Product Management Tools
Product management tools are software applications that assist product teams with some or all parts of the product lifecycle, including planning, researching, and designing, as well as launching, assessing, and iterating on a product. Product management software is an organizational tool for rapidly developing and improving a company’s goods. These tools allow product managers and their teams to gather new ideas and create detailed strategies for turning those ideas into actual products. While these technologies are intended for product managers and teams, they also enable more transparency and insight into product development for other departments such as marketing and sales. Product management software comes with a variety of capabilities that help you organize and execute your product strategy. Roadmap features break down a workflow from concept to launch, regularly tracking and allocating resources to a product team. Prototyping, developing a product roadmap, user journey mapping, consumer research, product road mapping, feature prioritization, managing sprints, evaluating product data, process mapping, and managing product releases are all essential tasks that product teams use as product management tools. Remote product management teams who need a central location to develop and manage their products can benefit from product management technologies.
Product Management vs Project Management Tools
There’s a lot of overlap between project management and product management software. Many of the top tools on our list, for example, include features to assist with both project and product management. This means you won’t need to utilize multiple tools in most circumstances; instead, you’ll use a single application that includes project management capabilities like resourcing, scheduling, and reporting, as well as product management elements like road mapping, product boards, and product diagrams. In this situation, you’ll get team management software, project management software, and product lifecycle management tools bundled together, or as separate modules that you can activate as needed.
Overviews Of the Best Product Management Tools
- monday.com- Best product management tool for teams of any size Monday.com is a web-based product management tool that helps teams of all sizes plan, track, and manage their daily tasks. Monday.com enables teams to define clear ownership, assess and track their work, organize sprints, and engage together on everything from large-scale product roadmaps to weekly iterations. The agile platform at Monday.com makes it simple for teams to collaborate from anywhere. Monday.com’s Work environment is made up of a combination of visual and flexible elements that may be used to build whatever agile workflow your team needs. Milestones, Gantt and Kanban views, task dependencies, and project analysis are all supported. Monday.com features a user interface that is basic and intuitive, and onboarding is quick and easy.
2. API Fuse- Best product management tool for prioritizing and building customer-facing integrations API Fuse is an embedded integration platform purpose-built for SaaS applications. API Fuse enables product managers to prioritize which integrations to build, as well as respond to their end-user integration requests without adding to their development backlog. Product managers at SaaS companies can showcase their most requested integrations that are relevant to their customers in their own custom branded marketplace. API Fuse also allows product managers to enable their users to connect their disparate apps directly inside their SaaS application. API Fuse is still a new integration solution and therefore has limited connectors compared to other iPaaS solutions in the market. However, they still have hundreds of widely adopted applications via pre-built connectors and their team can build any relevant integrations your users are requesting as part of their pricing model.
3. Jira- Known as the #1 software development tool for agile teams Jira is a project management solution for agile teams who need to take a product from concept to hard launch and beyond. Scrum boards, roadmaps, agile reporting, and customized workflow can all be found in Jira software, which may help any product lifecycle management team. Despite Jira’s well-balanced features-for-pricing set, some users may be put off by minor issues. It can be difficult to customize columns within a workflow. However, this isn’t a deal-breaker for the show. Jira features over 3000 third- and first-party apps that interface with the primary platform to add additional functionality through the Atlassian Marketplace. Google Drive, Draw.io, Microsoft Teams, GitHub, Slack, and Balsamiq are just a few examples. Jira includes a plethora of Usability aids for individuals new to product management, which is something I place a high emphasis on in my review criteria. They have Training and Certificate choices on their website, as well as an active blog for more learning.
4. Productboard- It’s a product management system that helps you with consumer research, prioritizing, and product road mapping as you build new products. Productboard is a product management system that helps your team understand what your target users need, prioritize what features to build (and when), and unify everyone from planning to QA around your product roadmap. It’s used by companies like Microsoft and Zendesk. The depth and breadth of third-party connectivity options with popular project management systems were some of the things I looked for in my assessment. While Productboard has several connectivity options, it has fewer connections than the majority of the companies on this list. Integrations include Slack, Intercom, Zendesk, Gainsight, Trello, Jira, Pivotal Tracker, and GitHub. Productboard does a lot of things well but one thing in particular that stood out is the usefulness for being able to aggregate product insights and customer requirements/requests across multiple inboxes, including slack. If an ongoing product feedback loop is important to you, Productboard will stand out.
5.Asana- From modest tasks to larger efforts, Asana helps teams organize their work. Asana, which is based in San Francisco, has over 107,000 paying customers and millions of free organizations spread throughout 190 countries. Amazon, Japan Airlines, Sky, and Under Armour are just a few of the global companies that use Asana to manage everything from business goals to digital transformation to product launches and marketing activities.
6. Software for making presentations (like PowerPoint or Keynote)
We frequently point out how ineffective roadmap presentation tools are. However, this does not negate the importance of PowerPoint or Keynote in your product management toolkit. Presentation decks may be extremely useful for conveying high-level strategies, visions, and plans both within your company and to external audiences such as clients. For example, vision decks can be an effective technique to communicate your product’s vision to a group of executive stakeholders and gain their support. Presentations can also be a powerful tool for sales training and informing industry analysts about your product.
Product Management Tool Selection Criteria
What criteria do we use to choose the best review tools? The following is a list of my evaluation criteria:
User interface (UI): Is the app’s user interface (UI) clean, intuitive, and modern-looking across several operating systems, including mobile and PC versions?
Usability: How difficult is the software to learn? Is it able to provide acceptable customer service via various channels (phone, chat, email, etc.)? Do they have the necessary training, credentials, blogs, webinars, or other resources to help them learn?
Task Management: Is there a way to organize and manage product-specific activities in the tool? Is the task navigation software appropriate for product development and testing?
Idea Capturing / Roadmaps: Not every feature is a “must-have” right away, thus any decent product management solution should leave room for functionality wish lists and brainstorming results.
Product Spec Templates: Do you have product spec templates in your product management system for convenient storage of functional data, files, and discussions?
Considerations to Make Before Choosing Product Management Software
First and foremost, let’s be clear. It’s all about the money. Product managers can range from remote workers providing support to a variety of small businesses to PM executives in large digital firms with global reach. Budgeting in both scenarios will be different. You should also be conscious of customs: you may work for a huge corporation, yet management may be accustomed to using “freemium” services rather than paying for complete services.
Now, since we’re talking about prices, be sure you’ve got top-notch security protocols in place. How much information are you willing to share with others? You’ve probably experienced a compromising breach.
References:
https://theproductmanager.com/tools/product-management-tools/
https://www.productplan.com/learn/product-management-tools/
