would take to get her to try a new bar topper product... and please give the check to our friend here...

That's a pretty shallow dialogue - but... this article is too long already for a real sample dialogue. Maybe I'll work on that after I respond to all the proDUCT managers who are offended by my self-criticizing depiction of the over-zealous PM ;)

Are you a PM?

If you're thinking of becoming a PM, or a PM, or a PM... I'd strongly recommend finding one or more of each that you can talk to to understand their experience, and use the above as just one of those perspectives. The role name alone won't really tell you the responsibilities of the specific job at the specific company - so also interview your interviewer, and ask about all three PM roles, so you know where the lines of responsibility might be drawn.

And if you're at an event where someone refers to a PM, ask them which one ;)