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Product Owners vs. Product Managers: Train Drivers and Track Builders
One of the most common questions I get asked is ‘what’s the difference between a product owner and product manager?’.
This is a critical difference to get right for successful digital transformation.
Often the product owner title and product manager title are used interchangeably. This causes a lot of confusion in teams who are used to — for example — product owners doing one thing, but then a product manager comes in and does that same thing. It destroys predictability and therefore efficiency.
My answer to the question is always the same.
Product managers are biased towards the strategic, and product owners are biased towards the tactical.
What does this mean in practise?
A strategic-focussed role is thinking about broader things, in less detail and at a greater distance into the future. A tactical focussed role is thinking about narrower things, in more detail and at a shorter distance into the future.
Product managers think more (but not exclusively) about the longer-term, and product owners think more (but not exclusively) about the shorter-term.
