Product Development vs. Product Management: Roles and Responsibilities

Product management and product development teams work hand-in-hand to fulfill customer needs and provide business value, but their responsibilities differ in crucial ways. Product development focuses on the hands-on work of building and refining actual features: writing code, running tests, and troubleshooting issues. Product management guides the vision and strategy, tracking performance metrics and ensuring everyone stays aligned from concept through launch and beyond.

Both roles require deep customer understanding and flexible strategy, but they approach product creation from different angles. Understanding where these roles diverge helps you structure teams effectively and avoid gaps that slow down launches or create misaligned products.

In this guide, you’ll learn how these two critical functions work together, where their responsibilities differ, and how to structure both teams for maximum impact.

What is product development? 

Product development is where ideas become real products. The team handles the hands-on technical work: designing prototypes, writing code, running tests, and refining features until they function as intended. Effective product development combines technical execution with strategic thinking that reflects market needs and creates a strong value proposition. 

During the product development research and early design stages, product development teams often draw on expertise from cross-functional teams to inform decisions from every angle. In smaller businesses, a single product developer may balance both strategic and technical tasks. 

Without a product development process to define technical specifications and bring a product to life, a company’s innovative ideas may never come to fruition. 

Product development example

Charlie Bowes-Lyon, co-founder and chief marketing officer of the bath and body company Wild, discussed his brand’s product development process in an episode of the Shopify Masters podcast. In devising solutions for eliminating single-use packaging waste, Wild revolutionized its industry and became a multimillion-dollar brand. 

It took more than a year to launch Wild, due largely to the brand’s ambitious product development efforts. Charlie says that when he and his co-founder, Freddy Ward, set out to create an effective, sustainably packaged natural deodorant, they thought, “How hard could this be?” Turns out, it was trickier than expected. 

“I think we went through 35 different iterations of the product, testing each one … before we finally landed one,” Charlie recalls. “It’s incredibly difficult to remove plastic from packaging, and this is why everyone uses plastic.” 

In addition to their sustainable packaging initiative, the Wild team also partnered with an industrial design firm to develop their refillable aluminum case design concept. 

“We were innovating something that didn’t yet exist, and we were going to create our own market,” Charlie said. That decision both reflected a gap in the market and created a strong value proposition for Wild.

Types of product development 

Whether you’re refining an existing product or creating something entirely new from scratch, understanding the different types of product development helps your product team stay focused on the right approach and set realistic success metrics. 

There are four main types of product development:

1. New product development (NPD). In new product development, the product team navigates the entire process, from market research and competitive analysis to launch, ensuring the product’s value proposition aligns with market needs and establishes clear success criteria. 

2. Product line extension.Product line extensions create new variations of existing products. The brand builds on the success of a popular product by introducing new choices to consumers, aiming to satisfy a refined customer segment in the market.

3. Product improvement. This technique uses data analysis, user feedback, and key performance indicators to enhance product performance across its entire life cycle. 

4. White label product development.White label product development allows businesses to sell generic products with their own logo, branding, packaging, and pricing. White labeling can help brands cut costs and increase their offerings without having to develop new, unique products of their own. 

What is product management?

Product managers shepherd products from concept to market and beyond, tracking performance and hunting for improvements throughout the entire product lifecycle. They act as the primary supervisors of everything from early product vision and development to ongoing management and quality control—which means spotting revenue opportunities and solving problems before they impact sales.

Successful product managers closely track key performance indicators (KPIs), including initial sales, marketing return on investment (ROI), and customer feedback, to define their product strategy. They also analyze data to identify potential improvements, such as optimizing the website conversion rate, which can increase sales without an added cost to the business. This data-driven approach helps identify gaps in the market and fulfill customer needs.

Depending on the industry and size of a business, a product manager’s responsibilities may vary. For example, a product manager at a software company may be responsible for the ongoing iteration and functionality of a core feature of the main product. Meanwhile, a growth product manager at an ecommerce business may be focused on avenues for expansion, seeking to bring the product to new audiences and improve retention and engagement metrics.

Charlie credits much of Wild’s success to “sweating the small stuff”—carefully analyzing KPIs, being clever with capital, and continually trying to make things better. 

“We’re constantly doing A/B tests or looking at ways to improve our website and convert higher and higher,” Charlie says. 

Product management vs. product development responsibilities

Product managers kick off the product development process by dreaming up solutions for market demands in the idea generation stage. Then, product development teams harness their strategic thinking skills to ground that dream in reality.

Ecommerce product management focuses on strategy and managing resources to solve big-picture issues. Their responsibilities include reviewing market research, analyzing sales team data, and completing a broad range of other business objectives that position the product launch advantageously.

The role doesn’t end there. Product managers continue to monitor performance during the full life cycle of a product, gather user feedback, and make iterative suggestions for improvements to ensure the product’s long-term success. 

Similarly, product development teams stay involved through the product life cycle, but their focus is on technical execution rather than the strategy. While product managers guide the vision and strategy, developers make those ideas materialize through design and testing. They construct prototypes, write test code, implement UX design alterations, and troubleshoot any small-picture problems that arise.

Even after product launch, the product development team remains involved to troubleshoot issues, implement improvements, and ensure the product continues to meet customer needs.