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I believe the main goal of a product manager is to ship experiences that delight customers and deliver business outcomes. This goal is the same for different product managers regardless of their companies or specialities. Software Product Management is similar to Hardware Product Management in terms of the expected outcome. However, the process with which the goal is executed is where the differences lie in.

I have experiences as a hardware product manager and as a software product manager. At a high-level, the main differences I have observed and experienced are across the following areas:

  • Product Development Cycle
  • Product Definition and Testing
  • Financial Involvement
  • Internal/External Stakeholder Management

Software Product Management

  • Shorter product development cycles: In software, the product development cycle is short and iterative. Typically, agile product development process is the vehicle with which features and products are delivered. One-week to four-weeks is the time-box in which teams have to deliver and ship a set of functionalities and improvements. Two-week sprints are typical for many organizations. Under this development cadence, new features can added released monthly at the very least.
  • Flexible product definition and testing: In software development, the product or feature is fully defined but with some room to finalize decisions as needed. With software, it is much easier to reverse a decision or make changes as necessary. A software PM often utilizes A/B testing during development to test out hypotheses so as to make a decision.
  • Little-to-no financial involvement or responsibility: As a software PM, you’re not involved or responsible for various financial decisions of a product or feature. However, software PMs responsible for growth or revenue might be exceptions here.
  • Internal team/stakeholder management: As a software PM, you’re mainly influencing and accomplishing outcomes through internal teams – such as your engineering and product marketing teams. You’re often not actively working with vendors and other teams external to the company.

Hardware Product Management

  • Longer product development cycles: In hardware, the product development cycle is very long with often strict time constraints. Hardware product development follows a waterfall methodology with some agile practices for the software/firmware features and rapid prototyping. Development cycles can be anywhere from 1 year to 5 years depending on the company.
  • Solid product definition before development: The hardware product manager needs to define and finalize requirements of the product before any development begins. This will guide the engineers on which parts and components to choose during development of the product. With hardware product management, there is no A/B testing. Therefore, the product manager needs to ensure that the product is fully functional when launched.
  • Financial responsibility: As a hardware PM, you have more insights into the financial performance of your product. For instance, you are involved with decisions regarding the Bill of Materials (BOM) cost as well as setting the target margin for the product. In addition, you are also informed on inventory forecasting and demand planning with the logistics team. Once the product is launched, you also have visibility into the financial performance of the product.
  • Internal and External team management: As a hardware PM, you work not only with internal teams but external teams as well. The product manager needs to be in communication with vendors, consultants, suppliers, other third-parties, the manufacturing firm amongst others.

What skills are required for each?

I think that coding or engineering skills should be desired but not required skills for a product manager. However; for a hardware PM, possessing design or hardware engineering knowledge is very valuable for success on the job. The same goes for a software PM with regards to A/B testing and software stack.

A good product manager can pick up these desired skills on the job. However, she or he should be strong in the areas as described in this post. A great PM possesses clear communication, customer empathy, leadership abilities, logical/strategic thinking, execution and autonomy.

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