Product Manager vs Product Owner.
What’s the difference? Is it important which title do you have? Sometimes it could be confusing: who is the product manager and who is the product owner. Of course, it could vary from company to company, but in general, there is a difference. The Product Manager is the CEO of the product. Product Manager is responsible for strategy, roadmap. Often, Product Manager focuses on external activities like:
- Talking to customers, partners, vendors.
- Present a product at conferences.
- Gather feedback
- Work with non-technical teams: sales, marketing, PR
Product Owner term comes from an Agile framework and refers to a person who is close to a development team. Product Owner focuses on:
- Detailed requirements
- Interactions with the dev team.
In other words, their focus is tactical and primarily inside the company.
As the company growths, PM & PO responsibilities can change. One company has both PM and PO. Another has only PM or only PO.
