9 Product Management Tools

Becoming a successful Product Manager is difficult if your information regarding Product Management tools is scarce. In this blog, you’ll get to know all the Product Management tools.

Introduction Product Management Tools

Product Management tools assist Product Management teams in carrying out part or all stages of the product life cycle, from planning, researching, and designing a product to launching, evaluating, and recapitulating it.

Prototyping, creating a product mapping, user guide, customer research, product road mapping, feature prioritization, managing sprints, analyzing product data, process mapping, and managing product releases are all examples of product-related tasks for which product teams use Product Management tools.

Product Management solutions are also essential for remote Product Management teams who require a centralized location to create and manage their products.

Techniques for Product Management and project management have a lot in common. Several of the top tools on this list, for instance, provide modules to assist with the project management techniques and Product Management processes.

Applications for Product Management are an administrative tool used to develop and enhance a company’s products rapidly and effectively. These tools allow Product Managers and their teams to gather fresh concepts and establish detailed strategies to turn them into products. Although Product Managers and product teams typically utilize these tools, they also give other departments, such as marketing and sales, additional transparency and insight into product development.

Various capabilities are available in Product Management tools to help organize and carry out product planning. A product team’s progress is continuously tracked by roadmap features, enabling timeline modifications and breaking down a workflow from ideation to product launch.

 A key component of road mapping is prioritization, where Product Managers can direct a team’s efforts toward the most important projects or backlog them for later consideration. Additionally, Product Management systems give development teams access to tools for resource allocation, product portfolio management, and agile workflows, including sprint planning, user testing, and bug tracking. Collaboration tools like chat or comment threads may be available in some Product Management tools. The organizational task of Product Management focuses on achieving a product’s strategic and financial objectives. Product Managers use various Product Management tools to cover all bases.

In this instance, you receive tools for product team management, product development, and product life cycle management that are either packaged together or available as individual modules that you may activate as needed. There are several tools available now to make Product Management simpler. This encompasses all the tactical work required to build features, like generating wireframes and setting product strategies. While it is beneficial to have a general understanding of the numerous tools accessible, you must also be picky.

Selection Criteria for Product Management Tools

By monitoring, displaying, and analyzing user behavior to determine what engages or disengages users, these technologies enable you to employ user research in product development.

Tools for project management offer a space for planning, teamwork, and communication.

1. Apps User interface: 

Does the app’s user interface look clear, simple, and up to date across all functioning systems, including phone and web versions?

2. Usability: 

How challenging is the product to learn? Do they provide good customer service across various channels such as mobile, chats, etc.? Do they have training, credentials, blogs, or other learning aids available?

3. Features and functionality:

• Task management:  Does the solution offer a way to manage and arrange that are related to particular products? Are those task navigation solutions appropriate for product testing and development?
• Idea for capturing roadmaps on the app: Since not all features are immediately necessary, a smart product development platform should save space for a functionality wish list and brainstorming output.
• Product Templates: Are product templates available in the operating system to make it simple to store functional files, information, and discussions?
• Customer feedback integration: Can the Product Management teams gather feedback from customers or team members through email, live chats, browser-based tools for help, and customer feedback integrations? Are the aforementioned tools allocating the feedback into easily understood and usual results?

4. Integration:

The Product Management solution includes a mechanism to connect with third-party apps to enable operation systems, such as an app store.

5. Money value: 

Does the pricing match the available features, capabilities, and use case? Is the pricing transparent, clear, and worth it according to the app’s features? A Product Management tool is any tool utilized in a product-related work, such as : 

• Product road mapping
• User journey mapping
• Prioritization of features
• Controlling product launches

Testing tools are specific Product Management tools, whereas video conferencing software has a more general application.

Brief Descriptions of the Top Nine Product Management Tools

The most appropriate instrument to employ will rely on the activities at hand because needs and skills differ widely. Additionally, it depends on your niche and goods. Even though the list isn’t exhaustive, these tools serve important purposes at various points in the Product Management cycle. There are many Product Management technologies available to make this process simpler.

1. Split: 

With the support of feature flags, alerts, and impact-driven A/B testing, Split enables product teams to shorten the development cycle, reduce release risk, and foster an impact-driven culture.

The tool can present you with the most useful data, is easily accessible, and keeps you updated, thanks to its wide range of available connectors.

Up to ten seats can be accommodated with pricing options that start at zero dollars. Organizations must upgrade to the full platform experience for more significant projects, and teams are encouraged to contact one another to explore price options and add-on features.

2. Pendo: The Product Adoption Tool 

The last user monitoring and analytics tool on our list, Pendo, focuses mostly on user onboarding and adoption. Teaching and persuading users to use your product might be challenging, but Pendo strives to shorten the learning curve and enhance the user experience.

Its main product features are user insights, in-app instructions, product feedback, and road mapping capabilities. In order to better understand how customers interact with your product, it also provides a wealth of mobile-specific data.

Pendo has four pricing tiers—free, team, pro, and enterprise—all of which call for contact. Pendo is a flexible tool that you may customize to meet your needs by choosing to buy particular features, such as its feedback or digital adoption capabilities.

3. Airfocus

The first and only modular Product Management on the market, air focus is designed exclusively for product teams to manage internal products, external products, portfolios, and more. The adaptable platform assists product teams in managing strategy, comprehending consumer needs, prioritizing, and bringing their teams together around well-defined roadmaps.

Users of Airfocus may easily create their roadmaps using the user-friendly drag-and-drop interface and the collection of completely customizable templates based on tried and true Product Management and road mapping. 

Airfocus is unique in that it allows consumers to add their configurable scoring criteria to score and rank each project and feature of your product. Product Management that struggles with reliable priority rankings will benefit specifically from these characteristics.

4. Maze – The Tool For Rapid Testing 

Maze is a platform for rapid testing that enables you to quickly test anything, including prototypes, copies, or gathering user feedback—all in one location. Gather valuable information from many teams, then work together to improve the user experience.

In addition to being a pioneer in usability and remote testing, this quick testing tool provides other beneficial features, including quantitative data, heatmaps, and automated reports. With Maze reporting, your test findings are transformed into useful data that is presented in a visually appealing, customizable report.

You can import an existing prototype from your preferred design tool using the platform’s extensive direct connectors.

Maze provides three pricing options. You can manage three projects and invite an infinite number of colleagues under the Free plan.

5. Canny

Canny is another solution for Product Management that aims to collect user insights for new product creation and enhancement. It enables you to gather, arrange, and examine product feedback in one location.

Utilizing Canny, you can prioritize feature requests and create a product roadmap by filtering customer reviews. When a new feature is released, you can use the platform to automatically notify contributors to keep them informed and maintain a healthy feedback loop. Companies with demands that go beyond these are welcome to contact us for a tailored solution.

6. The Dragon Boat

Dragonboat links your objectives and desired results to ongoing product development and resource allocation procedures.

Dragon is a comprehensive and user-friendly platform for managing product portfolios for teams who prioritize results. Dragon Boat provides integrated product planning, resource forecasting, automated tracking, dynamic stakeholder reporting, customer feedback, and roadmaps.

Product Managers may prioritize features, collect and consolidate feedback and requests and create with Dragonboat. Companies’ stakeholders can follow along with permission-controlled roles like Reader and editor.

You can allocate resources in Dragon to initiatives, objectives, and key results (Orks). To make sure you are making the most use of your team’s time, you may monitor the direct ROI of new product features and updates.

7. ProdPad

A lean product roadmap tool called ProdPad keeps your team members informed and on the same page. Product Management experts will value features like product templates, annotated design and versioning, and accurate user personas.

Some users can struggle with ProdPad’s browsing and search capabilities, which are not nearly as simple as they could be (good luck finding that “one” critical thing in your ideas bank). This discomfort can be reduced by routine cleanup and internal naming guidelines.

With integration through Zapier, integration choices include Slack, Trello, Jira,  Directory, Azure DevOps, Confluence, doorbell, Dropbox, Github, google apps, Pivotal Tracker, Rally, TFS, and user’s voice, and more than 1000 other services.

When we include Idea Capturing as a requirement in the Product Management tools evaluation criteria listed above, ProdPad goes to great lengths to ensure that their planning, ideas, and roadmaps solutions are robust; they meet and surpass what I am looking for.

8. Productboard 

Productboard is a system for managing products that companies like Microsoft and Zendesk use. It assists the team in determining the target audience’s needs, focusing on features to develop (and when to develop), and bringing everyone together around the company’s product roadmap.

The range and depth of third-party integration options with well-known project management software were one of the things we looked for evaluation. Productboard provides a few integration choices; however, there is a little drawback: they have fewer connections available than others on our list.

Slack, Intercom, Zendesk, Sight, Trello, Jira, Pivotal Tracker, and GitHub are some of the integrations. 

9. Chameleon

A Product Management solution called Chameleon can meet all of your requirements for in-product involvement. It’s one thing to release your product; it’s quite another to monitor and guarantee its retention.

Chameleon enables you to provide product tours to encourage activation, tooltips to increase adoption, and survey tools to gather user input to inform future product decisions, all of which contribute to the success of your product.

For monthly users, Chameleon offers a free trial. Plans differ based on monthly users and can be changed as needed.

Organizations seeking more alternatives can sign up for the Growth Plan, which provides priority assistance and unrestricted access to everything (micro surveys, launchers, etc.).

Conclusion

These tools offer useful features for various phases of the Product Management cycle, while the list is not exhaustive. They frequently work in tandem with one another. Product Management tools are important in a Product Manager’s arsenal since they allow you to test your product and get client feedback. To deliver a product that satisfies consumers’ needs, a Product Manager should have a wide range of Product Management tools at their disposal. There is a tool for every Product Management task, from creating a product roadmap to creating a product strategy.

We hope you’ve found something to help you continue reaching your objectives, whether you’re searching for thorough Product Management software or a solution to enhance team communication. If you are an aspiring Product Manager, here is the perfect program for you with competitive pedagogy and the opportunity to connect with peers of the same interest – the PG Certificate Program in Product Management. This is a robust program designed by industry experts from IIM Indore and UNext Jigsaw.