Product Owner vs. Product Manager: Who runs the show? Can I Be Both?

4 min readNov 17, 2020

Problem Statement:

As a founder of product firm / recruitment head,
I want to know -
* Is there any diffference between Product Manager & Product Owner?
* Both are required?
* Is someone senior to others?
So that I can make right hiring decision/Evaluation

The difference between the Product Manager and Product Owner gets very blurry in most companies. I can’t blame what is correct or not but let me share my view/research here -

I have seen the terms product manager and product owner interchangeably. This could be due to the abundance of startups and small companies, where the product owner role often includes the product manager role. However, if we consider the product owner vs. product manager narrative, there are some key differences.

What’re the Similarities?

Both the product manager & the product owner work towards a common goal — to build and improve products that create meaningful value for customers and all stakeholders within the company. Basically focusing on how to increase ROI.

“Product Owner is a role you play on a Scrum team. Product Manager is the job.”
Product Managers can exist anywhere, anytime. Product Owners, however, rely on the Scrum Framework.

Let’s dive into each role separately.

Who is the Product Owner?

Product owners (which you’ll find typically in agile organizations) are more tactical. (Works more closely with Scrum team)
The product owner is responsible for maximizing the value of the product by creating and managing the product backlog. This person creates user stories for the development team and communicates the voice of the customer in the Scrum process.

Who is the Product Manager?

Product managers are strategic. They focus on the product’s vision, company objectives, and the market.
The product manager discovers what users need, prioritizes what to build next, and rallies the team around a product roadmap.

A side-by-side comparison

Can a Product Owner Also Be a Product Manager?

The short answer is yes: A product owner can definitely be a product manager and vice versa. This often happens with software startups that are not yet ready organizationally or financially to hire both.

What are the challenges of having both roles?

The Product Manager doesn’t interact with the engineering team so they are not much aware of how things are being executed.
Product Owners don’t get into talking to customers and directly depends on the Product manager. Mostly involved in writing user stories and making sure it gets delivered with quality.
Product owners do prioritization without looking at product roadmap/strategy. (As he is most inside facing role)

Product Owner vs. Product Manager — Do You Need Both of Them?

Many organizations struggle with whether to hire a product manager, a product owner or both.

To make this decision, the company must focus on outcomes, not titles.
What is important, however, is that your product organization has a team structure that works for your process and that the Product Managers and the Product Owners in your team know exactly what the responsibilities and goals are for their roles.

Based on my limited understanding and exposure/research, having both roles can be very challenging unless there is a clear set of responsibilities.
We need to build an environment in such a way that PO and PM work very closely and the challenges mentioned above can be resolved/eliminated.

>>>>>>>>> PM and PO certifications

The Product Manager can take one of a number of tests for certification.
The larger umbrella of Agile Development certifications will teach both PM and PO roles and responsibilities. Among them, the PMI-ACP is the top certification that acts as a catch-all for agile development roles.

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