A product manager (PM) is a professional role that is responsible for the development of products for an organization, known as the practice of product management. Product managers own the product strategy behind a product (physical or digital), specify its functional requirements, and manage feature releases. Product managers coordinate work done by many other functions (like software engineers, data scientists, and product designers), and are ultimately responsible for product outcomes. A product manager considers numerous factors such as the intended customer or user of a product, the products offered by the competition, and how well the product fits with the company's business model. The scope of a product manager varies greatly, some may manage one or more product lines and others (especially in large companies) may manage small components or features of a product. In the financial services industry (banking, insurance etc.), product managers manage financial products (for example, credit card portfolios), their profit and loss, and also determine the business development strategy. The term is often confused with other similar roles, such as: Project manager: may perform all activities related to schedule and resource management Program Manager, sometimes known as Technical Program Manager (TPM): may perform activities related to schedule, resource, and cross-functional execution Product owner: a popular role in Agile development methodology, may perform all activities related to a self-encapsulated feature or feature set plan, development and releases Product marketing manager: responsible for the outbound marketing activities of the product, not development and cross-functional execution The role of the product manager was originally created to manage the complexity of the product lines of a business, as well as to ensure that those products were profitable. Product managers can come from many different backgrounds, because their primary skills involve working well with customers and understanding the problems the product is intended to solve.