Product Owner vs. Product Manager: what is the difference?

A simplified and opinionated explanation.

Since I switched jobs (and companies), from a Product Owner (PO) to a Product Manager (PM), I got questioned a lot about the difference. And not only by my friends and family but also from people within the industry. So is there a difference? If you ask me there definitely is, and this article is to give my (personal) explanation to it.

The one-sentence explanation

If I would be forced to answer the difference in one sentence I would say:

As Product Manager you are responsible for both the Discovery and Delivery of your product, whereas a Product Owner you are more focused on just the Delivery.

For those that are less familiar with these two terms, I try to briefly explain it below. But since there are people who did a far better job already then I can do in this short paragraph, I would recommend you to read this article.

• Delivery: making sure the value of your ideas reaches the customer as soon as possible. So the implementation from the thought out features. Translating the idea into epics/user stories that can be implemented…