Project or Product?

Selçuk Kalafat, PMP – Customer Services Manager

One of the recent topics of debate in the IT world is whether your focus is on the product or the project while you do your work. People asked this question will mostly say that they take a balanced approach: they aim to complete the project within the defined criteria while also striving to deliver a quality product. Yet, again in most cases, perhaps because its metrics are easy to measure, we see that the project perspective dominates, and projects that meet scope/cost/time criteria are declared successful while the product's success and customer satisfaction take a back seat.

The Project Perspective

First, I want to point out that there is nothing wrong with the project approach itself. The project approach is effective for getting a series of activities done within a set time frame to reach a specific goal. But projects are often misused. Organizations build teams whose main goal is to finish the project on time, on budget and within the defined scope, and they declare the project successful when these goals are met.

Another habit of project culture is assigning people to projects based on the availability shown in the resource planning tool, which means the most suitable employees are not always assigned to projects and that productivity-reducing reassignments can happen. Detailed designs, project tracking with Gantt charts, comprehensive reports full of data and logs where developers explain how they spent their time are also habits of the classic project management approach.

Dates, budget and scope are of course important. But in the end, it comes down to delivering the right product the customer wants. As mentioned before, even when these goals are met, the product itself may not meet expectations. You could sum it up like this: The operation was a success (the project), but we lost the patient (the product).

The Product Perspective

If you have decided to shift your focus from the project to the product, give your teams responsibility and room for freedom. Motivate them to develop the product that can deliver the highest value for your customers. Instead of handing out work to team members one by one, let them pull work from the backlog with a holistic perspective. Remember that the product you develop is the work you present to your customer.

In this approach, you measure success by users adopting the product, continuing to do business with you, revenues rising and costs falling. This reduces work that does not deliver results and increases efficiency.

Successful product managers understand the importance of the project perspective, but they prefer the product perspective. Because they know that for

. Building a product strategy and vision,
. Delivering customer satisfaction,
. Balancing priorities, risks, delivered value and dependencies to develop the right product,
. Creating a product roadmap that lets you ship fast releases,
. Increasing revenues and return on investment (ROI)
. And most importantly, developing the right product

the product perspective is the better choice.

Your Perspective

In this article, we briefly touched on the dominant aspects of the product and project perspectives without going into depth. Of course, choosing one does not mean you completely abandon the practices of the other. But because your choice determines your priorities and success metrics, it is critical for assessing yourself and directing your work.

Finally, I hope this small question will help you test your own perspective: When the work is done, do you celebrate the closing of the project, or the success of the product?

Wishing you successful products.

Sources

https://store.hbr.org/product/project-management-versus-product-management/UV9410?srsltid=AfmBOorUim_zt3NfZd62_v5ReUY-NXCSHoqnhbAnYG4I7LOF82SBe3Ju
https://hbr.org/2026/03/why-the-digital-product-model-beats-project-based-approaches
https://dergipark.org.tr/en/download/article-file/517196
https://www.scrum.org/resources/blog/project-mindset-or-product-mindset