IoT- Product Management — Part I
Ok Google, turn the volume to 40. Ok Google, turn on the Bluetooth. Google, turn on the news radio for today and etc. Those voice commands are what my son normally gives to our “Google Home” device at home every day. One of my colleagues told me that “Alexa, turn off the light” is a must say sentence from her son before sleeping. Another scenario, you can see a lot of “digital” information showing on the panel in front of the driver seat, so you think that you are likely to be inside a spaceship. But the reality is that you are in a Tesla autonomous car. Besides that, there are tons of Internet of Things (IoT) devices that we are using them at all time without knowing because they have already become a part of our lives.


So, it seems more and more of our decisions are made based on the analyzed data generated by the different kinds of hardware devices. But, what is an IoT product? How do people “integrate”this complicated hardware and software together? Where do people store and process the massive data then present the final solution to the users on their apps? A lot of people have the same questions as mine: how can a person manage an end-to-end solution for IoT product? Luckily, recently I am attending a course, product management for IoT (Internet of Things), at Stanford Universtiy and I am taught by Professor Daniel Elizalde, one of the “Top IoT Influencers to Follow” on the Internet. Here, I would like to share the fundamental knowledge about the course to the readers.

Meanwhile, I believe most of you can understand the concept of IoT decision process after reading the article. As a non-tech-background learner, I can absorb most of the content through the illustration (shown as below) in the course material and the professor’s detailed explanations in the class. So, let’s look at the concept of product manager for IoT:
First of all, what is an IoT product? Based on the professor’s hands-on experience in the industry, an IoT product is “A product that combines hardware and software, measures real-world signals and connects to the Internet to provide value to a customer.” Thence, there are five different technology layers involved in the IoT product from a hardware, software, communication, cloud platform to cloud application. Still, the manager needs to consider different scenarios before making decisions based on the specific professional fields, which are UX (user experience), data, business, technology, security, and standards & regulations.

As mentioned in the previous section, the final goal is to provide value to the customer. In other words, the role of the product manager is building products that add value to the customers (solve the problems) and companies (make profits). In short, the product manager needs to find out the pain points from the UX (users’ experiences) of each technology layer (stack). The most common method is using personas (shown as below image) to profile the relevant stakeholders and then prioritize the sequence based on their impacted degree on the products because the goal is to solve the customers’ problems — selling the solutions to the customers.

The second area of decision is data. What kind of the data and its flow direction in each technology layer are essential to the IoT project managers. Most people always think to collect as much data as they can is the best way due to they may use those data in the future. However, the reality is that also may cause a lot of unnecessary cost and time wasting because they don’t ever use them forever. Meanwhile, the budget issue is also an essential influence issue. Everyone wants to have the highest quality and fastest delivery for the products, but the budget of the product fixed based on the marketing department’s feedback. Before handing out your proposal to the mock-up stage, you have to re-evaluate the whole process based on the fixed budget even you have to back and forth to discuss the issue and find out the best balance point between the product quality and cost with the relevant engineers in each technology layer.

The professor quoted J.B Wood and Thomas Lah, the CEO and Executive Director at TSIA, from their book, ‘The Technology-as-a-Service Playbook’: “XaaS is not just technology that is priced by the month and hosted in the cloud. It’s a new way of running a tech company. And it’s powered by your real-time connections to the customer.” The third decision area, business, is all about revenue and cost because the organization has to make profits for a long-term business running plan. The traditional way of making profits is most likely from a one-time or single order, but here, IoT products/services emphasized on recurring revenue. The types of recurring revenue sources in the organization can be varied and the following image can explain the types of recurring revenues. Thence, the product managers have to think about how to generate the recurring revenue from each technology layer, but managers have to think about which layer of technology is(are) their core value(s); in other words, what their strength of the organization is. Some organizations may have a lot of talents and experts focusing on software and cloud applications, so they can focus on those two layers then purchase others from outside vendors for cost-effective consideration. Overall, the key point is making profits by reinforcing the company’s strength and limitation the weakness, then focusing on the recurring revenue for the long-term operating.

Will release Part II soon and thanks for your patience.