The roles of product owner and product manager have become increasingly crucial for business success. While these titles are sometimes used interchangeably, they represent distinct positions with different responsibilities, especially within organizations that implement agile methodologies.
According to a 2023 Gartner report, 85% of organizations now employ some form of agile practices, highlighting the importance of understanding these key product roles. This comprehensive guide will clarify the distinctions between a product owner and a product manager. We'll explore their unique responsibilities, skill sets, and how they collaborate to deliver exceptional products.
What is a Product Manager?
A product manager is often described as the CEO of the product. They are professionals who help shape and guide the success of a product. Their main job is to understand what users need, set a clear vision and strategy, and plan how the product will grow and improve over time. They create a roadmap to guide the team and make sure the product is launched successfully and performs well in the market.
Product managers work closely with teams like engineering, design, marketing, and business, helping everyone stay aligned and move toward the same goals. This strategic role focuses on the big picture, determining what products to build and why. According to McKinsey & Company, companies with strong product management capabilities generate 32% higher revenue growth than their counterparts.
The role of a Product Manager can differ from one company to another, but their main responsibilities usually include:
- Market Research & Customer Insights: Product managers look at market trends, customer feedback, and what competitors are doing to see how their product fits in and can stand out. They collect information through user testing, surveys, and data analysis.
- Defining Product Strategy: They create a long-term plan for the product, finding important opportunities and setting goals that match the business's aims.
- Creating & Managing the Roadmap: A PM makes a clear plan that shows how the product will be developed, making sure all teams are working towards the same goals.
- Prioritizing Features & Development: They decide what features to build next by considering customer needs, business impact, and technical feasibility, using tools like MoSCoW or RICE to help prioritize.
- Cross-Functional Collaboration: Product managers work closely with teams in engineering, design, sales, marketing, and other areas to ensure the product plan is carried out smoothly.
- Execution & Delivery: They supervise the development process, ensuring that features are built, tested, and launched on time while maintaining high quality.
What is a Product Owner?
The Product Owner (PO) represents the voice of the customer within an Agile Team and helps guide the team's work in line with the product’s overall strategy. As part of the broader product management group, the PO ensures that development stays aligned with the solution’s vision and business goals. They listen to customer needs, help shape the product’s vision and goals, and manage the product backlog—a list of features and tasks for the team, while balancing the needs of different stakeholders.
Unlike product managers who may oversee multiple products, product owners typically focus on a single product or component, working closely with one agile team, closely with both business stakeholders and the development team to make sure everyone is aligned and ensuring that the team builds the right features in the right order to meet user needs and business objectives. They focus on tactical execution and are deeply embedded in the day-to-day development process. According to the ResearchGate Report, 66% of agile teams use Scrum or a Scrum hybrid approach, making the product owner role increasingly common.
A product owner's core responsibilities include:
- Product Backlog Tasks: As a Product Owner, your main focus is the product backlog. You can delegate tasks, but you are responsible for their creation, organization, and communication. Your role includes identifying important tasks and sharing them with the development team.
- Being the Customer's Voice: As a Product Owner, your main focus is the product backlog. You can delegate tasks, but you are responsible for their creation, organization, and communication. Your role includes identifying important tasks and sharing them with the development team.
- Generating User Stories: You create user stories by translating customer feedback into actionable items for developers. Clear explanations of product value help developers understand priorities.
- Collaborating with the Product Manager: You support the Product Manager, who oversees the product strategy. Your feedback on the roadmap helps align development efforts.
- Aligning with the Product Roadmap: Ensure that backlog items match the product roadmap set by the Product Manager, allowing the development team to focus on the right tasks in the right order.
Read more:
- What Makes a Great Product Owner in Kanban? Restaff Guide
- Job Opportunities for Software Engineers in the AI Sector Introduction
- Software Framework Guide: Efficient Development
- Why Should Hire a Software Development Team Instead of an In-House Team?
Key Differences of Product Owner vs. Product Manager
While both roles contribute to product success, they differ in several important ways:
1. Decision-Making Differences
The decision-making authority of these roles reflects their different focuses:
Product Managers:
- Make strategic decisions about product direction
- Determine which markets to enter
- Decide on pricing strategies
- Approve major feature investments
- Balance portfolio priorities across products
Product Owners:
- Make tactical decisions about implementation details
- Determine sprint priorities
- Decide when features meet acceptance criteria
- Approve or reject completed work
- Balance priorities within a single product backlog
According to Harvard Business Review, organizations that clearly delineate these decision-making boundaries report 25% fewer project delays and higher team satisfaction.
2. The Product Manager: Strategic Roadmapping
Consider the product manager as the leader, charting the path for sustained product success. Their choices are influenced by market research, business goals, product planning, and customer requirements, ensuring the development of a product that provides significant value.
- Vision & Roadmap: This AI task manager should focus on remote teams and incorporate integration with Slack and Google Calendar.
- Market & Business Decisions: According to competitor analysis, we should emphasize AI-driven task recommendations as our unique selling point.
- Stakeholder Alignment: We need support from leadership, marketing, and sales to guarantee successful implementation.
- Metrics & Product Performance: How will we assess product success? Are our key performance indicators (KPIs) aligned with our business objectives?”
At Restaff, our Custom Software Development services incorporate strategic roadmapping to ensure client projects align with long-term business goals, not just immediate technical requirements.
3. The Product Owner: The Tactical Executor
The Product Owner (PO) functions like the first mate on a ship, overseeing daily operations to keep everything on track. They utilize Scrum methodologies and concentrate on delivering gradual product enhancements while ensuring deadlines are met.
- Sprint & Backlog Management: In this sprint, we will create AI-generated task categories and evaluate the algorithm with actual users.
- Technical Feasibility Decisions: The Slack integration API has certain limitations, so we will need to find an alternative solution.
- Developer Support: I will clarify the user story requirements for AI task suggestions to enable the team to develop them effectively
- User Experience & Execution: How can we guarantee smooth task automation that improves workflow efficiency?
Product owners typically work in two-week sprint cycles, focusing on immediate deliverables rather than long-term planning. Their success metrics often relate to team velocity, sprint completion rates, and feature quality.
4. Product Owner vs Product Manager: Salary Guide
Compensation reflects the different levels of responsibility between these roles:
Product Manager:
- Average salary in Norway: 850,000-1,100,000 NOK annually
- Typically requires 5+ years of experience
- Often includes bonus structures tied to product performance
Product Owner:
- Average salary in Norway: 700,000-900,000 NOK annually
- Typically requires 3+ years of experience
- May include bonuses tied to team performance metrics
Here’s the summary table between the Product Owner vs Product Manager:
| Column 1 | Product Manager | Product Owner |
|---|---|---|
| Planning the Product | Thinks about what the product should be like in the future and makes plans for it. | Helps make sure the team’s work fits into the bigger plan for what the product should become. |
| Understanding Customers | Figure out what users like and don’t like by talking to them and studying the market | Listens to what customers say to make a list of things for the team to work on that solve their problems |
| Organizing Work | Decides what the team should work on next and develops a product roadmap. | Put tasks in order of importance based on what needs to be done next, according to the product roadmap. |
| Deciding on Features | Chooses new things to add to the product based on what users need and want. | Breaks down those new things into clear tasks for the team to do. |
| Working with the Team | Makes sure everyone working on the product understands the bì plan and works together well | Talks a lot with the team to keep them updated and focused on what’s most important. |
| Improving the Product | Looks at how well the new features are doing and thinks about changes to make the product better | Gives feedback on how things are going and suggests tweaks to stay on track with the goals. |
Do You Really Need Both Roles?
Whether an organization needs both a product manager and a product owner depends on several factors:
Consider having both roles when:
- Your organization develops multiple products
- You have several development teams
- Your products serve diverse markets
- You need both strategic vision and tactical execution
A single role might suffice when:
- You have a single product with a limited scope
- You have one development team
- Your market and requirements are stable
- Your organization is small (under 50 people)
Many organizations, particularly startups, begin with a hybrid role that handles both strategic and tactical responsibilities. As the company grows, these responsibilities are often split into distinct positions.
Restaff's dedicated development team services can help organizations temporarily fill either role while determining their long-term staffing needs, providing flexibility during periods of growth or transition.
How to Transition from a Product Owner to a Product Manager?
Many professionals begin as product owners and aspire to move into product management. This career progression requires developing new skills and perspectives:
- Expand your business acumen: Develop a deeper understanding of business models, market dynamics, and financial metrics
- Build strategic thinking skills: Practice long-term planning and identifying market opportunities
- Develop cross-functional relationships: Build connections with marketing, sales, and executive teams
- Gain experience with data analysis: Learn to use analytics to inform product decisions
- Seek mentorship from experienced product managers: Learn from those who have successfully made this transition
Professionals who successfully transition between these roles typically spend about 12-18 months deliberately developing these new competencies while still performing their current role.
Restaff's Offshore Development Center services include professional development programs that help team members grow into new roles while maintaining productivity on client projects.
Best Practices & Tips for Being a Great Product Manager
Excellent product managers share several key practices:
- Determined major factors that differentiate product performance by conducting interviews, observations, and both quantitative and qualitative analyses.
- Evaluated the positioning and technical strengths of competitors.
- Choose an offshore partner capable of adhering to tight timelines.
- Established training workshops, introduced new pricing strategies, and enhanced sales techniques across various product lines.
- Mentored key leaders within the new product development team.
- Create compelling narratives about product vision and strategy
- Use metrics to evaluate options and measure success
- Navigate competing priorities from different departments
- Understand enough about technology to have meaningful conversations with engineers
- Create clear criteria for what gets built when
- Learn to lead through persuasion rather than direct control
- Launched a new product
As one senior product leader at Forrester Research noted, "The best product managers are those who can translate complex customer problems into simple product solutions, and then articulate the value of those solutions to both technical and non-technical stakeholders."
Final Thoughts
Hire a Dedicated Product Owner vs a Product Manager in Vietnam
The distinction between product owner and product manager reflects the evolution of roles in product management as organizations adopt more sophisticated approaches to building digital products. In many successful organizations, these roles work in tandem: product managers define the "what" and "why" of product development, while product owners focus on the "how" and "when." This partnership, when well-executed, creates a powerful engine for innovation and delivery.
For organizations looking to enhance their product development capabilities, Restaff offers comprehensive services from Staff Augmentation to Dedicated Teams that can provide the right expertise at the right time, helping you navigate the complex landscape of modern product development.