Project Managers with IT product development

The PMs with product development companies would have mostly similar skill sets as the ones in IT service providers. But I think there are some slight differences. The differences would be in the fact that though the IT product development PMs work as per a budget, they are not margin driven. So, though they would be bothered about the cost of the project, they would not be fanatical about the margin. Infact, they would not care so much for the financial metrics of a margin. They would however be fanatical about the quality of work and deadlines as with PMs in other organizations. The difference would also come from the type of the organization for which the product development is happening. For example, in companies like Microsoft, I guess, the products are very huge and it calls for high specializations among the roles. Here the project managers are mostly called Program manager (specific to Microsoft) and their role is mostly coordination and facilitation. However, in smaller product development startup, the project manager may be required to do technical review and face the customers as well.

Thus, in a scale of 1 to 10 in the following parameters: Technical Knowledge, Process orientation, Team management, Cost management and Project management, the typical PM in an IT product set-up would have the following ratings:

Technical Knowledge: 7

Process Orientation: 7

Team management: 8 

Cost management: 6 

Project management: 8