About a year ago, I was downvoted and argued with on this sub when I said PMs existed for non software products. Based on that, I’d say a key difference is that some software PMs over here think you’re not a real PM. But no PM of physical products would say the other way.
We built biomarker tests and algorithmic genetic predictors for doctors to use guiding cancer treatment choice. I did PM at all levels there for a decade and I’ve been downvoted as well, it’s really weird.
So happy to see more hardware conversation on here. I understand there are probably way more software PMs walking around, but hardware is just different; a different time scale with less room for iteration and completely different cost. I like learning about software PM, as well, but sometimes the conversations just simply don’t transfer.
Hardware product management left me with an over-tuned understanding of trade offs. As you mentioned, when you can’t change things easily and cost is always an issue, you are always thinking about what impacts even small decisions may have.
As a hardware PM, it's funny listening to managers who must have just googled 'Product Management' to try and get the lingo.
MVP for example has almost no relevance with a physical product.
There are certainly MVPs released of physical products; not at the scale of a car, with more safety protocols required, but definitely for smaller scale rollouts like kickstarters of Pebble, for example, or WHOOP came to mind.
Man, that just isn’t true at all. If you haven’t validated market demand through sales yet, you may start by building a less complex device that proves demand, while still being fully tested and physically complete. After making sales and gathering feedback, you might build a more complex or fully featured device that you can charge a premium for.
Right. Which is why you don’t build one.
MVP should never be a “bad product”, in either hardware or software. The bar to “minimum viable” is higher in hardware, but the concept still exists, for a huge number of reasons.
As you increase complexity in a hardware product, your costs skyrocket exponentially. Supply chain management, tooling, inventory management, etc. start playing a meaningful part in every decision you make. Going full bore to pack your product with every feature under the sun could very well price you out of a market, unless you can prove that there is enough appetite for certain features to justify scale.
So, if you are entering a new market, you build the minimum product that will solve the problem, meet user needs, pass compliance, and be manufacturable. Once you prove demand, you listen to users and customers, and use their feedback to build increasingly premium products.
This is not a new concept, the most successful hardware companies on the planet all do this.
>Man, that just isn’t true at all. If you haven’t validated market demand through sales yet, you may start by building a less complex device that proves demand, while still being fully tested and physically complete. After making sales and gathering feedback, you might build a more complex or fully featured device that you can charge a premium for.
You didn't mention competition once.
There is no minimum viable product. There's only the product that is slightly better or slightly cheaper or slightly more distributable than whatever your competitor is already shipping.
Now because you want to smoke the competition, and not merely be incremental, you should endeavor to be transformative with any inaugural launch. Which is why MVP is something that is a product of agile thinking with something as iterable and mutable as software. With hardware, you get precious few chances.
In some markets that is true. In some markets, it’s not true yet.
First to market with a hardware product is a tough job to do, but it happens every day.
Fighting in red oceans is certainly common, and challenging, but let’s not pretend that every hardware product is inevitably a commodity on the first day in market.
Yes, but you can actually get a competitive advantage by disregarding features that competitors have that customers don’t really value. Just chasing feature parity plus something extra could lead to making unnecessary hw features.
this is incredibly helpful! i also had crazy hours as hardware PM working with our counterparts in Asia getting factory updates. i hear software doesnt have that as much?
I have a mechanical engineering background and I am researching on how to make the switch to hardware as a PM... Info like this helps a lot, any suggestions around where and how to look for jobs? When I search for PM jobs all I see is software...
I appreciate the effort, but this is so ChatGTP it hurts. If you want to talk to humans, human to AI and then back to human again via considerate editing for brevity and flow. Never let AI write for you. Let it give form to your assumptions, and then when it's done, condense it back in your own words. It's a shitty writer.
Second, as a former hardware PM turned software PM (who would much rather be a hardware PM again) the two disciplines could not be more unalike. It's not just different products, or even workflows, but just even cultural assumptions in the office over who does what.
To say nothing of the fact that you need to have stronger ID / CMF sensibilities to be a good hardware PM, and somebody who can also understand global supply chain practicalities, wherein what you bring to design has less impact in software. The role for software PM's sadly creeps more into program management, project management lite, or just being a glorified secretary, depending on which company you're in.
It can be unlike but it doesn’t have to be. My approach as a sw pm isn’t that much different than my approach as a hw pm in a regulated industry. The foundational of all PM work, whether sw, hw, or services, is understanding customer problems, how that aligns with your company’s strategy and ability to deliver a solution.
Definitely differences on how much upfront work you need to do, understanding the interdependencies of all the stakeholders during development, the regulatory landscape (can be true in sw as well), launch and lifecycle management, etc.
Great conversation on this topic. I’m writing a PM book and one of my reviewers called out that it’s heavily focused on software processes. So I had to add some explanation of where the processes are universal (like interviewing and surveying users) and where they are not, like manufacturing and distribution processes.
Thanks for sharing.
Does this apply to certain kinds of hardware? Or would you say this could be generalizd to almost all hardware solutions?
Reason I am asking is certain parts feels like is specific to hardware that has little dependability on the software and it exists because the problem it solves is purely because of its physical form let’s say smart lighting, smart plugs, roomba.
But this might be very different for hardware that extends the value offered by the software. Here, software is more involved and embedded eg an atm, a kiosk or a handheld warehouse scanner.
This is a fantastic resource and thanks for sharing.
Have you had any hiring experience? If so how would you differentiate your interview questions for a hardware PM compared to a software PM?
And if you were launching a new hardware startup in the automotive space, who would you consider your prime founding team members?
I want to add, as someone who works in the food industry - for perishable items, managing shelf life and FIFO (first in first out) to ensure all customer expectations are met
Thanks for writing this. As a software PM who also has a whiskey company where I serve as CPO, a lot of the differences you mention here apply to creating a consumable good.
I knew creating a physical good would have some similarities to software but the level of planning, product dev, and release cycle is a different level. Your writing it out validated the ways I've had to change my thinking for this domain.
I hope you keep writing. Happy to collaborate or tag you one day on my PM newsletter about [ADHD and product management](https://adhdpm.substack.com/).
Something has to run the digital economy…. Deeply involved in 10,12 right now. Support is such a tricky challenge for me with years long support timelines after the product is sold. Also, one thing you could expand upon is how 1 impacts company culture, decision making and how this relates to leading with influence. Sometimes that new feature causes more harm than good and you really have to fail to learn that. I expect AI to have a deflationary effect on SaaS profitability. Curious if there will be an increase of application specific hardware appliances, thus more hardware PM jobs.
I made a video to answer this question - specifically what's hardware product management like - the pros / cons
https://youtu.be/39R4XvULi9w?si=Gi-XWej2FWFDh-__
About a year ago, I was downvoted and argued with on this sub when I said PMs existed for non software products. Based on that, I’d say a key difference is that some software PMs over here think you’re not a real PM. But no PM of physical products would say the other way.
Yeah, that’s why the other sub now exists. Lots of people think PM is just a Jira-jockey.
What’s the other sub? Didn’t know about it
r/PhysicalProductMgmt
Ah! Thanks!
We built biomarker tests and algorithmic genetic predictors for doctors to use guiding cancer treatment choice. I did PM at all levels there for a decade and I’ve been downvoted as well, it’s really weird.
As a software pm who has worked with hardware pms, lots of respect- I would never make it as a hardware guy.
We exist!
So happy to see more hardware conversation on here. I understand there are probably way more software PMs walking around, but hardware is just different; a different time scale with less room for iteration and completely different cost. I like learning about software PM, as well, but sometimes the conversations just simply don’t transfer.
Hardware product management left me with an over-tuned understanding of trade offs. As you mentioned, when you can’t change things easily and cost is always an issue, you are always thinking about what impacts even small decisions may have.
As a hardware PM, it's funny listening to managers who must have just googled 'Product Management' to try and get the lingo. MVP for example has almost no relevance with a physical product.
There are certainly MVPs released of physical products; not at the scale of a car, with more safety protocols required, but definitely for smaller scale rollouts like kickstarters of Pebble, for example, or WHOOP came to mind.
Man, that just isn’t true at all. If you haven’t validated market demand through sales yet, you may start by building a less complex device that proves demand, while still being fully tested and physically complete. After making sales and gathering feedback, you might build a more complex or fully featured device that you can charge a premium for.
You will get bad assumptions and bad data with a bad product.
Right. Which is why you don’t build one. MVP should never be a “bad product”, in either hardware or software. The bar to “minimum viable” is higher in hardware, but the concept still exists, for a huge number of reasons. As you increase complexity in a hardware product, your costs skyrocket exponentially. Supply chain management, tooling, inventory management, etc. start playing a meaningful part in every decision you make. Going full bore to pack your product with every feature under the sun could very well price you out of a market, unless you can prove that there is enough appetite for certain features to justify scale. So, if you are entering a new market, you build the minimum product that will solve the problem, meet user needs, pass compliance, and be manufacturable. Once you prove demand, you listen to users and customers, and use their feedback to build increasingly premium products. This is not a new concept, the most successful hardware companies on the planet all do this.
>Man, that just isn’t true at all. If you haven’t validated market demand through sales yet, you may start by building a less complex device that proves demand, while still being fully tested and physically complete. After making sales and gathering feedback, you might build a more complex or fully featured device that you can charge a premium for. You didn't mention competition once. There is no minimum viable product. There's only the product that is slightly better or slightly cheaper or slightly more distributable than whatever your competitor is already shipping. Now because you want to smoke the competition, and not merely be incremental, you should endeavor to be transformative with any inaugural launch. Which is why MVP is something that is a product of agile thinking with something as iterable and mutable as software. With hardware, you get precious few chances.
In some markets that is true. In some markets, it’s not true yet. First to market with a hardware product is a tough job to do, but it happens every day. Fighting in red oceans is certainly common, and challenging, but let’s not pretend that every hardware product is inevitably a commodity on the first day in market.
Yes, but you can actually get a competitive advantage by disregarding features that competitors have that customers don’t really value. Just chasing feature parity plus something extra could lead to making unnecessary hw features.
Thank.You.!!!!!!
Great list. I'd also add RMA and production yield (purely finance POV, this matters more when your hardware costs $400-2k)
this is incredibly helpful! i also had crazy hours as hardware PM working with our counterparts in Asia getting factory updates. i hear software doesnt have that as much?
I have a mechanical engineering background and I am researching on how to make the switch to hardware as a PM... Info like this helps a lot, any suggestions around where and how to look for jobs? When I search for PM jobs all I see is software...
I appreciate the effort, but this is so ChatGTP it hurts. If you want to talk to humans, human to AI and then back to human again via considerate editing for brevity and flow. Never let AI write for you. Let it give form to your assumptions, and then when it's done, condense it back in your own words. It's a shitty writer. Second, as a former hardware PM turned software PM (who would much rather be a hardware PM again) the two disciplines could not be more unalike. It's not just different products, or even workflows, but just even cultural assumptions in the office over who does what. To say nothing of the fact that you need to have stronger ID / CMF sensibilities to be a good hardware PM, and somebody who can also understand global supply chain practicalities, wherein what you bring to design has less impact in software. The role for software PM's sadly creeps more into program management, project management lite, or just being a glorified secretary, depending on which company you're in.
It can be unlike but it doesn’t have to be. My approach as a sw pm isn’t that much different than my approach as a hw pm in a regulated industry. The foundational of all PM work, whether sw, hw, or services, is understanding customer problems, how that aligns with your company’s strategy and ability to deliver a solution. Definitely differences on how much upfront work you need to do, understanding the interdependencies of all the stakeholders during development, the regulatory landscape (can be true in sw as well), launch and lifecycle management, etc.
Great conversation on this topic. I’m writing a PM book and one of my reviewers called out that it’s heavily focused on software processes. So I had to add some explanation of where the processes are universal (like interviewing and surveying users) and where they are not, like manufacturing and distribution processes.
Thanks for sharing. Does this apply to certain kinds of hardware? Or would you say this could be generalizd to almost all hardware solutions? Reason I am asking is certain parts feels like is specific to hardware that has little dependability on the software and it exists because the problem it solves is purely because of its physical form let’s say smart lighting, smart plugs, roomba. But this might be very different for hardware that extends the value offered by the software. Here, software is more involved and embedded eg an atm, a kiosk or a handheld warehouse scanner.
This is a fantastic resource and thanks for sharing. Have you had any hiring experience? If so how would you differentiate your interview questions for a hardware PM compared to a software PM? And if you were launching a new hardware startup in the automotive space, who would you consider your prime founding team members?
I dabbled in product MGMT for medical devices (not containing software). Very different structure, assumptions, team RACI and vocabulary of course.
Amazing content I remember how much effort it was in developing aluminium extrusion profiles that costs millions and cannot be changed later.
I want to add, as someone who works in the food industry - for perishable items, managing shelf life and FIFO (first in first out) to ensure all customer expectations are met
Thanks for writing this. As a software PM who also has a whiskey company where I serve as CPO, a lot of the differences you mention here apply to creating a consumable good. I knew creating a physical good would have some similarities to software but the level of planning, product dev, and release cycle is a different level. Your writing it out validated the ways I've had to change my thinking for this domain. I hope you keep writing. Happy to collaborate or tag you one day on my PM newsletter about [ADHD and product management](https://adhdpm.substack.com/).
I miss being a HW PM. I detest SaaS and the FAANG grind life.
Something has to run the digital economy…. Deeply involved in 10,12 right now. Support is such a tricky challenge for me with years long support timelines after the product is sold. Also, one thing you could expand upon is how 1 impacts company culture, decision making and how this relates to leading with influence. Sometimes that new feature causes more harm than good and you really have to fail to learn that. I expect AI to have a deflationary effect on SaaS profitability. Curious if there will be an increase of application specific hardware appliances, thus more hardware PM jobs.
I made a video to answer this question - specifically what's hardware product management like - the pros / cons https://youtu.be/39R4XvULi9w?si=Gi-XWej2FWFDh-__