The English name of product manager is "Product Manager", and the English name of project manager is "Project Manager", both are abbreviated as PM; so what is the difference between these two positions?

A product manager leads a product team to make decisions and develop products that users want.

Whether a product manager is an excellent product depends on the performance of the product. They may add a button and add millions of users in an instant. Then this product manager is very successful.

When the information is limited and the entire team does not know what to do, the product manager should guide the entire team in the direction of what to do first, what to do next, why to do it, etc. This is also what everyone calls a "roadmap".

Product managers generally focus on one product. As the product continues to develop, they will continue to improve the product experience and increase the number of users.

The project manager needs to lead the team to complete a very complex project on schedule within a limited time.

Can divide a large project into small parts, assign them to the most suitable engineers, and then manage various tasks;

When a certain engineer is assigned by another engineer In the case of dragging, the task allocation can be flexibly modified to ensure on-schedule completion.

Their success criterion is whether they can complete this complex project on time.

Many times, the strategy has been formulated and everyone knows what they want to do. At this time, the work is handed over to the project manager to ensure that it can be delivered on time.

Compared with the relative stability of product managers, projects will be responsible for completely different projects. If the project is completed on time, they will face new challenges.

There is also a type of project manager who does not care about technical projects. Their role is to organize the work process. For example, a development team of 100 people should conduct meetings and hold more meetings; or a local promotion team of several thousand people should establish a supervision mechanism. Such a project manager is more like an operations manager. Their goal is to design a very efficient plan that can make the work progress quickly. They may also estimate how many people the company should hire in the second half of the year, what the budget is, etc.

Compared with project managers, product managers have more diverse working methods.

In the stage of a product from 0 to 1, product managers will spend more time on data analysis, market research, user research, etc., in order to quickly formulate product development strategies.

Once product managers determine the direction and development strategy of the product, they will spend more time on task execution and project management. Therefore, the product manager must also be a good project manager to ensure that the product is executed quickly and accurately.

Sometimes, a team may have both product managers and project managers, which requires organic cooperation between product managers and project managers.

Let me give you an example: For example, a product with relatively high technical difficulty requires a project manager to connect with a product manager. (First person omitted)

The product manager is responsible for determining what problems the product should solve, what the target customer groups are, what functions it has, and how to measure the success or failure of these functions. The product manager works with the marketing department to interview users and propose user needs, and then works with the data department to evaluate market prospects.

Then based on the research situation, convert it into a product requirements document, and discuss with the engineers what can and cannot be done.

After determining the product requirements, some of the functions that require project management will be handed over to the project manager.

After the project manager gets the product manager's needs, he will convert them into tasks and then assign them to different engineers.

Because they need to work with other groups to promote this new feature, the project manager and product manager need to arrange a group meeting to communicate this week's work with other groups.

This group meeting requires the participation of more than a dozen team members, so the project manager is needed to help the product manager manage this meeting.

Every week, the project manager will invite the leaders of these dozen groups to attend the meeting, plan the meeting process in advance, propose the meeting mode, and then be responsible for organizing the weekly meeting and implementing it after the meeting.

At this time, the product manager and the marketing department work together to formulate product release plans and strategies, determine which media should inform our new product, and strive to get them to report this new product. The product was released smoothly. Users were very interested at first, but soon they all lost. As a product manager, I need to work with data analysts to find the problem and work with designers to improve the user experience of the product. At this time, the product manager will formulate some new product function modification requirements. Project managers will help drive the implementation of these new features.

The above is a case where the author and the project manager worked together to complete the product. Of course, most of the time, there is no full-time one.

The project manager and the product manager are connected. At this time, the product manager needs to wear multiple hats. While formulating product strategies, he is also responsible for project management.

Therefore, cooperation with project managers often allows product managers to spend more time formulating product strategies and making product decisions, which is actually very helpful to product managers.

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