The Product Manager (PM) role has gained immense popularity recently, particularly in the tech and IT world. You see professionals from all sorts of backgrounds transitioning into product management. The role is often seen as attractive, with many people believing it doesn’t require technical skills or thinking that if you’re good at talking, you can probably handle PM work.
But when I refer to the PM role here, I’m talking about the Product Manager in IT, specifically within product teams. Having been a Business Analyst (BA) for over 10 years, with two stints as a PM in between, I want to share my experience and shed some light on the differences between these two roles.
You may wonder how I was able to move between these roles, what separates being a BA from being a PM, what skills are needed to become a successful PM, or even whether you would enjoy the work of a PM.
The truth is that the PM role varies across industries, companies, and even teams within the same organization. People often say that PMs are the “mini CEOs” of their products, but what does that really mean? Let’s dive into it.
What Does a Product Manager Really Do?
The idea of the PM as a “mini CEO” is widely used, but it can be misleading. While PMs do lead the product, they don’t have the same authority as a CEO. Instead, PMs are responsible for guiding the product through its lifecycle, making sure it aligns with both user needs and business goals.
In practice, this involves:
- Setting the product vision and defining the roadmap.
- Prioritizing features based on their value to the business and users.
- Collaborating with cross-functional teams, including engineering, design, and marketing.
- Managing stakeholders and ensuring alignment across departments.
- Making sure the product not only solves user problems but also meets company objectives.
The role is far from one-size-fits-all. A PM in a large corporation may have a different set of responsibilities compared to one in a startup, and even teams within the same company can structure their PM roles differently.
The Transition from BA to PM: What’s Different?
Having been both a BA and a PM, I can tell you that while these roles share some common ground, there are key differences.
Similarities Between BA and PM Roles
Both BAs and PMs are deeply involved in working with stakeholders, gathering requirements, and collaborating with cross-functional teams. Both roles require strong communication skills and an ability to understand business needs and translate them into actionable plans.
Key Differences
- Ownership and Accountability: As a BA, your role is often to support decision-making by providing detailed analysis. As a PM, however, you own the product. You are the one accountable for its success or failure, which can be both empowering and daunting.
- Decision-Making: PMs make high-impact decisions, often with incomplete information. This requires balancing user needs, technical feasibility, and business goals. In contrast, BAs focus more on analyzing and presenting the facts to others to help inform decisions.
- Strategic vs. Tactical Focus: PMs often operate at a higher strategic level, deciding what the product should become and what direction it should go in. BAs tend to focus on the tactical side — detailing how things should work, ensuring processes are in place, and documenting requirements.
What Skills Do You Need to Be a PM?
If you’re thinking about transitioning from a BA to a PM role, here are some of the key skills and capabilities you’ll need:
- Product Thinking: Understanding the full product lifecycle is critical. You need to see the big picture and know how each decision impacts the end product and user experience.
- Leadership without Authority: PMs often have to lead teams without direct authority. You need to be able to influence people across different functions — engineers, designers, stakeholders — without being their manager.
- Decision-Making and Prioritization: Unlike a BA, who analyzes options, a PM has to choose which path to take. You need to get comfortable making decisions and trade-offs, sometimes without all the data.
- Agility and Adaptability: Products constantly evolve, as do market conditions and user needs. A PM needs to be flexible and able to pivot based on feedback, market shifts, or changing business priorities.
The Challenges of Being a PM
One of the biggest challenges of being a PM is leading people across different functions — engineers, designers, and stakeholders — without having direct authority over them. So, how do you get people to follow your lead?
My key takeaway: Don’t try to be the expert who tells everyone what to do. Instead, focus on collaboration and guiding the team to discover the best solutions together.
Working with Engineers
- Let them identify the problem and ask for advice rather than trying to persuade them to follow your direction too early. When the team feels the pain of a problem firsthand, they are more motivated to find and implement solutions.
- Plant ideas in their minds so the solution feels like a team-generated idea. This approach encourages ownership and accountability. A great way to achieve this is through discovery or inception workshops, where the team collaboratively works through problems and brainstorms solutions.
Working with Designers
- Balancing creativity with feasibility: Designers often aim for highly creative solutions, which may lead to complex or impractical designs for engineers to implement. As a PM, you need to balance innovation and feasibility, ensuring both parties are aligned on what’s achievable without causing frustration.
- Aligning priorities: Designers tend to focus heavily on user experience, which is essential, but as a PM, you must also consider timelines, deliverables, value, and effort. It’s important to persuade designers to align with broader business strategies without diminishing their creative input. This requires finding a middle ground where user experience and business goals meet.
Managing Stakeholders
- Setting the right expectations: Just like with your team, you need to guide stakeholders’ expectations. Sometimes this involves subtly planting ideas so they feel a sense of ownership over the deliverables. When stakeholders view the product as something they’ve had a hand in shaping, they become more invested in its success.
- Building trust: It’s essential that stakeholders feel you’re on their side. Show them that you are working toward the same goals, which fosters trust and positions you as an ally rather than just someone making demands.
Will You Enjoy Being a PM?
With all the challenges listed above, not everyone will find product management fulfilling, and that’s okay. People who enjoy problem-solving, decision-making, and taking ownership of outcomes are likely to thrive in a PM role. You need to be comfortable with ambiguity and be excited about shaping the product vision.
On the other hand, if you prefer a more structured, process-oriented role with clear boundaries, you might find the BA role more enjoyable. The PM role often involves managing uncertainty, handling pressure from multiple stakeholders, and constantly adjusting based on shifting priorities.
Conclusion: My Personal Takeaways
Transitioning from BA to PM isn’t always an easy path, but for me, it’s been an incredibly rewarding one. The skills I developed as a BA — such as stakeholder management, requirement gathering, and working with engineers — gave me a strong foundation for success as a PM. However, the shift to owning product outcomes, making strategic decisions, and leading teams has pushed me in ways I never imagined.
If you’re considering the leap from BA to PM, I encourage you to reflect on what excites you. Do you enjoy shaping the vision and direction of a product? Are you ready to take on the responsibility and accountability that comes with ownership? If so, product management might be the right path for you.
The next step is identifying where your skills can bridge the gap and stepping into that space with confidence.
Good luck to everyone considering this journey!
