Comparing adjacent job families

I love Venn diagrams because they show similarities and differences in a very concise and easy-to-follow way. Needless to say, you’ll see a few in this book.

A common question in my profession as a TPM is, what is the value of a TPM? The question is understandable because there is a lot of overlap between our jobs and the jobs of the roles most often adjacent to us in a software or hardware team.

We’ll start by exploring Figure 1.5, which shows the intersection of the roles most similar to the TPM: the Program Manager (PM), and the Product Manager – Technical (PM-T). Just as the TPM is a program manager who specializes in technology, the PM-T is a product manager who specializes in technology. The term PM-T may not be used at every company (just as TPM isn’t used everywhere), but the particulars of the job as they relate to our discussion are the same:

Figure 1.5: A Venn diagram comparing the TPM, PM, and...