IT Managers: Who Owns What?
The IT industry is known for its diverse roles and job titles ranging from “Digital Prophets” and “Evangelists” to “Development Gurus” and “Data Ninjas.” However, while organizations vary in terms of their structure, some roles are well-established and common across the industry. In this article, I will touch on the roles of a Product Manager, a Product Owner, a Project Manager, and a Scrum Master, since I’ve seen Scrum Teams having a few or all of these positions, while still struggling to distinguish the roles and the ownership areas.
Scrum Team
To be clear, we’re discussing here teams operating under the Scrum product development framework (Scrum Teams). This is important to digest since some of the roles we’re going to cover solely exist within the scope of a Scrum Team, and, outside of the Scrum framework, their roles and responsibilities vary.
Scrum Master (SM)
Owns: Team health
Manages: Scrum ceremonies, team success, delivery sprint
Holding one of the most important titles within the Scrum Team, the Scrum Master is the coach and facilitator of the whole Scrum Team (including the PO). I like the term “team health” a lot since it describes the overall, most important state of the team that the SM needs to look after. Maintained properly, team health ensures the team is successful and happy. Organizing and facilitating daily stand-ups, retrospective meetings, backlog grooming, and planning sessions are among the main responsibilities of a Scrum Master.
The SM monitors the team ensuring the health is on rise, the team is motivated, and the progress dynamics are positive. Having an SM that notices stresses and struggles within the team and deals with those on time is vital for the success of any project. While in some teams Scrum Masters also play the role of a Project Manager, these, in general, are two separate roles with their own responsibilities and ownership areas.
Product Owner (PO)
Owns: Product development backlog
Manages: Backlog grooming, deliveries prioritization, sprint releases
The Product Owner, along with the Scrum Master is another key role in a. Scrum Team. Just as the SM, the PO is a role solely defined within the scope of the Scrum framework. While the Scrum Master manages the health of the Scrum Team, the Product Owner is the bridge in between the Scrum Team and the “world outside,” and manages the communication with other product departments and internal stakeholders.
POs laser-focus on short-term deliveries. The creation of the short-term roadmap is their domain (on the contrary to Product Managers who focus on the long-term product vision). The major responsibility of a Product Owner is the creation of the product backlog. The backlog refers to a collection of tasks that are ready to be implemented in the near future, as well as those that are yet to be considered to be implemented as the product development iterates through time.
Often, successful products are defined not by the features they have but by the timeline these features have been developed, and this is the art of prioritization.
The PO needs to make sure the tasks are groomed by the team (assessed and estimated) and that clear, understandable user stories and acceptance criteria are prepared. Since the Product Owner is a full member of the Scrum Team, he/she also participates in stand-up meetings actively.
As a general rule of thumb, day-to-day operations of a PO consist of 30% of research and 70% of execution.
Product Manager (PM)
Owns: Product scope
Manages: Feature generation, product prioritization, annual and quarterly roadmaps
Product Management is on a constant rise since the early 90s. The role of a Product Manager is considered to be one of the most important in driving the growth of a product. The PM transforms the long-term vision of the CEO into a roadmap, fusing the vision with user needs and validating the vision with features.
While the Product Owner focuses on the product scope within the development team (internal-oriented), the Product Manager targets the larger scope (external-oriented), generating features for several quarters (often years) ahead, which is crucial for the product team to stay aligned to the vision. Teams that do not have a PM usually struggle from off-course drifting ending up shipping features of the product that users do not necessarily need.
Product Managers focus on delivering a roadmap consisting of well-thought features that have defined indicators of success as well as means to track the success (such as KPI metrics, event-based analytics, and funnels). This role implies maximum research and minimum execution and does not require the PM to participate in daily stand-up meetings.
In Scrum Teams, Product Managers link Product Owners with the external world of users, stakeholders, and general management. As a general rule of thumb, the PM’s day-to-day activities consist of 30% of execution and 70% of research.
Project Manager (ProjM)
Owns: Project scope
Manages: Project timeline, budgeting, resources
Although the roles of a Scrum Master and a Project Manager seem to be alike, there’s a major difference in what they own and what they deliver. While the SM owns the team health and acts as a coach and a facilitator, the ProjM owns the scope of the Project and manages the delivery timeline. The success of the project in terms of work being done is the ProjM’s priority.
This, perhaps, is a role under the highest pressure within the company, as the ProjM ultimately deals with budgeting, resource management, inter-team dependency solving, problem resolution, and processing generation. Additionally, the ProjM is a source of utmost reporting, generating weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual progress reports as the project development proceeds.
Just as PMs and POs focus on external and internal product scopes respectively, ProjMs deal with a wider scope of the project, whereas SMs focus on the team and its performance.
Role Interaction
The picture above shows the interaction among the roles within the Scrum Framework. The Project Manager defines the timeline and execution plan, communicating the stakeholders vision to the Product Manager. The Product Manager fuses the user research with the product vision and forms a high-level roadmap (usually one annual and several quarterly), generates features that users need, and communicates the roadmaps with the Product Owner. The Product Owner validates the short-term roadmap, generates the backlog, writes user stories and acceptance criteria, and, along with the Scrum Master, grooms and plans the backlog with the Team, forming the development sprints.
Involvement level
In teams where more than one of the discussed roles is needed, the overall success is often defined by the clear understanding of when to involve who. In smaller teams roles usually merge into one, i.e., the same person plays the roles of a Project Manager and a Scrum Master, while another handles both the Product Management and the Product Ownership. However, as teams grow, it is vital to understand when to separate the roles and the ownership areas.
Summing up
Team structure and organization are the keys to success. The baseline is — successful teams ship successful products. The roles I’ve touched on in this article are crucial parts of the team success, each responsible for a separate area of success. Moreover, the team itself needs to be well communicated on these areas, and clearly understand and distinguish the differences of the roles to avoid issues with ownership overlapping and double-work.
A huge thank you to Diana Melkumyan for peer-reviewing this article!
About the author: Dr. Ruben Hambardzumyan has years of experience in entrepreneurship and product management, focusing on AI- and data-driven applications and platforms.
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