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In Brief
In the different projects you support, you’ve probably heard the titles ‘Product Manager’ and ‘Product Owner’ (PO) tossed around, sometimes interchangeably sometimes you interact with one of these roles or even both at the same time. Sometimes, it might even be a bit puzzling. Each of these roles brings its own unique flavor to the table, significantly shaping the way we create amazing products.
Let’s explore the nature of these roles and how they integrate with our scrum and agile teams.
The Product Manager: Strategist and Visionary
A Product Manager oversees the strategic direction of a product, identifying market needs, defining the product vision, and communicating this to all stakeholders.
They ensure the product aligns with market trends and the company’s larger goals, often taking on a more outward-facing role. The Product Manager usually has a broader perspective, focusing on the ‘why’ and ‘what’ of product development.
A typical week for a Product Manager often revolves around several core tasks, which include:
- Conducting market research to identify new opportunities and trends
- Reviewing and refining the product vision based on new insights and feedback
- Holding meetings with stakeholders to communicate updates on the product vision and progress
- Analyzing market trends to ensure product alignment and competitiveness
- Evaluating the alignment of the product with the company’s larger goals and making necessary adjustments
Product Manager and Agile Teams
Okay, now, based on the role and their responsibilities, think back to our world of Agile. Scrum agile frameworks necessitate a product manager to oversee sprints and outline key roles. The Product Manager, in that way, is something like the team’s own personal customer whisperer.
They’re the ones who get the lowdown on the market scene and bring back the golden nuggets of insight. Like the team’s compass, they always point the way and ensure everyone paddles at a good pace and in the right direction.
Call to Action for Agile Teams
Here is a simple way to ensure you have your team engaged with your Product Manager:
- Team Contract: Set Clear Expectations: Start by clarifying the Product Manager’s role within the team and setting clear expectations for information sharing and decision-making.
- Encourage Open Discussions: Then set a basis for trust within the team, promoting a culture of open discussion where the team can ask questions and the Product Manager can share important updates or changes in the product’s strategy.
- Emphasize Your Sprint Review: This meeting is more than just a Demo; it should be a time to realign implementation with the product’s vision. The Product Manager needs to instill this vision in the team.
Address Misalignment: If your agile team finds new features they are working on that do not match the current product vision, give this feedback back to the Product Manager. - Schedule a Quarterly Session: This meeting between the Product Manager and the agile team is for roadmap initiative prioritization. The goal is to gain insight into the priorities based on market insights. It should be based on a Priority Score using methods like WSJF, where one of the variables is “Value to Business.”
The Product Manager focuses on the ‘why’ and ‘what,’ leaving the ‘how’ to the Project Owner.
The Product Owner: Executor and Prioritizer
On the other hand, the Product Owner typically plays a more tactical role in agile methodologies, working closely with development teams to ensure that the product vision is executed effectively.
Their main task is managing and prioritizing the product backlog, ensuring the most valuable features are developed first. They act as a bridge between the stakeholders and the development team, often making critical decisions about the product’s direction. The Product Owner usually operates within the ‘how’ and ‘when’ of product development.
A Product Owner plays a pivotal role in product development, and their key responsibilities often include:
- Managing and prioritizing the product backlog
- Working closely with development teams to ensure product vision is executed effectively
- Acting as a bridge between stakeholders and the development team
- Making critical decisions about the product’s direction
- Guiding the development team towards the realization of the product vision
- Making strategic decisions about feature implementation and development priorities
- Focusing on delivering immediate value and meeting development timelines
Product Owner and Agile Teams
The term Product Owner originates from the Scrum agile framework, and this role is sometimes confused with that of a product manager. However, these are distinct roles with different responsibilities and should not be used interchangeably.
In Scrum, a Product Owner has three primary duties:
- Developing and explicitly communicating the Product Goal
- Creating and communicating Product Backlog Items
- Ordering Product Backlog Items
- Ensuring that the Product Backlog is transparent, visible and understood
The Product Owner is the team’s superhero, bridging the gap between the high-flying Product Manager and the boots-on-the-ground Agile team. They transform the grand strategic vision into bite-sized, doable tasks while managing the product backlog. The Product Owner is deep in the trenches with the Agile team daily, making crucial calls about the product’s journey and arranging tasks based on their value and feasibility.
Call to Action for Agile Teams
Here are several strategies to enhance your interaction with your Product Owner:
- Team Contract and Clear Expectations: Start by clarifying the Product Owner’s role within the team and setting clear expectations for information sharing and decision-making.
- Encourage Open Discussions: Then set a basis for trust within the team, promoting a culture of open discussion where the team can ask questions and the PO can share important updates or changes in the product’s strategy.
- Create a Communication Channel: Ensure there is a fast, simple way to communicate by setting up a dedicated product communication channel (a Slack channel) for quick queries and discussions related to the product’s direction.
- Schedule Regular Meetings: Arrange regular feedback sessions where the product owner can share stakeholder insights or user feedback to hold the PO accountable for the product’s status. Consider setting up specific meetings with your product owner for backlog refinement and prioritization or increment planning.
- Apply the Principle of Genchi Genbutsu and Jointly Attend User Interviews: Join the Product Owner in user interviews or usability testing sessions to understand the product’s direction and potential implementation challenges.
Overlap, Tension, and Collaboration
The tension between Product Managers and Product Owners arises primarily from their distinct areas of focus. While both roles necessitate a profound understanding of the product, customers, and market, they approach these elements from different angles, creating the potential for friction.
Product Managers, primarily concerned with strategic direction and market positioning, often have a more macro-level view. They are typically involved in defining the overall vision of the product, understanding market trends, and aligning the product with the company’s larger goals. This role often necessitates extensive external communication, as Product Managers engage with customers, market research, and industry trends to shape the product’s strategic direction.
Conversely, Product Owners are more invested in the tactical execution of the product vision and the prioritization of the product backlog. They often work more closely with the development teams, guiding them toward realizing the product vision by making strategic decisions about feature implementation and development priorities. They focus on product development’s ‘here and now,’ often dealing with more immediate, practical challenges.
The tension between these roles can surface when strategic visions and tactical realities do not align. For instance, a Product Manager may have a grand vision for the product, which, while potentially beneficial in the long term, may be challenging to implement in the short term due to development constraints.
On the other hand, a Product Owner focused on delivering immediate value and meeting development timelines may push for more incremental improvements that may only partially align with the longer-term strategic vision.
However, this tension can be beneficial, balancing long-term strategic planning and short-term pragmatic execution. It ensures that lofty strategic goals are grounded in practical realities and that immediate product improvements align with the broader vision.
Moreover, this tension can stimulate a healthy dialogue and exchange of ideas between the two roles, fostering a more holistic understanding of what the product needs to succeed now and in the future.
Risks in Product and Agile Team Interaction
Despite the best intentions, interactions between product and development teams can sometimes lead to friction.
- Misalignment: This can occur when the Product Manager and Product Owner fail to communicate the strategic direction effectively to the Agile team or when the Agile team fails to understand or implement the strategic vision effectively.
- Conflicting Priorities: If long-term strategic goals and short-term tasks and deliverables are not reconciled and prioritized correctly, the risk is that the team may not be building the product needed today nor the future vision for the product.
The Need for Collaboration
In the complex dynamics of product development, the roles of Product Manager, Product Owner, and Agile team are interdependent. Each role is critical in its own right, and their interaction plays a significant role in the product’s success.
By fostering regular communication, transparency, and mutual respect, these teams can effectively navigate risks, mitigate friction, and drive the product toward success.
Although the titles of Product Manager and Product Owner may vary across organizations, the necessity for strategic planning, practical execution, and customer-centric development remains the same. Regardless of the specific division of responsibilities, what truly matters is accountability and alignment toward a shared product vision in the short and long term to ensure there is a path forward for the product’s success.
What you can take back to your team is a clarification of the Product Team with which you are interacting within your project. Ensure you update your team contract to accurately describe your customer’s product roles and follow all the next steps in the Call to Action sections that can bring out this synergy with your team.
Links of Interest
- West, Dave. “Product Owner vs. Product Manager.” Scrum.org, www.scrum.org/resources/product-owner-vs-product-manager.
- Scrum.org. ‘What is a Product Owner?’ Scrum.org, www.scrum.org/resources/what-is-a-product-owner.
- West, Dave. “Product Manager vs Product Owner.” Pragmatic Institute, https://www.pragmaticinstitute.com/resources/articles/product/product-manager-product-owner/.
