If I were to sum up the art of product management in one word, it would be ownership. Ownership is the defining characteristic of product management, which is different from the project management domain. The best product managers in the world are CEOs; they own the product end-to-end, which includes everything from defining the vision, mission, and establishing the team, to executing on the product, interviewing customers to capture pain points, and synthesizing those into product features and capabilities. This is an art that is distinct from project management - project management’s focus is on project execution only.
Project vs Product
There’s a difference between project and product. A project has a defined start and end date - it is inherently tactical by nature due to its short lifespan. Multiple projects linked together based on a core design ethos become a strategic initiative, but nevertheless, there is a time-bound horizon. What is incredibly important for projects is to have defined outcomes which serve as the exit criteria for the engagement. Projects generally have a project timeline that details step-by-step the key milestones and tasks needed with a clearly defined critical path to achieving the outcome. Success of a project is often narrowly defined by the ‘iron triangle’: finishing on time, on budget, and delivering a predefined scope.
Product, on the other hand, has a start but doesn’t have an end date. If the product is successful, it only ends if the product has failed. Products are inherently strategic as they are honed in on the core, overarching problem faced by multiple potential customers. Product requires a carefully crafted roadmap that details what product capabilities are coming now, next, and later. A product roadmap serves as a guide to inform customers on the capabilities, and customers often work closely with product managers to influence the priorities. Success of a product, by contrast, is not about a fixed output. It is defined by business outcomes - adoption, usage, and profitability.
Product Managers
Being the CEO of a product requires a level of autonomy that is foreign to most people working in enterprises.
This isn’t an exaggeration. In a typical corporate structure, roles are siloed. You have “strategy” over here, “engineering” over there, and “sales” somewhere else, all held together by project managers who are simply trying to hit a deadline.
The Product Manager shatters this model. That autonomy is non-negotiable because their ownership is absolute. They aren’t just handed a list of requirements to build; they are responsible for discovering the problem itself. They own the “Why” before anyone else even thinks about the “What” or “How.”
This level of ownership means they are accountable for the entire lifecycle, from ideation to sunset. They own the P&L, not just a budget. They own the market fit, not just the feature list. They have the authority to say “no” to a big customer request if it deviates from the strategy, and they have the authority to kill a feature that isn’t delivering. This is the existential burden of a founder, and it’s the core of product management.
Key Concepts
Problem
PMs must start with the problem statement - what are they solving for? This problem comes from hours of research into the problem space: why this problem exists, how many are affected, what is the total addressable market (opportunity), and what are the competing solutions. PMs then weigh their own skill-sets, experience, and technologies to determine if this problem is worthwhile pursuing, balancing the feasibility of the execution of the product with the cost.
Roadmap
Product strategy is owned by the PM, which defines the why and somewhat how we’re achieving the pathway of capabilities. Product Strategy leads towards the Product Roadmap. PMs often interview for hours across multiple potential customers to flush out the key pain points. However, it doesn’t mean every problem faced by customers becomes a product feature - that’s a sign of a PM without a strategy. PMs know their key strengths and comparable advantages, which they hone and leverage to define the roadmap. The pain points get synthesized into product features and prioritized based on feasibility, impact, and strategic alignment. One thing to note: often times PMs prioritize features based on potential lead to land deals. This is bad practice because it leads to the unintended consequence of the customer never getting their real features prioritized because other deals took precedence.
Finance
Managing financials as a PM is of critical importance. Like a CEO, they must be able to manage the operational and capital expenditures to translate to unit economics, while balancing the projected growth to achieve profitability. Ownership of the financials allows a PM to balance where to spend - whether it be on more engineering team, designers, infrastructure, or go-to-market.
MVP
Minimum Viable Product is another concept that is incredibly powerful. It requires a PM, based on all of their feedback and understanding, and a clearly defined vision and mission statement, to hone in on what is the minimum viable product. This requires ruthless prioritization to distill the capabilities down to the bare necessity - time, scope, and resources are limited. The resulting product must be something that is usable for the customer to solve a core, fundamental problem. If executed well, then a product should be able to go from ideation to planning to MVP in a matter of months (not years). This is where the mantra of “fail fast” comes into play. Hence it’s super important to get to MVP quickly to test the market on the hypothesis. If the product is viable, then it goes into the next round of iterations and with an existing customer base, the roadmap can be properly prioritized for continuous development.
Key Metrics
Adoption is needed to see how many users are onboarding onto the product. This is a key signal on the market demand and determines the product-market fit (PMF). If the product has PMF, then customers are willing to pay for the product because it has solved a clear problem. Usage is the signal to determine the product stickiness. Stickiness is critical because if the product is adopted and used once, then it’s essentially a disposable product. What’s important is to track customer engagement because that shows potential for up-sell of new capabilities. Cost/Profitability are the third metric that I like to focus on. Some times, products have wildly heavy customer acquisition costs (CAC) - some early startups spend $2+ for every $1 earned. This is clearly unsustainable and not scalable, which is why they often go back for additional funding rounds. As a PM, they must track the total cost of running the product which, compared to revenue, will be able to determine the pathway to profitability. There is no point in selling a product that is always unprofitable - you might as well deploy capital elsewhere.
Conclusion
If all of this sounds like a startup, then you are absolutely right. All startups start with the founders as Product Managers, where they deal with the existential crisis to survive. The incredible combinations of skills are why many startup founders are the Product Manager to drive the first set of iterations of the product development lifecycle until it hits a growth trajectory where the founder steps aside to be a CEO and hire a head of product to lead the way forward. Nevertheless, the key factors of success for any startup is to embrace and adopt the product mindset. Start with the problem, identify the comparable advantages, define and execute on an MVP, then go to market. It isn’t complex strategy that wins. It’s simple strategy, executed with brutal precision.