There are a number of product development roles that have been considered integral to the creation of a software or hardware product. In fact, many teams will have several people who focus on those roles, as well as other functions such as marketing and sales. However, there is one role in particular that is often overlooked despite its importance: Product Management.
The exact responsibilities of each PM can vary depending on their specific role within an organization (they may be referred to as managers instead) and the size of the company. There are some core tasks, however, that remains consistent for all PMs regardless of industry or business model. This article discusses both software and hardware product management functions with an emphasis on what each discipline entails.
What Is Product Management?
The most common misconception about product management is that it simply involves creating the next hot product. This isn’t accurate for several reasons. First, there are plenty of product managers whose responsibilities involve nothing more than shipping existing products to market within established deadlines and budgets. Second, many successful products fail to generate revenue due to poor marketing or uninspiring sales pitches, so an innovative new idea won’t necessarily ensure commercial success. Finally, most successful products aren’t actually “new” in the sense that they introduce ground-breaking features that haven’t already been seen in competing designs. Rather, they may offer a smaller improvement on an existing idea which makes it superior enough to offset whatever inherent limitations exist
For example, consider He is the author of ” Winning at New Products: Accelerating the Process from Idea to Launch “, an excellent primer on the fastest way to get new products to market. To demonstrate how quickly you can go from idea to sellable product, his book suggests that you take an existing product—a cell phone, for example—and remove its key features (the camera, perhaps). Can you still sell it?
If so, then your business does not need innovative ideas, which will exist in abundance anyway. Rather, they need knowledgeable people who can ensure that even if their first attempt is unsuccessful, they can use lessons learned and try an alternative method on subsequent attempts until the right one has been found. At this point, they should be able to generate revenue with minimal effort.
Unlike other business leaders at the time, who often launched their businesses by experimenting in all kinds of directions until they found a commercially viable one (such as Thomas Edison), Ford started with the assumption that people wanted motorcars and simply asked himself how he could produce his model more efficiently than anyone else. He then looked for solutions that were “the ultimate in simplicity”. By looking only at this goal, he lowered costs and increased capacity until he was able to produce large numbers of cars affordable enough for most people to own them. To do this, he had to innovate in every aspect of the business, including design, manufacturing, finance, sales, and management.
Ford’s process for innovation is worth studying in detail because it was so different from everyone else’s at the time, yet so successful. His genius was not that he knew how to make cheap cars; his genius was that he figured out how to make them cheap in a way no one else thought of.
He innovated in four distinct areas:
(1) his method for developing ideas (he queried customers directly),
(2) his method for planning (he kept things simple)
(3) his company structure (he gave people extraordinary freedom within clear boundaries)
(4) his approach to manufacturing (he created a moving assembly line).
Ford’s first insight was that the best way to innovate is to innovate incrementally, not through a hundred revolutionary new ideas, but through thousands of tiny improvements. This idea seems almost laughable today—how can you create great cars by making thousands of tiny changes? But it turns out that incrementalism has two big advantages: most importantly, it makes innovation achievable rather than miraculous; and second, what you achieve with this approach looks more like greatness than something “better than usual.” If you want to stand out from your competitors, don’t try to beat them at their own game. Instead, find a different game and play it better than anyone else.
Think macro-micro, not incremental. At first glance, this is just the application of Newton’s First Law to business strategy. But it really highlights a fundamental difference between how conventional management thinks and what we argue for here. Conventional thinking tends to be focused on reducing costs, increasing sales, etc. within existing markets; its goal is incremental improvement. We think that truly great innovations are usually best achieved by looking beyond existing markets or product categories entirely, which often means creating new ones rather than competing in old ones better than the incumbents do.
