How to Ensure Collaboration Between Project Managers and Product Managers

Projects and products are becoming increasingly entwined. That ramps up the need to build greater collaboration between project managers and product managers. What’s similar—and different—about the roles? What strategies can you use to boost collaboration? And how does agile help everyone stay aligned? 

We get insights and tips from Adam Motiwala, a product manager at Google in Irvine, California in the United States, and Meg Sawachi, PMI-ACP, PMP, a senior project manager at GlobalLogic in Lund, Sweden. 

 Key themes

02:14 Today’s must-have skills for product managers and project managers

06:04 The biggest similarities—and differences—between product and project managers 

08:29 Building a strong partnership between a project manager and product manager

12:56 How agile helps project and product managers stay aligned

16:51 Words of advice to product and project managers to boost collaboration

Transcript

ADAM MOTIWALA

The product manager is sort of responsible for defining where the value is and making sure that we are rowing in that direction. And the project manager is like, “Okay. How do we execute to capture that value?”

STEVE HENDERSHOT

Project managers. Product managers. Two roles with different functions. But their successful collaboration is increasingly critical for companies to develop products and services that delight customers and fuel growth. 

Ahead, we’ll chat with a project and a product leader about how each delivers value—and how they work together to maximize their impact. 

In today’s fast-paced and complex business landscape, project professionals lead the way, delivering value while tackling critical challenges and embracing innovative ways of working. On Projectified®, we bring you insights from the project management community to help you thrive in this evolving world of work through real-world stories and strategies, inspiring you to advance your career and make a positive impact.

This is Projectified. I’m Steve Hendershot.

The words “project” and “product” might sound alike, but the teams behind each focus on different things: a project team pushes for the successful completion of an initiative, while product teams aim to sustain stewardship of a specific product. But there’s also tons of overlap, especially in situations where projects are needed to develop or refine products. And that means collaboration among project and product leaders is essential. 

PMI’s report, “Dual Engines of Success: The Imperative Synergies Between Project Management and Product Management,” highlights the shared skills and competencies between the two roles as well as how they can be used to elevate project and product outcomes. You can check out the full report by visiting pmi.org/podcast and clicking on the transcript for this episode. 

It’s also the subject of our conversation today. Adam Motiwala is a product manager at Google in Irvine, California, in the United States, and Meg Sawachi is a senior project manager at GlobalLogic in Lund, Sweden. They explain how to forge common ground between product and project managers. 

MUSICAL TRANSITION

STEVE HENDERSHOT 

Let’s kick this off with both of you describing what is needed to thrive in your role. So Adam, let’s start with you. What makes for an awesome product manager? What are the challenges of the job, and what are the skills needed to meet them?

ADAM MOTIWALA 

That’s a good question. There’s a lot of change happening within the product management field with AI (artificial intelligence), ChatGPT and LLMs, large language models. There’s a few new skills or a few new processes that are required to be able to thrive. So the principles are the same, where it’s like, am I adding value to my end customer? That’s the fundamental value with whatever tool or system you’re using. You need to be able to understand who is your customer, what are their pain points, and be able to do that customer discovery either through experimentation, through interviews, doing market research, understanding what’s happening in the broader market for your tool, for your product. 

And then there’s the implementation side of it, which is like the stakeholder management, particularly for larger organizations. I’m at Google, which is a big organization. I’ve worked at startups and everything in between—the larger the org, the more stakeholder management becomes critical for your team to succeed and thrive.

But on the AI side, I would say there’s new skills. The first is context engineering. I work in support, so we provide an AI chatbot to help [Google] Ads customers particularly get customer support through AI, either through email and through chat. Now it’s a little bit different where you’re like, “Hey, we’re onboarding this AI agent,” and you have to onboard them or give them the context as you would if you’re bringing on a new support person on your team. That context engineering is new, and it’s vital for product to understand that when they’re building any sort of AI tool or solution.

The second is prompt engineering. You’re basically coding the LLM to do something. Now we’re all writing code, and that also has changed the entire structure of the software team—the UX, the software development, product management and project management. Because now they can all sort of be part of that process, which is new and different. And then the data quality.

Now you kind of have to make sure that your data is useful. You need to understand what this data means because that will either make or break how your AI agent responds to customers, especially if you want it to be personalized and contextual. And then being able to evaluate and monitor your AI agent.

STEVE HENDERSHOT 

So Meg, over to you. In your perspective, what makes a great project manager? What’s the essential challenge, and what are the skills that are most important to pulling it off?

MEG SAWACHI 

So for me, it’s important to place the team and the organization I’m in in the center. And I think three skills really stand out. The first one is communication, tailoring the message so it lands with different audiences, whether that’s stakeholders or team members. And, just as important, it’s about creating a psychologically safe environment where people feel comfortable speaking up so that I can build the trust between the team members. 

The second is problem-solving skills. I see part of my role as making sure every team member can focus on what they do best. So I pay attention to potential blockers, and when issues come up, I jump in quickly and resolve them. That way the team can keep moving forward without unnecessary friction. And then the third thing is stakeholder management. I need to keep stakeholders informed and engaged. Things can get complicated, so having the ability to navigate the complex situation and keep everyone on the same page, it’s really critical to do my job. 

STEVE HENDERSHOT 

So for both of you, where do you think are the greatest points of overlap? And then what do you think are the greatest differences? 

MEG SAWACHI 

I think project managers and product managers share many skills like communication or leadership and stakeholder management. But then, for a project manager, [they’re] more responsible for delivering something specific on time, within budget and to scope. A product manager, I think, focuses more on building and evolving a product that creates customer and business value. I think the success measures [are] a bit different for a project manager. It’s more on the delivery and execution. And then for the product manager, it’s more about the user satisfaction and the business impact.

ADAM MOTIWALA 

I just want to say, I think now my parents and my friends are going to be super confused. They’re like, “Oh, I thought you weren’t a project manager this whole time. You keep telling us you’re a product manager.” Yeah, yeah, it’s different. But like Meg was saying, some of the similarities with project and product management, stakeholder management is a key part to it. And as she mentioned, value creation is kind of where the product manager is really, I would say, responsible for. Where is the value, and how do we move in that direction? 

And there’s a lot of collaboration that I’m having with project management now on the AI side. Because now with the AI side, prompt engineering is something that both of us do. It’s kind of making those roles a little bit blurred in some ways, which is, I think, interesting and an opportunity, but it’s also creating new processes and things to figure out. So for one thing that I’m working very close with my project manager is how do we evaluate AI systems, like, their outputs? Is it saying it accurately? Is it saying it factually? Is it safe? Is it complete? And who evaluates that? How do we evaluate it? What’s the timeline? What’s the process? And so there’s these new processes that we’re sort of creating with AI, and that’s where I lean a lot on the project manager side to be like, “Hey, help me create these processes. Figure out who owns them.”

STEVE HENDERSHOT 

In your experience, do product and project managers, are they hardwired that way? Like is it tough to get them to see the opposite perspective? Is this an easy partnership? Is this an intuitive partnership or is there friction in your experience, or can there be? 

ADAM MOTIWALA 

I think it’s an easy partnership, and it depends on the personalities and the people. So a good project manager and a good product manager will understand that difference and sort of work together to figure it out. 

There can be friction when both people are trying to do each other’s job. So a lot of product managers sometimes, including myself, will be like, “Oh, let me get down in the execution because I have a deadline, and I want to push something through.” And then that creates friction because then the team gets confused, and the project manager’s like, “Oh, well I thought these were the priorities that we just talked about. If you’re going to shift something, communicate with me first.” And so just like any relationship, communication is very critical. 

If you don’t communicate, then that’s when the friction happens. And just like any relationship, you have to have that trust. So like Meg was mentioning that trust is really important, I’ve had project managers which I didn’t trust. I didn’t feel like they were bringing something to the table, and so then I didn’t communicate as often and that meant that we were having some friction. And then vice versa. If they felt like maybe I wasn’t doing my role, then they might try to step in.

STEVE HENDERSHOT 

Yeah. Awesome. All right, so Meg, how about you? To what extent do you feel like you and product managers are perfectly interlocking pieces, rowing in the same direction, versus sometimes feeling like, “This person is not exactly aimed at what I’m aimed at?”

MEG SAWACHI 

As Adam mentioned, I agree that usually it’s more like a partnership between me and the product managers. We try to align and work together for the common goal. I think the issue could be that if there’s a tight deadline, and if the product manager wants to push in some critical features, but then the timeline is tough and so on. But otherwise, I think the collaboration has been good.

STEVE HENDERSHOT 

How about examples from each of you of when this has worked well. What did that look like? In a time when a project in support of a product happened well, what made you think, “Oh yeah, if only I could replicate these conditions every time.” Meg, let’s start with you.

MEG SAWACHI 

I remember a time when I was at a startup company and building a mobile application. We had just kicked off a new sprint when the CEO came in with some major change to our priorities. It was a classic drop everything moment, and instead of just pushing back or causing a conflict, the product manager and I cooperated. 

We paused the sprint and reprioritized the backlog and held a quick new sprint planning meeting to get the team on board. By doing this together, we were able to quickly adapt and make sure the team wasn’t wasting time on work that was no longer a priority. So that kind of seamless collaboration is how we keep the project aligned with what truly creates value. 

We keep ourselves efficient and delivering in time, even though the situation changes and priority changes.

STEVE HENDERSHOT 

Yeah, that’s a great example. Adam, how about you? What’s a time when this worked well, and why did that time stand out?

ADAM MOTIWALA 

I think the last two years have been very ambiguous in terms of what we’re delivering, and how we’re delivering it, trying to incorporate LLMs into everything. So for example, we were working on AI chatbots, and now we’re like, how do we bring that into email and have generative email responses, which is something we’ve never done? What is quality? How do we know that this is accurate? Is this safe to release to customers? 

And so the project manager I’m working with now, he’s very good at forecasting those issues and starts to work on them or understand and sort of anticipate the needs of these new processes. It’s not this traditional, “Okay, this is our sprint. We’re blocked. How do I unblock or how do I anticipate?” It’s completely new. It’s talking to new stakeholders we haven’t spoken to before. That’s been amazing this last run because I feel like I have a partner who’s also anticipating the needs or the risk of the project as we’re moving along into something that’s new.

STEVE HENDERSHOT 

All right, now let’s get to agile, which I think is a key point of overlap. And I have already heard a few mentions of sprints and things like that. So how does agile help alignment and collaboration? And even more deeply than that, I guess, it adds some flexibility, right, to project teams. How does the agile process help you?  

MEG SAWACHI 

I’ve been working in software development, and since the market and competitive landscape changes so quickly, we have to adapt just as fast. So agile really supports that. It allows us to plan incrementally instead of locking everything in upfront and to release often through continuous integration and delivery. And that means we can get early feedback, adjust quickly, and stay aligned with both stakeholders and our customers. So for me, agile has been less about process and more about creating the flexibility to collaborate better. And also it helps us deliver value sooner. 

STEVE HENDERSHOT

Agile can blur the lines between product and project teams a bit, because it allows for adaptation and iteration based on testing and feedback. But there’s still maybe a core dynamic at play where the project manager is primarily tasked with landing the plane on time and on budget, while the product manager’s first loyalty is to ensuring that what ultimately ships will delight the customer. How do you balance those priorities, and how do you work together to make it happen? 

ADAM MOTIWALA 

When you’re in the process of building your feature and trying to launch it, or you’ve already launched it and you’re getting customer feedback, you’re looking at your data, you’re monitoring it, and you’re getting some new insights and you’re trying to decide what to do next. In an agile world, there’s usually like the core team. So I have our four in the box, which is like our UX lead, engineering lead and our project manager. It’s a partnership, and so those insights should be shared. And the next idea or the next iteration can come from anyone. 

I don’t like to function in a way where it’s like, this is what this person does. That’s what that person does. Some lanes are there in terms of completing certain process and task and things like that. But when it comes to delivering value, especially when we’re iterative quick cycle and there’s four leads on the project, we kind of come together and try to figure out what we should do next. And a lot of times, the decision falls on the product manager to be like, is this what the customer wants?

You have to sort of move forward or not. The collaboration is happening, so to me, it’s not a disruption. I feel like that’s part of agile, is to force everyone into understanding what’s happening even at the micro level. You can get insights, you can get data points from anyone and good ideas. It’s just how quickly can you make those decisions is kind of, I think, the whole point of agile. So this way, if there is a thing and the product manager needs to say, yes, I agree, then yeah, you just ping them. But I’ve had times when I’ve deferred authority to other team members, particularly like UX or project management or even engineering. Yeah, this makes sense. We should just move forward, especially if it’s not an expensive feature in terms of time. 

MEG SAWACHI 

I think it’s good that we can get the voice of the customer from the product manager, and then we can change the priority according to the product manager’s input. And as Adam mentioned, I think it’s important to balance what is a needed feature and what the team can deliver in the time scope. 

If the feature is not expensive or not time consuming, then we should implement that feature because it doesn’t consume a lot of resources from the team. Then we should start with those low-hanging fruits and make the customer happier. Or we can incorporate that feature into the plan so that we can deliver faster or earlier.

STEVE HENDERSHOT 

What do you want someone in your opposite role to understand about you, the constraints of how you’re supposed to execute your role? Like, “If only the project manager understood that as the product person, I am pushing toward this.” 

We’ll start with Adam. What’s the one thing you wish project people understood about you?

ADAM MOTIWALA 

Not to say that project managers don’t, but there’s like a deep sense of customer empathy, or maybe we just spend more time listening to customer frustrations. Because of that, there’s this desire to do more or to try to do more than we should or we can. I think that’s one thing that is important for the project manager to understand—that on the product side, we’re not coming to like, “Oh, we want to overburden the team.” 

Since we’re spending all this time listening to these pain points and trying to empathize with the customer, we do want to do more. But it’s not because we want to overburden people. That’s just where we’re coming from. So then you can sort of figure out how to best limit the scope from there.

STEVE HENDERSHOT 

Great. Meg, how about you?

MEG SAWACHI 

If I could share one thing with product managers, it’s that we are more than just keeping the schedule. We are trying to create a stable environment for the team so that the team can focus on building and delivering the product that the product manager envisioned. Sometimes the team situation can be complex. So it’s important that we proactively are clearing roadblocks and handling the chaos so that the team can focus. 

Another thing is that maybe people think that the project managers are focused on just delivering. But it’s not just about delivering a feature on time. It’s about delivering a quality feature. For us, it’s important to commit to the value of the delivery, too. 

STEVE HENDERSHOT 

Thanks for listening to Projectified. Like what you heard? Subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast platform and leave us a rating or review. Your feedback matters a lot—it helps us get the support we need to continue making this show. 

And be sure to visit us online at PMI.org/podcast, where you’ll find the full transcripts for episodes as well as links to related content like useful tools and templates, the latest research reports, and more. Catch you next time!