Institute of Product Leadership

37 Tools Every Product Manager Should Swear By in 2021

From conception to completion, product managers are responsible for creating products from scratch, and it is not an easy task. 

While in the past, spreadsheets and presentation decks helped them define their work, all the manual work just made their already difficult task more time-consuming. Leveraging technology, the last few years witnessed an increase in development of product management tools and software. 

We have compiled a list of 37 such product management tools and software that will help product managers plan and implement their projects seamlessly. 

The tools have been segregated into nine broad categories, as below:

  1. Prototyping 
  2. Roadmapping 
  3. Collaboration 
  4. Task Management 
  5. Project Management 
  6. Email Marketing 
  7. Customer Feedback 
  8. Metrics & Analytics 
  9. Wireframes


Prototyping

prototyping
Before everything, you need to prove that you can convert your product vision into something tangible. With these prototyping tools, you can test your product and make them user-friendly. Some of the most popular prototyping tools in the industry include:
  • Invision: This prototyping tool lets you upload your designs and add hotspots to transform your static screens into clickable and interactive prototypes complete with gestures, transitions, and animations. With syncing and version history available, working becomes more effortless.
  • Framer: You can create realistic and responsive layouts while ensuring that your product is closer to production. Framer is known for its interesting resources and interaction specs. It is also available on various platforms like desktops and mobiles, making it easier to work with.
  • Proto.io: This tool lets you create fully-interactive prototypes that look and work exactly the way your app would. The gestures and logic depth allow you to get creative and pull off amazing and robust prototypes using Proto.io.
  • ProtoShare: This prototype tool is easy-to-use for it allows your team to visualize requirements with website wireframes, interactive software, and mobile prototypes in real-time. ProtoShare also acts like a single repository for all communication with stakeholders.
Roadmapping

Roadmapping is fundamental to product management. It helps you draft and maintains your product’s progress. Here are some of the most frequently used product roadmapping tools:

  • Airfocus: This roadmap tool lets you score new features based on the customer’s relative effort and value. It can be easily integrated with other tools such as Asana, Jira, and Trello to keep all involved stakeholders informed about the tasks and developments made.
  • ProdPad: This tool allows you to capture feedback and ideas, create product specifications, and build the roadmap. It actively helps you understand what’s in the backlog and how to prioritize the right tasks. It also helps you write better specs.
  • Aha!: This web-based product roadmapping software allows you to outline your features, ideas, and strategies. It helps you share the roadmaps with all stakeholders and customers. It also allows you to measure your progress and make changes accordingly.
  • ProductPlan: This tool allows you to plan your roadmap and collaborate with your team members. ProductPlan is also known for its fast speed and efficiency. Creating a roadmap within minutes and presenting it to the right audience becomes seamless with this app.


Collaboration

Collaboration

When you are developing a product, cross-functional initiatives are apparent. Different team members may need to collaborate with each other. To ensure easy and immediate means of communication, similar tools are required. Here is a compilation of the best collaboration tools:

  • Confluence: This cloud-based tool from Atlassian centralizes your team’s communication. With confluence, you can capture your project requirements, assign tasks to specific users, and manage several calendars at once. It can also be integrated with other tools such as Jeera.
  • Google Sites: You can either launch an intranet for your company or build a project site for your team or a portal for your customers using this tool. Google Sites is free, fast, and easy to use. It can also be integrated with all other Google tools.
  • Slack: This is one of the most commonly used platforms for easy communication between team members. Slack works on both desktop and mobile versions, which makes it ideal for quick communication. You can also integrate it with other Teams apps.
  • TinyPM: Lightweight and intelligent, this collaboration tool allows you to manage backlogs, create task boards, and much more. It provides a wide range of plans to choose from.

Task Management

Task management tools are essential when capturing ideas, sharing reviews and notes. If you are looking to organize your thoughts when creating a product, these task management tools can be handy. Some of these tools include:

  • Airtable: Your team can use this combination of spreadsheet and database to organize their work according to their preference. You can also use Airtable to store customer databases, engage in Customer Relationship Management (CRM), task management, project planning, and tracking inventory.
  • Evernote: This tool allows you to take notes, track tasks, and save things you find online. You can also share your notes with your colleagues. Evernote also allows you to attach images, video clips, and voice notes.
  • RescueTime: This personal analytics tool enables you to see how to spend your time and provides tips on how to be more productive. It blocks unauthorized websites and tracks the latest trends. RescueTime also comes with a stopwatch.
  • Wunderlist: This task management tool lets you create and collaborate with your colleagues on to-do lists. Wunderlist also sends you alerts and reminders for pending tasks and supports all devices.

Project Management

project management

To ensure that your team is committed to achieving the same goals within the stipulated timeline, it is essential to have project management tools and software at your disposal. Here are some of the most popular tools:

  • Asana: This web and mobile application is designed to enable teamwork without sending emails. Asana not only helps meet deadlines but also ensures that every stakeholder is accountable for their individual tasks.
  • Jira: You can track your team’s issues with this flexible and scalable tool. Jira can be integrated with other third-party software. It is also highly customizable as it allows users to create any type of issue, and customize workflows.
  • Trello: This responsive tool allows you to organize and view all your projects in one dashboard. You can also follow your colleague’s tasks due its Kanban settings. Adding members on Trello is also easy.
  • Wrike: This work management and collaboration platform can be used to track your team’s performance. It can also be used to get feedback over various tasks performed. Wrike offers different plans for different users, further aligning to business needs.

Email Marketing

Reaching out to the audience is essential. With these tools, sending bulk emails to customers or reaching your business goals becomes significantly easier. Some of the leading email marketing tools for project managers include:

  • Aweber: This email marketing tool allows you to segment your subscribers’ lists based on opens, clicks, location, and the pages visited on the website. With Aweber, personalizing your emails to further increase your click-through-rates can be seamless.
  • Goodbits: This tool allows you to design interactive and informative newsletters for your customers. Goodbits offers a wide range of plans, which can be picked according to your business requirements.
  • InfusionSoft: This software combines email marketing, CRM, social media marketing, and e-commerce solutions. You can send targeted emails as this tool allows easy management of the subscriber list.
  • MailChimp: This email marketing solution helps you manage your contacts, send emails to your subscribers, and track results. Designing and running email campaigns become easier when using MailChimp.

Customer Feedback

It is essential to drown the noise and listen to what your customers say. Feedback is integral to a product’s success. Here is a list of tools that can be used to garner customer feedback:

  • Google Forms: This tool from G-suite lets you create new surveys for internal and external purposes. Be it the design or the content, Google Forms can be customized to suit your requirements. It can be integrated with other G-suite products, thus allowing it to track responses on the same.
  • SurveyMonkey: This tool allows you to create and publish online surveys, with options to view results in graphs and real-time. Many opt for SurveyMonkey due to its easy access, avoidance of input and data coding errors, and a faster distribution system. It is also cheaper compared to many tools in this category.
  • Typeform: This form and survey builder enables you to easily ask questions on any device. Typeform helps you to significantly increase the return rate of your forms and surveys. It also gives your credible data for accurate results. Even with the free plan, you can create unlimited surveys and forms.
  • UserTesting: You can get videos of customers expressing their thoughts about your product. This is considered to be a leading video testimonial platform. It can be used by individuals and companies alike.

Metrics & Analytics

matrix and analytics

Performance is the key success indicator. To know how your product is performing, you need to have access to metrics and analytics tools. Some of the leading analytics tools in the industry include:

  • Google Analytics: Another product from G-suite provides data, collects user information, consolidates data, and manages the same. Insights from Google Analytics can be monumental when setting goals or understanding the effectiveness of a product. It can also help you understand your audience better.
  • Amplitude: This product analytics tool helps teams build better products by giving real-time insights. Amplitude is extremely easy to integrate. It understands your users and their reaction to your product, which can be helpful when making improvements.
  • Mixpanel: This mobile and web analytics platform supports businesses to study customer behavior. It also detects anomalies and helps you fix them seamlessly. Mixpanel sees the world as events rather than pageviews, making it apt for single-page websites and mobile applications.
  • Qualaroo: This SaaS solution is triggered by customer behavior, further providing intelligence and helping product managers to understand customer needs better. Qualaroo determines customer intent, thus unlocking optimization methods.

Wireframes

Wireframes are pivotal when trying to get a visual guide of your creation. Here is a list of tools and software that create wireframes for product managers easily:

  • Balsamiq: This is a wireframing and mock-up tool that allows easy usability and can be shared with clients. A huge advantage of Balsamiq is their iteration and versioning tools, which allows you to save a wireframe in versions, and track changes to the UI easily. This allows you to quickly update and change your designs.
  • Marvel: This wireframing tool allows you to transform your files into interactive and shareable prototypes. These wireframes can be viewed on any device to get feedback. Marvel allows you to sync automatically and be as creative as you want.
  • Mockingbird: This tool helps you create and share interactive wireframes with clients. Though there are different plans available, you can create wireframes on Mockingbird for free as well.
  • Moqups: This is an HTML5 app used to create wireframes and mockups. You can plan and communicate in real time to create a wide range of visual materials for any project including wireframes, mockups, diagrams, mind maps, dashboards, and prototypes.

To Sum it Up

Every high performing team needs tools and software to fast-track the process of planning and managing their goals. These tools not only help product managers achieve their targets but also ensures that the process is significantly short.

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