Those new to the tech world and seasoned alike, I’m sure the question has come up many times to those of us that are in one of these roles, about one of us that are in these roles, or even in our own experience as we were deciding our career paths: What do these people do?

If you Google these roles, you’ll know what these roles SHOULD do from an ideal point of view, but many organizations don’t follow these models 100% accurately, as with any role. There’s a lot of overlap in scope. So how do you differentiate?

First, let’s define what is a project versus a program versus a product.

Project: A temporary endeavor to achieve and/or create a specific service/result with a defined start and end date

Program: A group of related projects coordinated to obtain benefits/business value that would not be available from managing them individually

Product: A product or service that is sold or made available to customers to fulfill their wants and/or needs

So, what do these “managers” do?

Project Managers

These individuals manage the individual projects that may be within a program or may be one-off endeavors that are required to produce some immediate value or contribute to a larger vision. They offer on-the-ground day-to-day monitoring of the health, schedule, budget, etc. of a project.

How do they add value?

In the real world, leaders and program managers often have many parallel and competing priorities. Project managers offer the ability to be involved in the day-to-day execution to monitor and track how a project is progressing, communicate updates, escalate issues, and identify and raise awareness of roadblocks.

It’s atypical for a lot of the bigger tech giants to offer opportunities at this level. Often we expect these responsibilities of program or product managers.

Program Managers

There are a lot of different archetypes of program managers. I’ve come across master politicians, empaths, glorified communicators, and many, many more.The textbook definition of what a program manager should be is someone who is leading a group of projects that deliver a specific business value. Metaphorically, they are the architects that ensure the house gets built. Often, program managers are expected to manage multiple programs at a time, depending on the organization and its pace.As I mentioned, project managers are rare in the bigger tech companies, so program managers are often expected to fulfill the responsibilities of both a project manager and program manager by keeping a pulse on the individual projects in their program, while also ensuring that there is cross-functional synergy to deliver the business value on time and accurately.

How do they add value?

Personally, I believe this is one of the most versatile and misunderstood titles in tech. I want to begin by stressing what program managers are not and should not be pigeonholed into:

1. Executive Assistants

2. Chiefs of Staff

3. Communications Managers

4. Operations Analysts

5. Business Analysts

Some ways program managers can add value:

1. Process Design

2. Process Improvement

3. Change Management

4. Execution Tracking

5. Risk Management

6. Agile Transformation

Program managers wear a lot of hats because of their versatility, and that often leads to their role being misunderstood.

Product Managers

Let’s start with some typical responsibilities of a Product Manager:

1. Define Requirements

2. Map the User Journey

3. Define the User Persona

4. Define the Product Roadmap

5. Listen to customers by inviting them to share their experiences

Over the past few years, these are the people that have gained rockstar status in Silicon Valley equal to that of engineers, but why?

Simply put, these are the people that create the work. They define the direction of a product or conceptualize features that users interact with. They can define a company’s identity, and ultimately, they conceptualize, maintain, or improve some of our favorite products.

How do they add value?

They extend the voice of your customer within your business by conceptualizing and defining requirements/features/products that your customers are asking for or identifying areas of mutual benefit for the customer and the business.

So, how do you know if you need a project manager, program manager, or product manager?

You need a project manager if...

There is a project that is being executed by one team that needs oversight. This project may or may not be part of a larger initiative or program, and, ideally, can be executed mostly, if not wholly, by one team.

Typical responsibilities of a project manager, in this case, would be to forecast the completion date, communicate progress, identify and escalate risks, etc.

Now on to program managers...

If you have large, cross-functional projects that can span multiple quarters and multiple teams, it’s likely that a program manager is better suited for this type of work. Why?

Program managers have a higher and broader perspective to identify inefficiencies and risks, which they can correct/address by designing and implementing process improvements to unlock more throughput from a team(s), or by escalating to the proper stakeholders.

Example:

The business is undertaking work to upgrade security controls on its infrastructure to align to a specific standard (ex. FedRAMP, ISO, etc.).

Multiple teams will probably own and be responsible for multiple containers, data stores, etc. Hence, this is going to create work for multiple teams. Each team will have its own project to satisfy requirements that may differ across teams.

Some ways program managers add value to this process are by becoming the nexus of cross-functional communication, consolidating requirements, ensuring teams are receiving adequate cross-functional support, and advocating for the program and the teams involved.

In most tech companies, they expect program managers to fulfill project manager responsibilities, in addition to, the program manager's responsibilities.

Last, but not least, Product Managers...

As I mentioned above, Product Managers are the voice of the customer. They are the individuals through whom the customer reaches the product/feature team(s).

If you’re struggling to understand what to build next, what features to improve, how to improve a feature, etc., this is where a Product Manager comes in.

They will typically survey or interview existing customers, or potential customers, to understand how they’re using your product, why they’re using it, etc. Product Managers take these data points and conceptualize requirements for features for engineering teams to build. They will then work with Program Managers to deliver these requirements to the team(s), who will then work with the team(s) to schedule/forecast the work to be done.

Each of these roles provides unique value to any organization through experience gained over years of experience. It’s important that an organization understand what they need, and not all dysfunction within an org can be resolved by applying the skillsets of these roles. The leadership of any org is responsible for identifying the root cause of any dysfunction and enlisting the correct expertise and providing adequate growth and career development for the individuals in these roles to thrive and contribute to the success of the business.