People using "PM" is adding to the confusion.

That’s why I use PMP for Product Management Professional. Much clearer

For what it's worth, I enjoyed that joke. I work in education and the number of redundant acronyms and initialisms (if that's a word) is astounding.

BIT meeting on my calendar. Is it behavioral intervention team or something about the bachelor of information technology or Business Information technology or bachelor of industrial technology or are we talking about income taxes or what?

This adds to the confusion since Project Management Professional is a certification for a Project Manager that specifically uses that acronym and not all project managers have the certification.

I think it was a joke

Alas, the joke is "Too Real" and on all of us.

Agreed, PjM and PdM are what I use when referring to them.

What is the difference then, between a project manager, product manager, a project owner and a product owner? Always thought they're approximately the same thing. Isn't any product you're working on a project too?

The main difference is between a product and a project. The gist is that projects are short term specific plans while products are a bit more open-ended ideas with continual feedback. Here’s a decent overview: https://martinfowler.com/articles/products-over-projects.htm...

Product Manager: They are essentially the voice of the customer and upper management. They work on the product roadmap and determine the requirements for the product based on the needs that are determined by conversations with the stakeholders as well as other market research. In addition to this they also work on things like product pricing, release strategy, etc.

Project Manager: They ensure that all the tasks for a project get done on time. They make the gantt charts, work with teams to break it down into sections, keep track of budgets, manage risks, report on progress to stakeholders, etc.

I've never worked with a Product Owner since I understand it is mostly a software related position and that is not my area. From what I understand, they are an intermediary that sits between PdM and PjM.

Imo projects are company details, products are what your users see.

The split between project manager and product owner seems clearest.

A project manager is running the team. Who does what and when? How do we plan the work?

A product owner is kind of like the representative stakeholder. What should this do? How important is launching now Vs fixing these bugs?

How Vs what.

Good people in these roles are incredible. I've been fortunate to work with some.

A lot of teams with poor business operations seem to treat project, product, and program management as a generic blob of “help us be organized please” duties instead of specific jobs with specific operational missions.