The difference between a project manager and a product manager

There are two positions in the company's organizational structure: Project manager and product manager.

The project manager is a relatively broad term, as long as a project can be used as a manager can be called the project manager, such as: construction project manager, financial project manager, manufacturing project manager, research and development manager. Product Manager, the term used by internet companies or startups, is also recently widely used in the organizational structure of the word.
Does everyone just know that there is such a position, exactly what their position is, what the responsibility requirements are, and what the competencies are. Perhaps a one or two-point answer, more systematic and clear, is less likely to be understood.
Sometimes it takes two jobs to interact. How is the optimal combination? And a matter to you, do you take it as a product operation or as a project operation, how to differentiate and measure? So let's simply analyze it:

I. Positioning of project managers and product managers

1. What is a project manager?
Want to know what a project manager needs to figure out what a project is? What is Project management? What is a project manager?

(1). What is a project?
A project is a temporary work to create a unique product, service, or outcome.
The basic characteristics of a project: temporary, with a definite start time and end time, uniqueness, offering unique products, services or results; Progressive, progressive refinement of the process, means a step-by-minute, continuous accumulation.

(2). What is Project management?
Project management is the application of knowledge, skills, tools and technology to project activities to meet the needs of the project. Project management is the five processes, ten areas of knowledge, 47 sub-processes, 60 IO, 120 TT, to "cut" the use of effective management projects.
The five process groups include: Start-up, planning, execution, monitoring, finishing.
Ten areas of knowledge include: Integrated management, scope management, schedule management, cost management, quality management, human resources management, communication management, risk management, procurement management, stakeholder management.

(3). What is a project manager?
A project manager is a person who is delegated by an executive organization to lead the team to achieve the project goals. Project Manager is the use of project management knowledge, skills, tools and technology, coordinate the management team to ensure the timely delivery of quality and quantity of the project, to meet the relevant stakeholder satisfaction, customer satisfaction.
This, in a sense, emphasizes not only the use of specialized knowledge and skills, but also the importance of the participants in project management. Not only strive to achieve the scope of the project, progress, cost, quality and other goals, but also to supervise the control, coordination and management of the entire project process to meet stakeholder needs and expectations.
When the project is relatively large, the project is disassembled into small projects that are interrelated to each other and form the program management, in this sense the project manager is the programme manager or the major project manager (Program Manager).

2. What is a product manager?
Want to know what a product manager needs to figure out what a product is? What is product management? What is a product manager?

(1). What is a product?
A product is anything that can be provided to the market, used and consumed by people, and satisfies a person's needs, including tangible goods, intangible services, organizations, ideas or combinations of them. Products can generally be divided into three levels, namely the core products, form products, extension products.
Core products (direct benefits and utility provided to purchasers); form products (physical physical form, including product quality, characteristics, modelling, trademarks and packaging, etc.); Extend the product (additional benefits to the customer, including delivery, installation, maintenance, warranty, etc. to the consumer).
Products include five elements: product connotation, product form, product extension, product concept, product terminal.
Product connotation (to provide users with basic utility or benefit, to meet the user's essential needs), product form (the way to realize the connotation, including function, content, design, etc.); product extension (use or purchase of additional services or benefits of the product);
Product concept (the product's belief and purpose, the value that the user expects to use or buy the product); Product terminals (users at which terminals can use or consume products, common terminals include the Web, desktop client, mobile phone, Tablet PC).

(2). What is Product management?
Product management is a part of the enterprise (may be products, product lines, services, brands, segments, etc.) as a virtual company to do business management, the goal is to achieve long-term customer satisfaction and competitive advantage.
Product management is the organizational structure used by the company to manage product plans, product markets, and product lifecycles for a product or product line. Product management is a very typical way to manage strong matrices.
Product management is a business activity in which the organization manages the product planning, development, production, marketing, sales and support in the product life cycle.
Product Management Main package five links, namely demand management, product strategy management, product market management (product Marketing Management), product development and management, product life cycle management.

(3). What is a product manager?
Product managers are managers who drive and influence the design, technology, testing, operations, and marketing personnel to advance the product life cycle.
Product Manager is responsible for product management positions, responsible for research needs, determine what products to develop, choose which technology, what business model, responsible for product profit and loss. Its core features are: lack of actual leadership, coordination and drive.
Coordinate research and development, marketing, operation, etc. according to product life cycle, identify and organize implementation of corresponding product strategy, and a series of related product management activities. It can be broadly divided into product development manager, Product Operations Manager and product marketing Manager.
Most research and development product managers in the product development phase, the focus of their work in user analysis, demand analysis, needs assessment, demand management, writing requirements, prototyping and flow chart;
Most of the operational product managers in the operation phase after the product launch, its focus on product promotion, operational data analysis, attract users, retain users and allow users to pay, and so on;
Most of the market-based product managers in the product growth, maturity stage, its focus on the use of a variety of effective methods to make the product good to sell and get a good reputation and build product brand and so on.

II. responsibilities of project managers and product managers

1. Responsibilities of the project manager
It is the responsibility of the project manager to meet the following requirements: task requirements, team needs, and individual needs. Implement effective project management with knowledge, tools and techniques for good practices. Can be divided into six areas:
(1). Responsible for the success or failure of the project;
(2). Establish a goal to achieve and ensure that the team has a consistent understanding of the objectives;
(3). Balance project scope, schedule, cost, quality and other elements of the project management weight;
(4) Meet the needs and expectations of all stakeholders (stakeholders) and make them satisfied;
(5). Cutting using PMP to promote and advocate the project management method, to achieve effective management;
(6). Master the PMI, coordinate the relevant dry cleaners, and achieve full life cycle management from start to finish.

2. Responsibility of the Product manager
Product Manager is each product leader, need to do the collection of user needs, responsible for the definition of product functions, planning and design, to ensure the smooth work of the team, to ensure the quality of the timely completion and release of products, each product within the group is responsible for profit and loss. also need to coordinate the product all Operation link and the operation activity, carries on the competitive product analysis, studies the product development tendency, promotes the product promotion operation. The following seven aspects are summarized as follows:
(1). Define the target user group of the product and its characteristics;
(2). Acquiring, evaluating and managing user requirements;
(3). Complete Product requirements documentation, product prototypes and flowchart;
(4). Proficient in user experience, interactive design and information architecture skills;
(5). Project management, demand change management and demand acceptance;
(6). Analysis and summary of product operation data;
(7). Provide support for operations, marketing and sales.

Iii. capacity of project managers and product managers

1. The ability of the project manager
to be effective in managing projects, in addition to the skills and common management capabilities of specific application areas (which can be understood as business areas) , but also need to have knowledge ability, practical ability, individual ability, technical ability.
(1). Knowledge capacity, the project manager's knowledge of project management;
(2). Practical ability, the project manager can apply the knowledge of project management to do what and accomplish what;
(3). Personal ability, the way the project manager behaves when carrying out a project activity-related activities. The most important is interpersonal skills, including:
leadership, influence, resilience, team building, motivation, communication, decision-making, negotiation, confidence-building, conflict management, coaching skills, political and cultural awareness.
(4). Technical ability, for the software industry, the project manager may need a technical capacity, the development of technical capabilities, system integration software industry capabilities, coordination of resource integration capabilities.

2. Ability of Product Manager
(1). The Product manager's project management capacity accounted for all 35%
Good product Manager first is a successful project manager, project management ability can be a good management of products, to promote the production from the birth to the spread of the market, the management of all parties to achieve a win;
(2). The Product manager's business management capacity accounted for all 20%
The product manager's business management ability includes professional business management skills, such as: the ability to forecast the development trend of the industry, the ability to estimate the size of the market;
(3). The Product manager's technical ability accounted for 15% of the total capacity
Product manager's technical ability is the necessary skills, technical ability to give product managers a better understanding of product performance and characteristics, such as: the ability to collect demand, the user's core needs to control the ability to assess the needs and priorities of the definition of capacity, prototyping, production plans, such as product planning;
(4). The Product manager's personal ability accounted for 15% of the total capacity
Product manager's personal accomplishment, leadership, affinity, appeal, influence, innovation, negotiation ability, ability to control resources, complex ability and so on.
(5). The Product manager's communication and conflict handling capacity accounted for 15% of all
Product managers from product demand research to market acceptance, to ensure the realization of design, revenue, market share and profit objectives, which more communication with people, balance the interests of all parties, better management conflict.

Iv. Project manager and Product Manager Competency model

1. Product Manager Competency Model

2. Project Manager Competency Model

v. Common Tools
Product Documentation:ms-office,iWork
Mind Mapping / Flowchart:Mindmanager, freemind(open source),Xmind,Mindnode, Visio,Powerpoint, edraw graphic expert
Prototyping:Axure,mockplus,fireworks,Photoshop,Mockingbird(Web) , Balsamiq mockups,omnigraffle and so on, the difference to other prototype tools,Mockplus Both review function, more convenient design, improve work efficiency.
Project Management:Priciseprojectmanagement(PPM),Project(Microsoft products),todolist,Excel,Sheet ,Gcalendar,Google task,trac,outlook
Online Collaboration:SVN,Google docs,mockplus
Test feedback:testcenter,qc,jira,bugzilla,Firebug,testdirector,ietester
Demand Pool management:Mantis
Team communication:QQ,Outlook,MSN,GTalk, picture Sound (precise communication)
Note software:Evernote(Impression note),Onenote(Microsoft products), McCoo, Youdao Cloud notes, for know, light notes
Code Editor:editplus,UltraEdit,Sublime Text 3,textmate,Notepad

Vi. the schools of contention

A friend thinks like this:
1. Product = Project + operation
2. What is a product and what is a project?
Products pay attention to continuous optimization, continuous updating iterations, and operating components, to achieve a lasting profit;
Project pay attention to one-time delivery, clear delivery date within the quality and quantity completed, to achieve customer satisfaction;
3. What are the objectives of the products and projects?
The product manager ensures that we are doing the right thing on the right path;
The project manager ensures that we do the right thing with the right management method;
4. Work on products and projects?
Product managers are not just good for demand management, it's just a small part of the job;
Project manager is not only in the development of technology is very exquisite, which is the ability to reflect a small piece;

Product managers pay more attention to the external, to open up, to plan, to lead, according to market trends to develop products to promote;
The project manager is more concerned about the internal, to accept, to execute, to coordinate, according to customer needs to accept the completion of the project delivery;

In finishing this article, more see "PMBOK Fifth Edition" and "God-like Product Manager", found that there is indeed a lack of industry standards.
Although PMP describes the content as a common project management guidelines in various industries, but in-depth specific industry may have different differences, or need to put theory into practice, the practice of filling theory, and constantly complementary progress.
On the Internet access to project managers, product managers, a lot of information, there are a lot of tutorials, some good arguments or articles, and sometimes confused, we know the right way to do things.
or need to hone in practice, to grow, the reason for such an article, but also for better carding and positioning of cognition, only a certain matter has been recognized, can do more in-depth exploration.
Different people are not the same cognition, different application scenarios will be treated differently, different organizational structure has its corresponding understanding and construction, some are gradually perfect, strong, to meet the needs of the reality is the most important.
The road long its repair far XI, I will go up and down and quest. Long way to go, let us on the road of exploration continue to refuel it.

The difference between a project manager and a product manager