Posted by Today, I’d like to share insights on transitioning from project management to product management.
This article summarizes my journey over the last six years, transitioning from a digital project manager to a product manager, experiencing first hand changes in responsibility, expectations, and daily tasks.
Understanding the fundamental differences between these roles can help you navigate future or current transformations.
The Role of a Product Manager
A Product Manager (PM) oversees the development and success of a product. They ensure that the product meets the needs of the target market and aligns with the company’s goals – often referred to as the “business” in many contexts.
Stakeholders
As an agile project manager, I managed a delivery team of 13 people, responsible for their work assignments, deliverables, and problem-solving.
Since becoming a product manager, I interacted with many more stakeholders, such as customers, competitors, and delivery teams.
However, I no longer managed teams directly (except for mentoring a junior product manager). Instead, I collaborated with project managers to communicate the vision, strategy, and requirements, enabling them to ensure delivery.
Scope
As a project manager, my role was to deliver a predefined project scope within a realistic time and budget – the well known “devil’s triangle”.
The task focused mainly on delivery. Once the project went live, the role was accomplished, and I would move on to the next project – with the same team or a different one.
As a product manager, I follow the full lifecycle of the product. The work never ends as long as the product exists. Every time a new feature goes live, my role is to monitor performance to see if the original goals are met. If not, I gather data, investigate the root cause, and potentially launch new innovative initiatives.
In other words, the go live is just the beginning for a product manager.
One of my favourite aspects of being a Pan-European product manager is travelling. I visited different markets a few times a year to meet my local national counterparts and customers. This helps me understand the reality on the ground and always reminds me to put the customer first.
Idea-Oriented vs. Solution-Oriented
Product managers focus on the “why” and “what,” whereas project managers (and their teams) focus on the “what” and “how.” Both roles require close collaboration and room to challenge each other.
Skill Set
Some skills, such as leadership, collaboration, communication, and problem-solving are commonly required for both project managers and product managers.
However, there are fundamental differences in the key skillsets.
The primary goal of a project manager is to execute a project efficiently, requiring skills such as detailed planning, risk management, and resource management. In contrast, a product manager’s role involves creating a product vision and strategy, bringing the scope to the project team, and necessitating skills like market research, feature prioritization, data analysis, UI/UX design, and customer focus.
Often, product managers act as project managers for key initiatives they launch.
Metrics
The metrics for a project manager often revolve around scope, time, budget, risks, and bugs.
While these are also interesting for product managers, the key metrics for them are customer satisfaction, market share, revenue, return on investment, etc.
Execution vs. Innovation
Only after undergoing Insights Discovery training did I understand why I enjoyed being a product manager more than a project manager. My dominant color is yellow, which represents creativity, fun, and versatility, while my least dominant color is blue, representing detail, accuracy, and perfectionism.
Below is my insights profile generated in 2022.
This underscores the importance of understanding the role and yourself before making any transition.
Operational Work
I must admit I dislike operational work. However, being a great product manager involves a lot of operational tasks to ensure the product’s success. This includes regular customer feedback analysis, data monitoring, and stakeholder engagement, and many power points and excel reporting.
The trick is to keep the big picture in mind, which makes these crucial operational tasks enjoyable. One of my most significant moments of innovation came during weekly data analysis sessions with my team, where we discussed problems and made data-driven decisions.
For a project manager, operational work lies in team management and project execution, such as planning sessions, risk discussions, project reporting, and team retrospectives.
Project vs. Product Mindset
Transitioning from a project mindset to a product mindset requires a shift in how you view goals, processes, and outcomes. There are certain things you need to let go while other things you need to take full accountability.
Typical tensions between project and product managers
Funny enough, there are some typical tensions I have experienced from both roles – against each other.
What do project team often say about product manager?
” Unclear requirement, feature overload, don’t understand the (technical) complexity, micro management, last minute changes, not enough communication.“
What do product manager say about delivery team?
“Missed deadlines, too many bugs, not customer focused, poor communication, lack of proactivity.“
I know, I know, seems like a handful, however, those tensions are common and should be anticipated as part of the transition phase, the key is to understand each other, and always keep the big picture in mind, collaboratively solve all the issues.
I was super lucky that my last project manager and the team loved the product and we all worked proactively to resolve the tensions when they arise.
Conclusion
Making the transition from project management to product management is a significant career shift that requires understanding the nuances of both roles. Each role comes with its unique challenges and rewards.
By aligning your skills, interests, and personality with the role you pursue, you can navigate this transition successfully and find fulfilment in your career.
What is the next step for a career transition? I would suggest to spot a person in your organisation who holds the role that you would like to transition to, and kindly ask to have some regular catch up to understand the role better, and also spend some time to shadow him/her, eventually you should understand the gap and come up with a development plan.
Good luck!
If you enjoyed reading this article, feel free to checkout other articles on my blog.
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Photo by Andrea Piacquadio: https://www.pexels.com/photo/laughing-businesswoman-working-in-office-with-laptop-3756679/