Product Manager

A Product Manager is quite similar to a product owner, however has more of an overarching, strategic and holistic view over various products, whereas a product owner tends to focus on one. Usually, a product manager will set a vision for different products and pass this on to their product owners to manage, whilst still keeping tabs on where everything is up to. There is quite a lot of crossover between Product Managers and Product Owners, they usually work in tandem with one another and have similar responsibilities, however they are different in the way that product managers are required to set the desired visions, in line with their ‘Head of Product’ therefore they have usually come from a product ownership role in the past. It is often seen as the next step up from sole product ownership, as they delve into multiple products simultaneously which makes the job more interesting for some people.

The main responsibilities of a product manager are:

• Strategic thinking
• Developing business cases for products
• Be a subject matter expert on the product, for the customer
• Develop and maintain the product roadmap
• Position the product
• Go to person for funding and managing the budget