Program Managers Drive Product Design

Customers and partners who want to influence the direction of Microsoft products or exploit the company’s marketing machine must understand two jobs at the company: program manager and product manager. Program managers are responsible for the features and early direction of a product while product managers handle its marketing through launch and beyond. Understanding the differences between the two roles and their goals can help customers and partners work more effectively with Microsoft.

Program Management Explained

Product development at Microsoft is decentralized, and every product group is free to use whatever development processes best suit its needs. However, one of the few constants across the company is that every product group contains at least the three following roles: development, quality assurance (sometimes referred to as QA, or testing), and program management.

Most customers and partners have an intuitive understanding of development and QA (“write the code” and “test the code,” respectively) and use those disciplines within their own development teams, but few fully understand program management.