The three “PM”s: Differentiating between Product, Project, and Program Management

Addressing the differences between the "PM" roles

Product management often gets confused with “project management”. Now that “program management” has grown and gained permanence, there’s even more confusion. Let’s address the similarities and differences between each.

How is each role defined?

A product manager directly influences the outcome of the product. This person generally uncovers opportunities via data — whether it be unmet customer needs or shortcomings in the existing product for the engineering team, hardware or software, to tackle.

A project manager directly influences the output of the process. This person creates systems to prevent bottlenecks in a product development process. They track the status of progress on pre-established goals and report those updates

A program manager directly influences the outcome of multiple projects. This person articulates a program’s strategy and objectives and assesses how it will impact a business. A program manager manages multiple large-scale projects tied to a specific higher-level objective, like a core company outcome or a big bet.

Project management can be a part of the product management role. But, product management is not a part of the project management role.

Core differences between product, project, and program managers

Measuring Success

• Product managers define and measure metrics for their products and experiments within their products

• Program managers define and measure success of initiatives supporting a business outcome

• Project managers report on progress toward pre-established success metrics.

Level of Autonomy

• Product = high autonomy

• Program = moderate autonomy

• Project = low autonomy

Proximity to Strategy

• Product Managers are responsible for product strategy. Note: As a junior PM, you are more accountable to a strategy rather than responsible for one.

• Program managers are accountable for providing strategic direction for how to guide dependent projects within a program.

• Project managers are tactical and generally don’t influence strategy.

Primary Stakeholders

• Product’s primary stakeholder is the customer

Ex: Product manager for Google for Education is responsible for feature optimizations and new product rollouts

• Program’s primary stakeholders are often external partners

Ex: Program manager for Google for Education is responsible for go-to-market programs and establishing partnerships with schools

• Project’s primary stakeholders are highly variable given the temporary nature of and diversity of a project.

Shared Commonalities between program, product, and project management

• All are considered “operational” roles

• All enable the product development process with varying degrees of separation from the product itself

• As stakeholders of the product, all are valuable to the success of a product development team

Product, project, and program share the need to collaborate across functions, communicate clearly and consistently, and create processes that enable scale.

If you’re curious about the differences between a project and a program, take a look at the table below

Comparison table from wrike.com

Summary

• Product managers are responsible for directly improving and contributing to the product. Program and project managers are tangential to the product and influence initiatives and processes that help to scale the product or the KPI that the product directly impacts.

• Program management is more similar to product management than project management. As a career transitioner, the logical stepping stone to reach a product role would be project management — program management — product management.

• Generally speaking, project managers have the least range of motion around the product and are still critical roles that enable the business to operate successfully.

Caveat: A project manager can manage multiple projects and not be a program manager. These definitions don’t align with the Microsoft definition of a program manager. Lastly, this assessment is based on an interpretation of job descriptions and conversations with peers in these roles.