Product Owner vs Product Manager

What’s the difference?

This story was originally published in the Product Compass Newsletter. Anyone can access it here.

In 2024, we need to end this madness. Product Owner is not a job title.

When you split the roles:

• Product Manager talks to the business and customers.
• Product Owner (“backlog administrator”) works with developers, collecting and documenting “the requirements” and inspecting their work.

I consider this one of the worst anti-patterns in product management.

The Product Trio must work together

I agree with Marty Cagan, who wrote that to succeed as a Product Manager, you need:

• Direct access to users and customers.
• Direct access to business stakeholders.
• Direct access to engineers and designer.

Without proxies. Product Owner included.

So the only valid setup is that the Product Manager and Product Owner are the same person with the end-to-end responsibility:

In particular, it’s essential that the Product Manager, Product Designer, and at least one Engineer perform Product Discovery together.