Thought Leadership Strategist| Project Management InstituteGreater Stockholm Area, Sweden
PMI’s new Thought Leadership report, “Dual Engines of Success: The Imperative Synergies Between Project Management and Product Management,” explores how professionals across these roles can build strong working dynamics to translate foundations of shared experience, education, and core skills into outcomes.
Key findings from the report:
-Project and product managers rely on the same core skills.
-Upskilling is essential for all professionals, regardless of role.
-Strong cross-functional integration can deliver project success.
-Effective collaboration is a key mediator for common project roadblocks and tensions.
Share out in the comments below!
-When project managers and product managers collaborate, what are your strategies for shared success?
-How have you overcome roadblocks in these collaborations?
-How have agile practices supported collaboration across project and product management? Saving Changes...
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Mike GriffithsPresident| Leading AnswersCanmore, Alberta, Canada
Not really answering your prompt questions, but I think it is a good report that highlights the significant overlap in goals and practices between project managers and product managers.
Rather than leading with the MORE framework, I would have gone straight to Figure 10, which describes the Common Practices used by project and product managers, effectively illustrating how similar the roles are.
When describing the differences (section 2.1), I would like to see the project management competency “Risk Assessment” defined as “Risk Management” or “Risk Navigation” to emphasize the active dealing with risks, not just finding them. This is how project managers add value. Likewise, product management “User Experience Awareness” is passive, “Customer focus” or “Customer driven” would be more accurate and focus on the actions needed to be successful.
For me, we could categorize project management as more internally, execution-focussed and product management as more externally, market-focused. This is a simplification, as project managers do look externally and product managers do look internally. However, if looking for differentiators, the predominance of their focus is telling.
It is great to see the adoption of agile principles called out as a unifying feature set. To support this, we should adopt the agile mindset and vocabulary that emphasizes respect for individuals. Using language like “resource management” dehumanizes people, undermines their autonomy and empowerment, and conflicts with core agile principles. It may seem trivial, but words matter, and since our goal is to build bridges between these communities, we should consider terms like “people management” or “talent management” that does not ignore intrinsic worth and potential for growth.
Companies like Google, Atlassian, and VaynerMedia (who have lots of product managers) have embraced “people enablement”, seeing positive benefits, including a more engaged workforce and higher productivity.
Overall, the report confirms that there is significantly more that unites product managers and project managers than separates them. Both communities can learn from each other, and have a uniting goal of delivering value. Merging toolkits and vocabularies can help drive both communities forward. Saving Changes...
Clear communication, aligned goals, and mutual respect are key. Regular syncs, shared roadmaps, and joint reviews ensure transparency, manage dependencies, and create a unified focus on delivering customer and business value.
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