The journey into Product Management (PM) is often an incidental one. It’s rare to see someone start their career in the role, leading to the diverse and unique backgrounds in the PM talent pool. You’ll find terms like “technical,” “growth,” and “generalist” prefixed to PM roles, but I don’t think this goes far enough to fully capture the breadth of variety in how PMs approach their work. The role demands countless decisions across many areas of a business, and no two PMs do it the same way.

My own journey into Product Management came after five years as a Business Analyst (BA). There’s certainly a lot of overlap between the two roles, but transitioning wasn’t without its challenges! So for any BAs out there thinking of the switch, here’s what I’ve learned about the similarities and differences between the two.