The Role of a Software Product Manager in Various Business Environments

The aim of the paper is to identify the role of the software product manager depending on the size of the company and the characteristics of the product they are working on. This has been achieved in cooperation with 15 experts from the IT industry. The companies were divided into 4 levels of size: micro-enterprises, small businesses, medium businesses and large enterprises. The characteristics of the products were divided into business-business (B2B) and business-customer (B2C). This way, 8 personas of software product managers have been developed. Differences in this role were mainly related to the staffing, its scope of responsibility, tools and techniques used as well as the mode of work with the target customers. Many common aspects of this role have also been identified that made it possible to define archetype persona of a software product manager. All personas have been validated by experts who offered their improvements.