Project Management vs Operations Management: The Key Differences Explained

Project management and operations management are both key roles in a company. While they share many of the same skills, their responsibilities differ considerably.

Understanding these differences is key to ensuring your company and its teams operate smoothly and within their respective scopes. In this article, we compare project management and operations management and look at the different tools they use.

EDITOR’s CHOICE

Monday – Affordable, Easy to Use, and Powerful

• 10+ Project Views
• Generous Free Plan
• Powerful Workflow Automation

9.7

Read Review

Visit Now

Table of Contents Table of Contents

1. Project Management vs Operations Management: Overview
2. What is Project Management?
3. What is Operations Management?
4. Project and Operations Management: Shared Skills, Separate Scopes
5. FAQs
6. References

Show Full Guide

Table of Contents

1. Project Management vs Operations Management: Overview
2. What is Project Management?
3. What is Operations Management?
Show Full Guide
4. Project and Operations Management: Shared Skills, Separate Scopes
5. FAQs
6. References

Project Management vs Operations Management: Overview

While project and operations management share some common ground, such as organizational planning, resource allocation, and performance measurement, they differ in many important ways.

Project management involves bringing change through specific, time-bound projects that create new products, services, or features while working with a mix of internal and external stakeholders.

Operations management is about improving efficiency through ongoing innovation and refinement of new and existing processes with close collaboration with internal, often senior stakeholders.

What is Project Management?

This is usually to create something new—like a product, service, or set of features. In this way, projects drive companies, enabling them to better serve their existing customers and appeal to new ones.

To achieve their objectives, PMs allocate company resources, including employees, and continuously monitor their team’s progress to ensure projects stay on schedule and within budget.

There’s a wide variety of project management methodologies available to PMs to help them achieve their goals and a number of project management tools to help make their lives easier.

What Does a Project Manager Do?

A project manager’s day-to-day tasks can be broken down into three main categories: planning, executing, and analyzing. Or, to think about it another way: before, during, and after a project.

Planning a Project

To successfully plan for a new project, a PM must:

Read More:

• How to Successfully Plan a Project
• How to Identify Risk in Project Management

Executing a Project

Once the project starts, the PM is responsible for ensuring it stays on track and within budget. This means:

Analyzing a Project

After a project ends, the PM must make final reports for other stakeholders, including senior management. For example, what went well and what can be improved for next time?

Did the project meet its initial deadline and budget? Why or why not? These lessons are then carried over to future projects.

Related: 

• Agile vs Waterfall Project Management
• Must-Know Project Management Best Practices

What is Operations Management?

But unlike PMs, whose attention is generally limited to individual projects, operations managers take a holistic view of a company’s or department’s operations.

They oversee the “big picture” of day-to-day processes, identifying opportunities to reduce costs, increase efficiency, and improve quality with innovation, creativity, and problem-solving skills.

To accomplish their objectives, OMs use specific tools and solutions, such as resource management software, to track the various moving parts of a company.

This includes from its human resources to its suppliers, equipment, materials, and more.

What Does an Operations Manager Do?

An operational manager’s responsibilities span three key areas: process management, resource management, and people management.

Project and Operations Management: Shared Skills, Separate Scopes

EDITOR’s CHOICE

Monday – Affordable, Easy to Use, and Powerful

• 10+ Project Views
• Generous Free Plan
• Powerful Workflow Automation

9.7

Read Review

Visit Now

As may be clear from their individual tasks and responsibilities, PMs and OMs share some key skills. They must be:

1. Strong leaders and excellent communicators.
2. Masters at time, resource, and risk management
3. Innovative, with outstanding critical-thinking abilities

PMs and OMs differ the most in their:

• Objectives (new products vs new workflows),
• Timelines (time-bound, single projects or continuous, iterative improvement),
• Position within the company (OMs typically sit above PMs)
• Involvement with stakeholders (internal and external stakeholders vs primarily internal, senior roles).

Both rely on a variety of tools to achieve their goals, including solid resource and project management software.

FAQs

Christian Rigg

Business Management Expert

• 

Christian Rigg

Business Management Expert

Christian holds a BSc in Psychology with an emphasis on organizational management and is the current Head of Operations for Eleven Media, where he oversees day-to-day business operations, manages a team of project and account managers, and otherwise greases the sticky wheels of company-wide collaboration. Prior to this, he managed operations for a hotel chain in the South of France while completing a Masters in History. When not geeking out over automations and data analysis, he can usually be found cycling and hiking around the French Riviera.

All Articles by Christian Rigg