Product Manager vs Project Manager: What’s the Difference? (2024)

Understanding how product and project management work together helps retail initiatives flourish.

Retail companies juggle multiple tasks simultaneously. Daily operations involve sales associates serving customers and inventory managers tracking merchandise.

Then, there are staff members who focus on the longer-term performance of the business, such as product managers and project managers. 

The success of new initiatives largely hinges on the collaboration between product and project managers. This article explores the differences between these related roles and the unique skills each demands.

What is product management?

Product management is the process of identifying customer needs and business objectives, and then developing products or features to meet them. It involves defining success criteria and leading a team to bring the vision to life.

In retail, the "product" often encompasses a company's entire range of offerings, not just individual items. A product manager's role involves analyzing this spectrum and making strategic changes based on market research and identified opportunities or weaknesses.

Consider a women's clothing store with a well-known but underperforming line of suits and separates. Upon investigation, a product manager might discover that this line was added late in the season and placed in a low-traffic area.

To address this, they could propose moving the suits and separates to a more prominent location and expanding the display space. Additionally, they might recommend retraining staff and organizing a store event to highlight this renewed focus on the product line.

Skills needed to be a product manager

Effective product managers require a diverse skill set. While the role demands a broad range of abilities, from communication to business and technical expertise, the essential skills include:

• Balancing product strategy with tactical implementation needs
• Maintaining team rapport while being firm when necessary
• Trusting personal instincts while remaining open to evidence-based decisions
• Conducting market research
• Applying critical and strategic thinking
• Demonstrating leadership and initiative

Challenges of product management 

Product managers encounter significant challenges when carrying out their objectives. Common challenges in a product manager’s role include:

• Prioritizing the product roadmap. It’s essential to make sure the decision to launch the project is supported by customer feedback, research, and market validation.
• Establishing a smooth company-wide process. If the above-described initiative is for a chain and not a single store, for example, the product manager must accommodate a certain amount of local or seasonal variance in sales emphasis.
• Tension between short- and long-term objectives. A company may not want to leave its current customers behind while moving up in price point.
• Communications. Make sure the team members involved in a product introduction understand the importance of the various steps in the process and their role in carrying them out. 

What is project management?

Project management is the art of steering initiatives to successful completion, ensuring they stay on track in terms of time, budget, and overall plan. A project manager's role is multifaceted, involving target-setting, resource allocation, and guiding the project from start to finish.

Key to a project manager's success is their ability to assemble an effective team and create a realistic schedule. They must also secure the necessary tools and resources for the team, while constantly monitoring progress to ensure deadlines are met and the project remains on course.

In a retail environment, such as a women's clothing store, project management takes on unique challenges. For instance, when relocating merchandise, the project manager must balance the need for change with minimizing disruption to daily sales. They must also coordinate associate training around existing work schedules. If the project involves product mix changes that require repricing, the manager must ensure accurate updates to inventory and point-of-sale systems.

Shopify merchant Phone Loops provides a real-world example of effective project management in action. By implementing streamlined workflows, empowering their teams, and maintaining a focus on deadlines, Phone Loops demonstrates how solid project management practices can drive business success.

Skills needed to be a project manager

Project managers, like product managers, need specific skills to perform effectively. Key attributes include:

• Managing a budget and project timeline
• Adapting quickly to changed circumstances
• Reporting clearly and concisely on progress and problems
• Understanding basic organizational policy
• Resolving conflicts as they occurs
• Project planning

Challenges of project management 

Like product managers, project management professionals routinely face challenges as they put their plans into action. Some challenges commonly encountered by project managers include:

• Setting a clear project scope with goals and objectives. The project manager needs to understand what exactly the team is being asked to do, and when.
• Budget restrictions. Without adequate project resources—both in terms of time and money—the team will not be able to do what is required. The project manager must make sure the product manager understands this and is able to resolve the problem.
• Team conflict. This most often arises when either the project’s objectives are changed or unexpected circumstances arise.
• Impractical deadlines. These often occur as the result of a snap decision regarding a previously scheduled product release. 

The key differences between product management and project management

On paper these functions look similar, but project and product managers are quite different. As successful companies grow and change, it’s important to understand the distinctions.

Responsibilities

Product managers are the visionaries behind a product's success. They identify what to create and why it matters. They're also responsible for ensuring that new products and features meet customer needs and align with business goals. 

Their role involves setting the product vision, analyzing market trends, and conducting user research. They then share these insights across teams and communicate with sales, development, stakeholders, and others. 

Product managers also set and track key metrics and act as customer advocates. While product managers develop change initiatives through a series of projects, project managers focus on bringing these projects to life. They assess each project, allocate resources, and create detailed plans for execution. 

Project managers handle everything from initial briefs and kick-offs to progress tracking and workflow implementation. They strive to maintain a neutral, productive environment and often use specialized software to aid planning and implementation.

Overall, product managers determine the strategic direction, while project managers execute the tactical plans to achieve the goals. Both roles are crucial in bringing successful products to market and driving business growth.

Goals

Product managers and project managers have similar goals, and they all boil down to supporting overarching business goals. However, their specific goals vary. 

A product manager’s goals might include: 

• Deeply understand customer needs and advocate for future customers.
• Collaborate with and inspire other teams to create compelling technical patterns, design systems, and shared features.
• Continuously build trust and improve the team and product.
• Maintain high standards of quality.
• Solve the most challenging aspects of products and projects.

A product manager’s job, on the other hand, might come with the following goals: 

• Ensure projects are completed accurately and on time. 
• Maintain and track budgets. 
• Allocate resources effectively. 
• Complete projects promptly and within budget. 
• Simplify processes to enable others to work more efficiently.

Salaries

In the US, product managers tend to make anywhere from $51,000 to $262,000 per year. Project manager salaries are an average $104,920 annually, ranging from $56,000 to $140,000 per year. While both career paths tend to start around the same mark, product managers ultimately have a higher earning potential. 

Essentially, there’s more room for salary growth on the product management side. 

How do project managers and product managers work together?

The project manager and product manager roles share many similarities, but they require distinct skill sets to perform effectively. Both collaborate to ensure products meet customer needs while staying on time and within budget. Product managers provide product requirements and priorities, while project managers translate these into actionable tasks and manage project progress.

When launching a new product, the product manager defines the vision, understands market needs, sets features, and aligns the product with customer demands. They focus on the product's purpose, value proposition, and integration into the overall business strategy. 

In contrast, the project manager oversees the execution of the product launch by coordinating timelines, managing resources, setting up workflows, and ensuring all teams (such as marketing, supply chain, and IT) are aligned and on schedule.

Consider the implementation of a new point-of-sale (POS) system. The product manager would define the required features and user experience of the new POS, ensuring it supports the store's operational needs, integrates well with existing systems, and enhances the customer experience. 

The project manager would be responsible for the actual implementation, including vendor coordination, timeline management, retail location deployment preparation, and risk management.

Using product and project management in your retail store

Radical change has become common in industries across the economy, and retail is no exception. Recent examples include the exponential growth of ecommerce, the emergence of new competitors, and the ever-changing expectations of the customer base. To adapt, retailers have been forced to make both deep and rapid changes in their product offerings and business models.

Product managers determine how their companies need to change and in what timeframe. Project managers enable them to execute those changes while continuing day-to-day operations. Together, product and project managers hold the keys to the future, and it is essential for retailers to ensure these managers understand their roles and work together in harmony.

Project management vs. product management FAQ

Who gets paid more, product managers or project managers?

Product managers and project managers have similar starting salaries, but based on industry averages, a product manager has a higher average salary cap than a project manager. A product manager can make as much as $250,000+ per year, while a project manager typically hits a ceiling of around $150,000 annually.

What is the difference between product management and project management?

Product management leads product strategy and identifies an opportunity that can be met by introducing a new product. Project management then subdivides a related project into a set of constituent tasks, builds a schedule for them, assigns them to the appropriate staff members, and takes responsibility for seeing that each of the specific tasks is completed as scheduled.

Are project management and production management the same?

Project management and production management are similar but slightly different. Production management involves managing production inputs of resources like raw materials, capital, and labor to achieve the output of a finished product. Project management is slightly broader, as it can involve production and other tasks and initiatives, like implementing new business technology or completing a logo redesign.