Project manager vs product owner. Which is better? More important? More foundational? More right for you?

The titles don’t sound all that different on their own, and they are both management roles, after all. Both a project manager and a product owner oversee teams who work hard to bring projects across the finish line together.

But the path to that finish line diverges entirely from the beginning.

It is the underlying structure of a project that guides a project manager or a product owner. Which type of leader will be most effective depends on what kind of philosophy the project is built on.

A project manager comes into play when a project takes a more traditional Waterfall approach, whereas a project designed with an Agile approach in mind is going to be led by a product owner. Project managers prefer Gantt charts; product managers prefer enterprise Agile tools.