Product Owner vs.
Product Manager vs. vs. Project Manager
Not who holds the title.
Who is allowed to decide.
Three titles, one question: who is allowed to decide?
A Project Manager manages resources: budget, schedule, scope, and how something gets delivered. A Product Manager, in the classic setup, decides what gets built and passes decisions down to the team. A Product Owner keeps the balance between what the crew wants to build and what the company needs: the product’s biggest fan, who hears every side, then has the final word.
A title without the helm is only a hat. The helm is handed over by the whole ship.
Who does what on boardThe captain
Product OwnerSets the course and keeps the balance between crew and owners. Hears every side, then has the final word.
The shipowner
Product ManagerDecides ashore where the voyage goes. The orders arrive by letter, the crew carries them out.
The purser
Project ManagerKeeps provisions, money and schedule. Decides how the voyage is supplied, not where it goes.
The ship’s crew
The teamMakes the ship move. Speaks up when the course seems wrong.
Give the role a name.
The rest follows, right?
A crew follows a captain, not a hat
Every title comes with expectations, from the system and from the people in it.
Without the mandate behind it, the title promises what the role cannot keep.
Unofficial leaders
The captain has the hat, not the trust.
People turn to the one they trust.
A captain without a mandate
A captain worth following, overruled.
Who do we follow now?
The crew stops following
Hat and mandate, but the wrong calls.
The crew works around the captain.
Five ways responsibility blurs
Where roles stay unclear, the space between them never stays empty. Something always fills it.
How blurred responsibility shows
Typical indicators. Not a complete list, but the ones that show up most often.
Who holds which part of the helm
There is more than one good way to share responsibility.
Each one works, as long as everyone knows which one they sail by.
Responsibility needs a clear role, the mandate to decide, and a system that honours both.
Carrying responsibility is not the problem. Carrying it without a mandate is, or carrying it alone. Management is there to manage resources, and that includes the system people work in: roles that are clear, decisions that stay made, mistakes the crew can learn from.
Self-check: whose call is it?
Pick a role. For each of its decisions, play the card you think it deserves.
Decision of 5
How should the make this decision?
Your cardATypical agile viewCTypical classic view
Would your colleague play the same cards?
Where the cards differ, responsibility starts to blur.
After the seven levels of delegation by Jurgen Appelo.
More on the subject …
… in the Logbook
Is the hat on the right head?
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