Product management is a process that falls under the product development umbrella and is primarily focused on creating a product that delivers value for a targeted customer audience. This includes work like planning, developing, conceptualizing, and improving products to:
- Fuel overall customer satisfaction and loyalty.
- Generate revenue.
- Improve profit margin.
- Gain key audience and product insights to measure success and inform new products and improvement rollouts.
To achieve these goals, product managers use product management tools and software applications to work through the various stages and steps of the product development and management process.
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What tools do product managers use?
In today’s digital and remote-first world, product management tools are essential for centralizing and streamlining the product lifecycle across various teams, time zones, and sprints.
Product managers rely on product management tools to meet customer needs, leverage customer feedback, and respond to competitors and market changes. The ultimate goal here is to create products that deliver value to customers. The types of product management tools used include:
Collaboration and communication tools
Whether it’s a communication app like Slack or Zoom or a collaboration tool such as Google Drive or a business process automation platform, keeping teams connected and information flowing is the first step toward creating products that make customers happy and delivering projects on time.
Process and product road mapping
A process output is only as good as the process that was designed for it. Using a platform or software with the capability to map processes is essential to ensuring products are created in the most cost- and resource-efficient way — on time and without breaking the budget.
Workflow modeling tools
In addition to tracking the process and creating a product roadmap, it’s important to model all steps, people, procedures, and approvals are accounted for in the product management process.
Customer feedback and audience analysis tools
Understanding what customers want and collecting feedback is essential for effective product management. To gather feedback and explore targeted audiences, product managers may conduct customer surveys, market research, and collect data on how customers use or engage with the product.
Process management tools
Product management is a complex process that depends on a variety of people, workflows, and information. It’s therefore essential for teams to have deep visibility and control over their processes.
Project and process management tools are usually used to keep teams informed on product development statuses, monitor issues or constraints, and keep to the process roadmap developed for the product’s rollout.
Industry analysis resources
While this doesn’t exactly qualify as a tool or software, expert industry analysis is another resource that product managers leverage. Keep track of what competitors are doing and how your product’s market is changing to best inform strategy. Product managers will typically refer to industry research, studies, surveys, or reports from reliable global research firms, like Gartner, McKinsey, or Deloitte.
Key product management tool features
In addition to features that help with product road mapping and process management, there are other features to look for when choosing a product management tool, including:
- Collaboration support through forms, portals, and request tracking.
- Deep visibility through dashboards, reports, and multiple views.
- Seamless data flow through integrations with the existing stack.
- Enhanced efficiency through low-code automation and the use of conditional logic and rules.
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How low-code platforms bring key features together
Of all the features available to product managers, few have the power to solve more problems than low-code automation
Low-code automation software makes its easy for product teams to build and automate their workflows using an IT-sanctioned set of tools. Processes scale, manual tasks are eliminated, and errors are avoided. Many platforms offer visual user interfaces that make it easy to quickly scale and adapt to changes.
7 best product management tools
Here’s a roundup of some of the best product management tools on the market:
1. Pipefy
Pipefy simplifies product management processes by making it easy for users to build, modify, automate, and scale their work. Pipefy’s data-driven platform gathers key data insights to inform product strategy and offers process mapping and modelling functionality to keep teams on the same page regardless of location or department. Pipefy benefits include:
- Intuitive low-code interface for scalable development that doesn’t add to the IT and dev backlog
- Customizable automations and conditional logic
- Integrations that help teams get the most from their existing stack
- Process mapping and modeling
- Collaboration tools like shared team inboxes, email automations, and automated notifications
- Labels and automated alerts for product prioritization
- Approval assignees and end-to-end audit trails for process visibility and accountability
- Forms and portals to centralize and standardize process documents and customer feedback
2. Trello
Product managers use Trello to keep track of tasks, statuses and issues, and keep teams informed. Trello’s interface allows PMs to add updates and move steps, and lets teams collaborate on roadmaps and sprints. Trello features include:
- Automations and integrations, or “power-ups”
- Boards for free users, and timeline, table, calendar, dashboard, and map views for paid users
- Dashboards for data insights
- Checklists, labels, and assignees
3. ProductPlan
ProductPlan is a roadmap platform that helps teams build better products by aligning teams with a single source of truth. Product managers use ProductPlan to capture and organize ideas, collaborate with teams, and build and share roadmaps. ProductPlan features include:
- Roadmapping for a visual approach to strategic and tactical planning
- Drag-and-drop roadmap builder
- Filtering and tagging capabilities
- Streamlining collaboration and communication between teams
4. ClickUp
ClickUp’s many features make it easy for teams to work from a single platform. From in-platform documentation to brainstorming, chat functions, and project tracking, teams can work together in a more productive and efficient way.
ClickUp features include:
- Native document creation and centralization
- Dashboards and data insights
- Managing product roadmaps
- Development sprints
- Gathering customer feedback via forms
- Whiteboards for brainstorming, product modeling, and process mapping
- Automations and integrations
5. Monday
Monday’s customizable platform helps boost team alignment, efficiency, and productivity. Monday makes it easy to customize workflows, tailor processes, and build agile product roadmaps — breaking down silos and bringing together product, dev, and research.
Monday features include:
- Industry-specific product options for marketing, development, sales, and project management
- Scalability and ease of use
- Automations and integrations
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6. Jira
Jira is the go-to tool for many product managers due to its powerful, agile, and scalable features. With Jira, teams can play well with developers, keep organized, gain full roadmap visibility, and build customizable workflows that prioritize autonomy and structure.
Jira features include:
- Bug and issue tracking
- Project management
- Collaborating with engineers
- Automations and integrations
- Application development, deployment, and management
7. Asana
Asana lets product managers plan roadmaps, set and track milestones, simplify sprints, and launch products without a hitch by coordinating and communicating launches easily across teams. Asana features include:
- Project collaboration and product road mapping
- Task management
- Scalability
- List, timeline, and board views
- Automations and integrations
Build a better product management process with Pipefy
Pipefy is a low-code automation software built with collaboration at the core of the platform. Low-code makes it easier for teams to build, automate, and scale their processes while keeping IT teams in control.
Pipefy’s visual interface keeps business teams agile and responsive to industry changes, customer feedback, and competitor activity quickly without adding to the ever-growing IT backlog.
