Product Engineering and Product Management: Are They Connected?

Any given organization has to deal with myriad factors other than just the customers and products. You see, internal operations are typically elaborate processes. It must be in perfect harmony to ensure they can successfully continue to deliver the targeted value. Therefore, it is especially true for product engineering and product management. Unfortunately, many people often confuse the two. It is imperative to clarify that confusion and understand the relationship between the two concepts before we can even understand their true potential.

We will start with the basics then: Product engineering is the process of building a product and ensuring its maintenance. But it’s not easy as it may appear at the moment because the product must be first conceptualized, as must the business strategy in the context of this product. And guess who brings that to the table? Product management. Then you put it together with solution design and hand it over to the project engineering team. It is how they determine the most suitable architecture, platform, and other such details.

As you can see, product engineering and product management are inter-connected. However, given the nature of the process, i.e., the product manager’s vision is brought to life by the product engineering team. And, it is the one who would think product management is higher up on the hierarchy. That’s not true; the two functions complement each other, instead.

Now let’s look at some of the other ways these two teams assist and aid each other.

1. The product engineering team’s input about the feasibility of new ideas can be highly valuable to the product management team, trying to come up with a unique offering. They can also help the latter with new ideas for products, features, to help take the process to the next level
2. The product engineering team can also be a part of the discussions involving end-users and customers. Applying them in these conversations will not only help them give a better understanding of the customers’ requirements. It will also help them innovate in pursuit of the means to fulfill customers’ needs and expectations.
3. When the engineering team is involved in the process from scratch, i.e., from product discovery, the results are much better. They can help the product management team to gauge costs associated with various ideas, find better solutions to fulfill customers’ requirements, and so much more. The more the two groups are in sync, the better the product and the overall process will be.

Suffice it to say that these two concepts are highly intertwined despite the distinctive nature of their work and responsibilities. And as companies go through one product development lifecycle after another, it is clear to see that they stand to gain much from co-ordination between these two teams. However, a viable alternative to this is to engage the services of a trusted software product engineering company to help you develop high-quality products without all the fuss.