Why your engineering team needs a product manager, not a project manager

Building scalable SaaS platforms requires more than just efficient engineering teams.

Recently on the Product Driven podcast, I had a conversation with Jerel Velarde, our director of product management at Full Scale, who transitioned from construction project management to tech product management.

Our discussion revealed why traditional project management frameworks fall short in modern software development.

The strategic deficit in engineering organizations

Most engineering organizations have mastered the mechanics of software delivery.

Your teams can handle sprint planning, manage backlogs, and maintain deployment pipelines. But when engineering velocity doesn’t translate to business outcomes, the instinct to add project management oversight is often misguided.

The real challenge isn’t coordination — it’s strategic alignment between technical capabilities and business objectives.

Breaking down the project management fallacy

In my experience scaling Stackify, I discovered that project management creates an illusion of control while potentially adding layers that impede value creation.

Project managers excel at tracking outputs: sprint velocities, burndown charts, and resource allocation. But in high-growth SaaS companies, these metrics often become vanity metrics that mask deeper strategic issues.

The core problem is that project management optimizes for predictability in a domain that requires adaptability.

Product management as a strategic force multiplier

Product management, when implemented correctly, serves as the connective tissue between technical capabilities and market opportunities.

During our discussion, Jerel shared a compelling example from ClickUp’s evolution – they faced the classic tension between architectural refinement and feature delivery.

The solution wasn’t better project management; it was strategic product management that could balance technical debt against market demands.

Want to go deeper? Watch this Product Driven podcast episode, then keep reading.

The engineering empathy gap

One of the most overlooked aspects of this dynamic is what I call the “engineering empathy gap.”

Engineers get disconnected from users and business outcomes when we add too many layers of project management. I’ve found that the most effective product managers actually reduce organizational complexity rather than add to it.

At Stackify, we discovered that direct engineer-to-customer interaction dramatically improved both velocity and value creation.

It’s not about adding management layers – it’s about removing barriers between technical decisions and business outcomes.

Beyond the traditional product owner role

The conventional product owner role, as defined in Agile frameworks, often falls short in complex SaaS environments.

It’s not enough to have someone who can write user stories and manage a backlog.

Modern product management requires deep technical understanding coupled with strategic business acumen.

Here’s what I’ve found truly matters:

• Strategic context integration — Product decisions must reflect both technical constraints and market opportunities
• Outcome-driven development— Every technical decision should map directly to business value
• Technical debt equilibrium— Balancing system evolution with market demands
• Customer-centric architecture— Technical decisions viewed through the lens of customer impact

The critical question framework

I’ve developed a simple but powerful framework for evaluating product decisions.

Instead of asking “Why should we do this?”, ask “What if we don’t?” This cuts through theoretical discussions and forces a concrete examination of business impact.

For instance, when discussing architectural changes, the question isn’t about technical elegance – it’s about the business cost of maintaining the status quo.

Implementing strategic product management

For growing SaaS companies, especially those scaling beyond initial product-market fit, here’s what needs to change:

Eliminate proxy roles between engineers and business outcomes

Invest in product managers who understand both technical architecture and market dynamics

Build feedback loops that connect technical decisions directly to customer impact

Create frameworks for balancing technical debt against market opportunities

The shift from project to product management isn’t about changing titles – it’s about fundamentally realigning how technical organizations create value.

Successful SaaS companies don’t need better task management; they need strategic product leadership that can transform technical capabilities into market advantages.