When I type "PM" in this course, I mean product manager. However, anyone with a job title that has the initials "PM" is equally entitled to use the initialism PM. That said, I usually see it refer to product managers.
A really good first question to answer is, "What does a PM do?" We will answer that throughout this course, but I will try to give you a brief overview first.
Before we do that, let's define some terms because "PM" can be confusing. Let's first define what a product manager is not.
What each of these terms means at each company varies so, so, so much. My title at Microsoft was "Program Manager," despite doing product manager work. "Product manager" isn't a title at Microsoft. So take each of these definitions with the appropriate "it depends on the company" grains of salt.
Project Manager
A product manager is definitely not a project manager. Sometimes their jobs overlap (that depends a lot on the company), but the two's primary goals are distinct. A project manager's primary goal is to keep a team aligned on what work needs to be delivered and when. They organize team sprints, hold status update meetings (frequently called standup or scrum), and update everyone on the work status. They are frequently certified scrum masters specializing in organization and process to keep teams aligned, working on the correct thing, and oriented to deliver work on time and on budget.
This is a critical role in companies, particularly in large corporations. If your team does not have a dedicated project manager, it means those responsibilities are falling to someone else. It could be the product manager, the engineering manager, the tech lead, or someone else, but driving alignment of work is a critical part of a healthy team. Treat these folks well; it is important work.
Technical Program/Product Manager (TPM or PMT)
This title has more variance in it than just "project manager." A TPM can be synonymous with a project manager, a product manager who works with technical tools (which would fit me), or someone who works on cross-company processes. The last one there is what tends to be the most common definition of PMT: someone who specializes in managing how teams work together. They will define how teams create dependencies on each other, how products and features get reviewed before launch, and how big company-wide efforts are managed when many stakeholders are involved.
Another critical role. While these imposed processes can feel like overhead, not having that overhead leads to disarray later, which creates much more work than if you had just had some alignment before. The only thing worse than process is not having process. A good TPM can accelerate the pace of work for entire companies.
Program Manager
This one is way less clear about what it does and varies strongly from company to company. Microsoft calls all PMs, TPMs, etc. "program managers," and they perform duties contextual to their teams. Other companies call what you would typically call a TPM a program manager as they manage company-wide programs. My title at Microsoft was principal program manager, and I did product management. The process-oriented engineering PMs I worked with had the same title as I did but did wildly-different work than I did.
Product Marketing Manager (PMM)
Not as much applicable here, but I wanted to call it out because the initialism PMM can confuse some. This is a title given to folks in marketing who work with product teams to create marketing plans for products and features. Some of this has strong overlaps with product managers as both roles care strongly about "GTM" (go-to-market) plans: the plans you make for releasing products and driving interest in whatever you are releasing. I work a lot with PMMs they are wonderful folks to have on your side: they care about your great product if no one is using it. Some companies (famously Apple) make the PMs do a lot of the PMM work themselves, so it is a useful skill set to acquire.
Okay, so what is a product manager then?
A product manager manages product.
lol
Okay, so really, a product manager does a lot of things, but their job is primarily determining what the team works on. They gather ideas, prioritize what is important, and make plans for the team to accomplish those goals based on the available resourcing. They are focused on what is going on now, what is coming soon, and researching what is further down on the horizon. They are working with the organization to ensure the team is working on "ladders up" to what the rest of the organization is working towards.
Another important thing is that a PM is typically the person who fills whatever gaps the team has. They are the glue person. Your team doesn't have a project manager? Frequently the PM will do that. Your team doesn't have a marketer? You'll come up with a marketing plan. I've even hopped on my team as an engineer to close out some important deadlines when the team has someone get sick at a bad time. You do what is most helpful to the team.
But if I can sum up what a PM does, I'd put the following:
- Ideates and organizes ideas from others as to what the team works on
- Prioritizes work
- Creates plans/roadmaps of the near future of what gets worked on
- Aligns their own team(s) to their own goals and the goals of the organization
- Whatever else their team needs from them to be effective.
This is a general list. Certain organizations ask more of their PMs (like project management), while other organizations will split some of these responsibilities off to the engineering manager or other folks.
