Challenges in IoT Product management

Photo by BENCE BOROS on Unsplash

I'm a member of several slack groups revolving about product management. On one group I
encountered a question about "What it is to be a product manager in IoT space and how it differs from being a pure SW PM?", so I thought I'd write a small blog post about the challenges and differences.

1. The usage conditions matter

You really have to know where your users are using the software and hardware. Probably they want to take them in airplanes, want to go diving with it or use it in industrial environment. The users might be guys that drop stuff all the time. The users might not have computer all the time with them, but are "on the field"  with nothing more than a small screen mobile phone. The hardware itself has to endure the conditions and software has to adapt. What it there is no network coverage? All these add a bit of complexity to your product, since the job has to be done no matter how bad the network or how extreme the conditions

2. IoT has a lot of regulations

In IoT there are things that needs to be addressed all the time, especially if the HW is going globally around the world or is used in special conditions. There are a lot of country or area wide network regulations that might even stop you from providing your products to different countries. I personally am not a deep-diving expert in these, but I have to be aware about all CE-markings, different EN -standards, IP classifications for water and dust proofing, FDA regulations etc. And these might even go on country level!

3. Hardware has longer lifespan than SW

You have to keep in mind that hardware has longer lifespan. You can't build a feature and just test it cheap and scrap it if it didn't work, or even improve it easily. There are things to take in account: How it's manufactured, how it's provisioned, how to replace the hardware with next generation.. You have to think about the complete lifespan of a product, even keeping the next iteration in mind. What if there is a bad component in manufacturing and you have to replace it or firmware was left with a bug and you didn't think of on-the-air updates in hw? Callbacks might not be an option and error like this might impact your brand seriously.

4. It's not only hardware!

Even though I talked about hardware, the customer and customer experience is always in the middle. The software itself is not all what IoT is, it's the interoperability between software and hardware. You have to be able to create added value to the customers through the software. Let's say you're providing home automation IoT - at least I'd love to be able to control it through my mobile when I'm away. I don't how the hardware does it, as soon as I can rely that when I press a button on my mobile, the main water valve is closed. I'd even be interested if the magnetic water valve wasn't operating as it should or if the water flow is still running or exceeded last month's flow. Interaction to IoT is usually done through mobile- or web browser experiences and this is the real contact point with the customer what can make it or break it.

5. The acquisition is not as flexible

Whether you're on consumer IoT or B2B, it's still relatively new, it's still in kind of a early adopter phase in many places and the IoT networks just aren't as covered as mobile (well, in Finland mobile networks are just awesome, no matter where you are). This might bring companies using mobile networks for IoT, but for example 2G and 3G networks are going to shut down at some point - some planning it even for this year - but you're customers don't know it. It's really hard for customers to understand all the challenges included in IoT if they're not experts with it - and because of the hype around IoT, they just expect a lot more! You have to be able to educate customers before they buy to provide the best and easiest experience possible from purchase to installation and constant use.

6. From SW to HW and visa versa

For most product managers that have been tackling only SW it's going to be a challenge to talk with the hardware team. You have to be interested and understand the challenges in hardware side. On the other hand if you've been on hardware, you also need to understand the software side - and at best you can pair the experts from both to get seamless experience. After all the customer experience is about finding a fit of easy to use and understand value.

7. Protect what you do

Let's face it, HW and SW are suspect to copying. It's usually relatively easy to copy and at least the someone (not saying Chinese or competitors..) can provide alternatives quite fast. If you are creating something revolutionary, protect it in any way possible. Keep in mind that your product might fail just because someone copied it and marketed it more efficiently than you could. There are a lot of bigger and smaller players and the industry is rising.