Building a great product is no easy feat. From prototyping to planning out your roadmap, product managers will need to use different tools for each step of the way.
Building a software product is like building your own canoe: if you don't have the right tools for each part of the process, you're sunk.
Whether it’s for task management or feature prioritization, the right tools help product managers automate repetitive tasks, better manage their team, and gather feedback. We've compiled the best tools for each part of the job, so you can pick the ones that meet your needs.
Task Management and Delegation
A big part of a product manager’s role is managing tasks and delegating them effectively to other team members. Project management technology allows them to keep track of all tasks in one place and monitor their team's progress.
1. Asana
Asana is a top project management tool that gives product managers options of how to structure their tasks with timelines, list views, boards, and more.
The platform allows you to leverage automation to take care of some of the most repetitive tasks involved in managing a team. These include setting up due dates, moving new tasks to a project, giving stakeholders visibility to the project, and more.
A key aspect of Asana is its reporting capabilities with real-time insights on your team’s work. You can track the productivity of each team department and visualize data to spot problems before they get in the way of product development.
As a bonus, Asana provides users with access to 50+ templates to manage their tasks. It also integrates with over 100 third-party apps such as Slack, Zoom, and Salesforce.
2. Trello
Trello offers a minimalist approach to assigning and prioritizing tasks for your team in the form of a Kanban board. It’s known for its simple-to-use interface that makes it easy to get started even with no prior experience.
While Trello is straightforward to use, it’s missing a lot of advanced functionality, such as reporting. It’s a good platform for smaller product teams just getting started, but as you begin to scale, you may want a project management tool more suited to complex needs.
3. ClickUp
ClickUp is a project management platform that goes beyond task delegation capabilities. Its users get access to reminders, custom calendars, docs, and a special inbox they can use to communicate with other team members.
One of its other useful features is the ability to create wikis and knowledge bases within its platform. This is helpful for product teams that want to explain the functionality behind each feature they plan to build for other departments.
Another aspect that makes ClickUp stand out is its large integration stack. Even if they don’t currently integrate with a tool you’re looking for, you can build it independently with its API.
Product Prototyping
Prototyping allows product teams to understand what a software solution will look like, what it will do, and how it will function. Product managers need tools that allow them to quickly design and test an idea or a feature before an official release.
4. Proto.io
Proto.io is a tool that allows product managers to build a prototype without too much coding or technical knowledge. It’s all thanks to its drag-and-drop interface, which gives you the building blocks you need to launch your first prototype and collaborate with your team.
Proto.io comes with various collaboration and sharing tools that make it easy to showcase your project to your team. For example, you can enable video recording of your prototype that you can share within the platform so others can provide their feedback. It also comes with integrations with tools such as Userbrain to collect feedback from beta users.
The sky’s the limit when designing your product prototype: Proto.io users get access to 250+ UI components, 1,000+ templates, and 6,000+ digital assets.
5. Sketch
Sketch is an intuitive solution for drawing and designing your product prototype with your team, with many collaboration tools and an extensive content library at your disposal. Its design tool kit includes grids, layouts, math operators, and more.
With Sketch, all team members can work together on the same document and provide their feedback. You can then easily share your project to get stakeholders’ feedback. Keep in mind, however, that Sketch is only available for Mac users.
6. InVision
InVision is a digital design tool for product ideation and prototyping to review and test potential releases with your team. You get access to various pre-built templates to use a wireframe for your product or feature and then share with your team to collect input.
To streamline the product development process, you can connect InVision to tools you’re already using, such as Slack. That way, you can facilitate collaboration and feedback between team departments as you’re coming up with ideas for new features.
Your development team can use InVision’s Inspect feature to understand the design details they need to build the product. As a result, they’ll be able to go from feature ideation to development much more quickly.
Product Roadmapping
Product roadmapping involves outlining the product development process based on priorities, vision, and long-term goals. Be on the lookout for a tool that makes it easy to prioritize features, plan product development, and collect feedback from other departments.
7. ProductPlan
ProductPlan is a roadmapping platform that allows teams to create their roadmap in just a few clicks, thanks to its drag and drop feature. You can present your product roadmap in different layouts, such as timelines, lists, tables, or portfolios. Some of its users include companies such as Microsoft, Nike, and HubSpot.
There’s an unlimited amount of roadmaps you can create within ProductPlan’s platform. You get unlimited free viewer accounts when you want to share the roadmap with other team members. You also have the ability to include comments and mentions so everyone in your product team can provide their thoughts on the roadmap.
8. ProductBoard
ProductBoard allows product managers to consolidate all of their customer feedback in one place to help prioritize which features to build in the roadmap. You can collect all the feedback you’re getting on its platform, whether it’s from Slack, Intercom, Zendesk, or other tools you’re using.
It includes a unique data-driven prioritization tool to evaluate features based on their business criteria, estimated effort, and priorities. That way, you have data that backs up every decision you’re making and are putting the user’s needs first.
You can customize and personalize your roadmap with ProductBoard based on different audiences, such as the various departments you’re working with. As a result, it improves cross-functional collaboration between team members and helps them understand why a particular feature is essential.
9. Roadmunk
Roadmunk is another product management tool to organize your product development strategy and align with various team departments. It comes with two scoring templates to prioritize features in the product roadmap: the RICE method and Value vs. Effort.
A unique feature that comes with Roadmunk is its Chrome Extension for your sales and support team to collect user feedback. They’ll be able to collect feedback from channels such as email, support chats, browser-based tools, and whatever CRMs you’re using.
From there, after prioritizing features and collecting user feedback, Roadmunk allows you to convert that data into roadmaps to outline product development. You can use a timeline format to structure your roadmap and include milestones you want to reach.
User Survey and Feedback Collection
To build a product customers love, product managers must actively collect user feedback to understand their needs better. The right technology helps automate this process to save you time.
10. Typeform
Most forms on websites are dull-looking and don’t make users want to complete them, which is why Typeform focuses on building engaging forms users will actually want to fill out.
It achieves this by making forms feel like a conversation with your user instead of an interrogation. As a result, you’ll generate higher completion rates and drive more thoughtful responses from your target audience.
To optimize the design of your forms, you get access to built-in photo and video libraries to catch the user’s attention. It’s an excellent way to provide your user forms a more branded feel.
11. UserBrain
UserBrain is a simple solution that allows product teams to get users to test their platform and collect their thoughts. The software only takes a couple of minutes to set up your user test and a couple of hours to receive your first feedback.
UserBrain offers product companies access to more than 65K beta testers across different demographics and devices. You can also invite your own customers or friends to test your product themselves. The platform will then send you videos of users interacting with your product in real-time.
Watching these beta tests in action will help you identify any usability issues and get insights into what you’re doing wrong in the product experience. From there, you can use the data to make improvements to your product.
12. UserReport
UserReport allows you to reach out to customers via user surveys and feedback widgets.
For example, you can use the tool to ask customers to provide you a Net Promoter Score (NPS) to rate how likely they are to refer your product to others. It’s a good indicator of your product experience’s quality.
With feedback widgets, users can let product teams know about any bugs in the software the development team can fix. The feedback widgets also allow users to vote on which new features they want the most so you can start building them.
User Engagement Tracking
In addition to collecting user feedback, product managers must also keep track of their customer’s engagement throughout the product experience. User engagement tools should provide you with various metrics to track how engaged users are at different touchpoints of their journey.
13. Amplitude
Amplitude is an analytics tool with various features to understand the behavior of users. These include data visualization, customer journey mapping, and user interaction tracking.
It allows you to understand which specific features of your product translate to more revenue, brand loyalty, and customer lifetime value. In addition, you can explore user behavior data across various factors to understand how different buyer personas engage with your product.
With its timeline feature, you can also observe the impact of all the changes you implemented and how they improved user engagement. The platform also allows you to extract all user data into reports you can then share with your team.
14. Mixpanel
Mixpanel’s platform helps you understand why users choose your product, what retains them, and what gets them to come back. With a simple click, you instantly get an idea of which products are the most popular with your users and who are your most loyal customers.
You can identify at which touchpoints customers end up churning and why with customer funnel reports. With the data, you and your team can find ways to optimize these touchpoints to retain more users and increase customer lifetime value.
15. Pendo
Pendo is an advanced analytics and reporting tool to help product teams create the digital experience users expect. The software can answer important questions for your product team, such as which features customers are using the most and which they are ignoring.
Pendo allows you to track your product usage across different platforms, such as web, mobile, and multi-app. As you analyze your entire product journey, you’ll start seeing trends, such as which type of segmented users is more engaged with your product.
Make Your Life Easier with the Best Product Management Tools
Being a product manager really means having several jobs at once, and you need the right tools for each of them. Which tools are right for you will depend on your team’s needs and your specific preference, but this list is a great starting point to help you find the technology you need.
