The PMO Best Practices: Ideation/Concept Phase - Picking Winning Ideas (The PMO Practice Booklet Book 4)

Aside from engineering and operations, there are a two key roles in bringing products to the market: Product Management (idea creator) and Program Management (execution). A good analogy to think that the “CEO” for the product is the product manager and the “COO” who eill make sure the product is ready for the market is program management.

The role of Product Manager while outside the scope of this book is referred to in most of sections because they are key partners to Program Managers in “creating” or “innovating” products throughout the lifecycle. They are the customer-facing part of the team responsible for gathering and translating target feature sets, costs as they relate to pricing and even schedule as it relates to Market Windows. The process of screening ideas is central to their role and the Program Manager is there to support the process with data as needed and to lead the approved ideas through the rest of the process.

Throughout the Ideation/Concept Phase the Product Manager takes the lead to idea/conceptualize the product. The Program Managers take a facilitating and support role by guiding the Product Manager on the “how to” boundaries to bring the product to market.