What is the difference between a product manager and a project manager?

↓↓ Let’s take a look at the definitions of the two first:  hmi tft module

【Product Manager】：

Product Manager (Product Manager) is a position in the enterprise responsible for product management. The product manager is responsible for market research and according to the needs of users, to determine which product to develop, which technology, business model, etc. to choose, and to promote the development organization of the corresponding product.

【project manager】:

Project Manager (Project Manager), from the professional point of view, refers to the important management position established by the enterprise to establish the project manager responsibility system as the core, to implement the responsibility guarantee system for the quality, safety, progress and cost management of the project and to comprehensively improve the project management level.

​▲To sum up, the project manager is the one who is responsible for achieving the project goals, and the product manager is the one who defines the functionality of the product.

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Otherwise, there are the following points:

/ 1 / , different industries

Compared with project managers, product managers are more popular in the Internet field.

Internet teams generally have product managers and no project managers.

Project managers mainly exist in some traditional industries, such as construction, civil engineering… Most product managers exist in the Internet industry, and their main responsibilities are to be responsible for all activities in a product life cycle, such as development, testing, launch, operation, etc. .

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/ 2 / , facing different groups

The product manager is responsible for the product, and naturally needs to find out the user needs of the product, while the user group is more difficult to find specifically.

The project manager is responsible for the project, and the connection may be the boss or the team, all of which are more specific.

The product manager is responsible for the boss and users, and the project manager is responsible for the completion of the project.

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/ 3 / 、Different career development

The industry development of project managers is too slow, and the promotion mechanism is fixed at the same time, resulting in a relatively obvious upper limit of occupation, and therefore the demand for project managers in the talent market will gradually shrink.

The speed of Internet product update and iteration is very fast, and products are paying more and more attention to the user experience, so product managers have relatively more room for development.

As far as I understand it, Product Manager is a more suitable career for the current form.

But that’s not to say that project managers have no value.

In many large projects, the project manager is very important, including as Party B, he is responsible for the overall delivery, and he himself is the commander-in-chief.

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/ 4 / . As for the project, do you want to switch to the product?

The project manager turned into a product manager has great advantages in project management and promotion.

However, the process of changing careers should be carefully considered, make a serious decision and then work hard.

In fact, in some companies, the product manager and project manager are held by one person, responsible for both design and execution.

Therefore, it depends more on your personal industry and personal ability, whether you can hold one of them.

It may be relatively easy for a product manager to do a good job in project management, but a project manager may need to practice if he wants to be a good product manager.

Whether you are a project manager or a product manager, you can learn PMP to learn management knowledge, which is helpful for resource control, risk assessment, and coordination of multi-party needs.