Program manager, product manager and project manager are familiar terms to people in almost every industry, but what sets them apart from each other? It’s a common question, and an important one, especially if you are just entering the world of program in project management. Understanding the distinctions between these roles can help you navigate the sometimes confusing world of enterprise project management, and can also help you evaluate possible future career paths.
The Difference Between Product, Program and Project Management
The terms product management, program management, and program in project management are often associated with the software industry – especially product and program management. However, you are likely to encounter them in fields as diverse as manufacturing, marketing and retail. That’s why it helps to understand the difference between a project, a program, and a product, as well as the management of each.
Project Manager
A project manager is responsible for guiding and empowering a project team through the entire life of a project. In most industries, project managers are professionals who have developed expertise in the field, often by working on projects, and have moved into a management role over time.
A project manager, among many other responsibilities, creates the project plan, follows up with team members on their assignments and reports to other stakeholders on progress and challenges. Project managers may even perform project tasks and produce deliverables, but in most cases, they are a step removed from those responsibilities.
Important Project Management Skills
- Budgeting – One of the most common and important project constraints project managers work within is finite budgets.
- Planning – Project managers must have a high-level view of the project objectives and be able to plan the proper sequence of tasks within a reasonable timeline.
- Task Management – Project managers must be able to plan, prioritize, and delegate the tasks that will ensure all deliverables are produced within the timeline and budget.
- Resource Management – Project managers must have a high-level view of all the material, financial, and human resources that will go into a project’s completion.
Common Project Management Methodologies
Project managers often use one or more project management methodologies, which can include but are not limited to:
- Waterfall
- Agile
- Scrum
- Kanban
- Critical Path
- PRINCE-2
- CRISP-DM
Product Manager
As we’ve seen, project managers work in a variety of industries and types of projects that may or may not result in the development of a product. Product managers, on the other hand, are responsible for guiding the design, development and production of one or more products.
The product manager role usually involves evaluating customer needs, creating a design that will address those needs and working with the teams who actually build the product to ensure that it meets the intended goal.
In the software industry, a product manager usually does not need to be an expert programmer, but needs to understand the software development process and be able to synthesize that knowledge with an understanding of the marketplace. In other industries, the product itself might be a physical object or a service rather than a collection of code, but the job description can still be quite similar.
Program Manager
So what’s the difference between program and project management? It helps to understand the difference between a project and a program.
Many organizations group their projects together in programs, which in turn are part of an organization’s overall portfolio of projects. A program is often closely linked with a single organizational goal, and generally consists of multiple interrelated projects. In these organizations, a program manager’s role is essentially a higher-level variation of a project manager’s role, with fewer tactical or administrative tasks, but with responsibility for the success of the program as a whole.
The program manager position tends to be highly variable from industry to industry, or even between companies in the same industry.
Program Management in the Software Industry
Some software companies have an entirely different definition of a program manager. Here, the distinction is made between product manager vs. program manager, rather than project manager vs. program manager. Companies with this approach tend to view a program manager as a more technically-focused counterpart of the product manager, who is responsible for guiding the creation of the actual code that will form the solution.
