what is the difference between program manager and product manager? which one makes more?
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Product Manager usually pays more, but no one will ever be hired as a Product Manager if they dont have several years of prior PM experience. It isn’t a random job title.
The bigger question I have is what the difference between program and project management is supposed to be. I've seen them used interchangeably sometimes. My best guess at this point is program managers oversee processes whereas project managers oversee the cross - functional use of resources to deliver X...
Pmi.org to help. Projects deliver outputs, programs deliver outcomes, portfolio delivers strategy.
When I see these used interchangeably, it tells me a lot about level of maturity of PM practice at a company.
Product manager: what should we do? Project manager: when will we do it? Program manager: here’s what we are doing and how. Program manager is more of a role that communicates and coordinates internally within the team and with other teams. If the program is important this is a huge role and can involve multiple products sometimes and many projects. Or is can be a smaller role for smaller teams. Sometimes one product or one project in big companies - just coordinating the communication between all the different moving parts of the organization. Project manager is all about schedule and deliverables. A project could be one deployment for one customer. Or it could be a big enterprise with a huge team of engineers. But it’s about who does what when. Biggest job is understanding when things are at risk of missing schedule and communicating. In general project managers don’t set the schedule but they communicate about the iron triangle of resources, schedule, and features (choose one and compromise on the other two). Product manager is the “ideas guy” both at its best and at its worst. Job is to understand what the product needs to be and be able to explain it. Product managers have to convince everyone else what to do without having direct authority. It’s about the story of what the product should be, and being able to explain that story in a convincing way.
Wow
Also of course I should note that at some places all these things are one singular job mixed together, pick any of the three names. But that’s the concept of the different roles. But honestly in particular it is a really good idea to separate the features person from the schedule person so they can work out in tension the balance. Having one person responsible for features/requirements and schedule ends up being a disaster everywhere I have worked and seen it happen. There should be a tension and balance between the two and having two different people (project and product) managing those two things ends up stressing that person out and leading to bad decision making compromising either on the schedule or the product. Ideally these things are worked out as a team or brought as a clear decision (do we want to do x and hit y date or drop x to hit our original date) to a business team owner or executive. Then there is no emotion and no responsibility individually for hitting a schedule. When you have one person doing both you get weird decisions like “engineering says we can’t do x feature and hit our original date but we have to do both! So it’s a death march now everyone come in on the weekends”
One manages "programs" or projects/initiatives and the other manages a full "product". For example, program manager might manage a project for implementing agile methodology across all engineering depts whereas product manager might manage the iPhone product. As for who makes more, it depends. A project manager of a global company working on a global strategic initiative might make more than a product manager managing a product line that is losing money.
Thanks 😊 do you know which one is a better career in terms of market value?
I am not a fan of being project manager. I think product is better alternative and it is quite popular these days. Most of the times, product role is aligned with revenue generation as opposed to being a cost center. You always want to be closer to the business. 😀