There are 2 views of PMs I’ve worked with.
PM as initiator — PM figures out why, what, and who. Everything else is someone else’s problem.
PM as quarterback — PM is responsible for success of product, measured by the product P&L. Responsible doesn’t mean the PM does everything, but they’re responsible for ensuring it all gets done.
Shipping — whether you narrowly define it by engineering handoff, or by fulfillment (post-engineering handoff, including customer transaction with money) — is an integral part of definition #2, but not #1.
My last set of management leaned towards definition #1. The C-suite decreed that pricing, delivery, service, A/R were all outside of the PM’s purview for all products, whether software, hardware, or blended. This did not work well.
There are many problems in the productization chain which interact with each other. What if the cost of a software deployment due to either excessive bugs or long QA cycles pops up the ongoing COGS? Who gets to manage the meetings where these things get thrashed out? The problems don’t go away by saying it’s someone else’s problem.
In a successful company, the ultimate scorecard is reflected by the P&L. That means the entire productization process, from ideation through to delivery, all matters. Production efficiency measured by KPIs like feature and bug fix rates vs. inputs matters. Market perception of the product measured by the order book matters. And ship rate matters.
The PM who ignores a step doesn’t remain a PM for long because the product inevitably stops doing well.
You can guess I’m a proponent of PMs as quarterbacks.