Product Managers! 7 tools tailor made for your needs

List of Best Product Management Software

Product Management is believed to be a cocktail of responsibilities spanning across functions like business analysis, product design, project management, negotiation, leadership, marketing and sales, by having a vision for the product. The scale of activities performed by Product Managers depends upon how Product Management function evolved in the company and the skill gaps existing in the organization. But the absolute truth is, a Product Manager just needs to do three things: research and develop the roadmap, articulate the idea and execute the vision for the product. Repeat.

Personally I have been in search of tools to help me rock-on with at-most efficiency, as a Product Manager. Here I am sharing with you my finds (Quite a few are still in beta. still I will add them to this list) and before that, here is the criteria I used for the search.

1. Roadmap tool with the capability to manage ideas and feedback.(Perhaps! I am not talking about an idea management tool)
2. Maintain priorities and help with decision making
3. Engage with stakeholders
4. Visualize high level milestones and associate with collaborators from different streams
5. Integration with project management/feature tracking tools and other supporting software
6. Interactive design
7. Affordable Price

(Stealth/Enterprise product managers might have security requirements too! But I am happy with standard UserName/Password or OAuth login from Google/Twitter)

ProdPad

The product touted to be a strategic communication tool that drives the vision for the product, pretty much covers all the requirements mentioned above. It is quite exhaustive, offering a way to visualize the roadmap, collaborate with teams and manage features, feedback and their priorities. On the down side its interface is pretty overwhelming and I am not able to keep my focus on the tasks. Also workflows get pretty complex at times. It’s priced per user and with higher plans you get features like persona management, roadmap management and integrations. $59/month plan seems to be the most adopted one.

ProdThink

ProdThink is primarily used to capture and centralize feedback on product features. You can collect in-app feedback from users, on your new/existing features. Also you can share the roadmap with stakeholders to get their vote and measure interest levels. The pricing varies depending upon the number of admin licenses required and screen recordings you would want to perform.

Reqqs

The product is still in development and is not available for beta yet. It claims to help prioritize the features effectively by taking into account the revenue, strategic value, customer adoption and cost of development and launch. It also plans to offer collaboration and feedback option on the ideas. The roadmap includes presentation, analysis and idea building capabilities which sound interesting. It is too early to comment on its viability.

Aha.io

Aha.io allows requirements management, status/timeline tracking to manage deadlines, feature assignments, capacity planning and roadmap management. In a way the product offers more of project management capabilities than for product management. The interface looks too verbose and crowded. On the plus side it offers integration with Jira, Github and web hooks. The plans start at a minimum of $59/user/month.

Interstate

Interstateapp supports building roadmaps and managing them as projects, also allowing us to engage our user community during development process. It does not yet help us to visualize a collective roadmap rather shows the status of items epic/feature wise. It is the most competitively priced product among the lot which offers a free version for 1 project and 2 users and priced at $9/person/month when you have superior needs.

I am sure the list would grow with more products and capabilities. The existing list of products offer a great market validation that a Product Manager’s workflows are standardized and comprehensive.