For five years now, I have been going through this conversation almost quarterly, with every new senior hire and often with management. I wholeheartedly believe that this post is the reality on the ground, a po role is a subset of the PM role, it’s unrealistic to have two translation layers one discussing strategy and one discussing execution, this will more often lead to many more problems far bigger than the problem of the workload on a single person.
In 2025, we need to end this madness. Product Owner is not a job title. When you split the roles: - Product Manager talks to the business and customers. - Product Owner (“backlog administrator”) works with developers and documents “the requirements.” I consider this one of the worst anti-patterns in Product Management. A typical argument is that combining two roles is "too much work for a single person." That might happen if you spend days attending useless meetings or writing detailed instructions. But if you empower others, prioritize work, and focus on value without BS, things go smoothly. I agree with Marty Cagan, who wrote that to succeed as a Product Manager, you need: - Direct access to users and customers - Direct access to business stakeholders - Direct access to engineers and designer Without proxies. Product Owner included. The only valid setup is that the Product Manager and Product Owner are the same person with the end-to-end responsibility. In particular, it’s essential that the Product Manager, Product Designer, and at least one Engineer perform Product Discovery together. Finally, if you work in Scrum, as PSPO III, I’d like to emphasize that Product Owner is just accountability, and Product Manager is a job title. The Product Owner’s accountability is best fulfilled by an experienced Product Manager. Do you agree? Disagree? Let me know in the comments. - Enjoy this? ♻️ Repost to help PMs avoid this anti-pattern. Want a hi-res PDF of this picture? 📌 Download 30+ high-res PM infographics, like this one, by subscribing here: https://lnkd.in/d5bHGj5j
Backend Tech Lead @ Raisa Energy
1moTotally agree! we usually try to even invlove the development team in parts of the discovery process, being aligned on the company vision and objectives helps the whole team to brainstorm then build tools that truely benefit the business