What Are The Must-Have Product Manager Tools?

Leading a product from its conception to its completion is not an easy feat. As a product manager, you are in charge of keeping in touch and working alongside many different departments at the same time.

Since a product manager's responsibilities can vary depending on the needs of the company, the tools used by a product manager are critical in balancing everything out.  

These tools are commonly used every day by product managers to ensure everyone remains on the same page. Fortunately, there is a  wide range of tools available to make the product management process more efficient. That includes everything from setting product strategy to the techniques used when developing features.  

While it’s important to have a general idea of the various tools available on the market, you also need to be selective.  

After all, looking for new tools and learning how to use them can be time-consuming and pricey. By getting the tools that best suit the needs of your teams, you make the workflow more efficient and remain focused on delivering your products to the public.  

What are Product Management Tools?

Product management tools are solutions that help a product manager carry out some of the phases in a product life cycle. It helps with the planning, development, researching, and launching of the product.  

These tools are used by product managers for anything related to product development, prototyping, product roadmap, customer research, feature prioritization, user journey mapping, analyzing data, process mapping, and product release date.  

Choosing the Right Tools

One of the things you need to do first is evaluate which tools are best for your team. Start by evaluating the size and stage of your company and product. For example, startups with a single product manager won’t have the finances to acquire too many tools.  

You need to choose a few software tools that provide a wide range of functionality and integration. However, a larger-sized company may require specialized tools that are made for sophisticated workflows and multiple teams.  

One great idea is to decide on the least amount of tools to meet the needs of your team. Search for tools that grant you the broadest range of functionality you need to create and deliver the best possible product. Regardless of what stage the product is on the lifecycle.  

Feedback Management Software

Feedback is one of the most crucial things you can get from your customers and colleagues. It allows you to acquire data that can be used to improve the product that you are developing.  

Having a tool that can help you manage all of the feedback is essential for product management.  

Enterprise feedback management software enables you to systematically gather and manage feedback and integrate those results with various information systems. It permits product managers to have an actionable, comprehensive, and accurate outlook.  

Using these tools allows you to increase efficiency and reduce costs because it eliminates the use of several other redundant surveying tools.  

SupporTrends

If you are looking for an enterprise feedback management solution, then we recommend checking out SupporTrends. Our platform can help eliminate the guesswork by automatically processing and organizing all qualitative feedback so that you can work on the features and products that really matter.

Customers these days tend to share a good amount of qualitative feedback with companies through surveys, emails, phone calls, chats, and more. Customers often discuss potential purchases, as questions, or even want to return the product.

With our tool, you can access all feedback that is curated and organized under a single platform.  

SupporTrends is capable of integrating with other tools such as Asana and Jira. Doing so allows you to automatically organize customer feedback by several categories, such as Feature, KPI, Product, or any other thing that suits your fancy.  

That allows your team to tell at a glance what drives your highest and lowest customer satisfaction. Our tool makes use of machine learning to comprehend what the natural language elements of churn and retention look like. It swiftly identifies the features, feedback, and products that correlate the highest with customer retention and churn, and synchronizes to your product board automatically.

Roadmapping Software

Roadmapping software is one of the most necessary tools you need when getting your product management tools together. While it is possible to create a roadmap by drafting and maintaining it through spreadsheets or slide decks, that leads to more work for you.  

Getting a well-built roadmapping tool enables you to have more flexibility and a way to easily share the roadmap with the rest of your team. If you want to ensure your products progress steadily, then you need a roadmapping tool.  

ProductPlan

ProductPlan offers product managers a seamless way to plan, visualize, and communicate product strategy by presenting a number of roadmap templates. Users of this tool can also seamlessly collaborate on a life every roadmap, allowing you to make adjustments on the fly. The tool offers unlimited free viewer accounts, allowing your stakeholder to gain access to view and provide feedback on the roadmaps.  

It can securely track your progress and measure its impact, all while integrating with your essential tools and data on a single platform.  

While ProductPlan does have some robust features, it is missing a decent way to handle requirement management for products hosted on the platform.  The platform can integrate with other tools like Jira, Slack, GitHub, Trello, PivotalTracker, Confluence, and Microsoft Teams.  

Team Communication Tools

When it comes to product management, you need to ensure that everyone on the team and different departments is on the same page.  

That means constant communication between everyone to share information and feedback on the various tasks being performed. It also helps to keep a record of every communication related to the initiative.  

The recent pandemic has also caused many companies to switch over to remote work environments. That has caused the importance of centralized team communication to grow even more.  

Fortunately, there are plenty of easy-to-use team communication tools that offer a seamless way for teams to communicate. One of the more common communication tools is Slack. 

Slack

Slack is one of the leading industry tools when it comes to team communication, and provides a way for small businesses and enterprises to communicate with their team members in a single place.  

Each department in your organization can create a channel and discuss relevant issues. It can also be used to have individual meetings with team members as well as conversations that break away from the primary threads. Slack enables you to develop an excellent remote working environment with the assistance of countless integration options that Slack offers with other tools.  

Using Slack ensures that you don’t lose out on any of the communication processes. Plus, Slack allows you to have a one-on-one conversation through video. It also has a video conferencing option for groups.  

Project Management Tools

Project management tools are some of the most crucial tools you can have at your disposal. If you want to ensure that everyone is aware of what tasks they need to complete to progress through your roadmap, then you need one.  

Most project management tools are developed to be robust and offer a simplified means of tracking and documenting details.  

Trello, Jira, and Asana

These three tools are some of the more popular project management tools on the market. That is due to the accessibility it provides for product managers. First off, you don’t need to download the tools to use them, and they are entirely accessible from the internet. Users can access the platforms from any device, whether it is a desktop, laptop, or mobile phone.  

These platforms ease the management of the task of managers by offering a seamless interface to use with maps and tables. The tables are the basic format for management and planning and can be adjusted to your specified needs.  

Each column can be used to include essential information on the development of your project. The essence of the cards is to catalog each task by entering a description, the name of the person who needs to execute it, the attachments, and more. You can also share the board with other team members. They are sent task notifications frequently and these boards can be populated with a SupporTrends integration.  

Metrics & Analytics Tools

A product manager won’t make it very far if they have no way of acquiring vital data. While some intuition based on years of experience does play a part in creating a product, it won’t be entirely practical without the assistance of accurate analytics.  

Without acquiring the precious data you need to improve your product, there is no way you can produce something that your customers will be happy with. These tools are another critical part of a product manager's arsenal. 

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is an excellent choice for startups or anyone with a tight budget. The primary features of Google Analytics are the reports it creates based on the assets like your website, Google Ads, Google Search Console, and much more.  

The reports are easily accessible on the dashboard on the left side of the bar. They can also be customized to include or exclude any information you want. The data is easy to understand and navigate through as well.  

Audience reports grant you insight into who your organization’s audience is in terms of locations, demographics, interests, and devices.    

That data can be used to improve your user experience. Acquisition reports reveal every traffic source that is generating visitors to the web properties. That is essential for understanding what traffic sources you should invest in and which of them are not worth chasing after.  

Furthermore, behavior reports reveal how users are engaging with various parts of the website.  

Prototyping and Wireframing

Prototyping and wireframing hold some of the more crucial roles when it comes to communicating early-stage development ideas.

Using these tools allows developers to understand what they are creating, designers have something to work upon, and content creation won’t have to wait until something tangible is prepared.  

Invision

Invision is a prototype and workflow platform created to help designers. The tool makes it easier to design and include hotspots to transform status screens into a clickable and interactive prototype. The tool provides you with every animation, gesture, and transition you could ever want from a prototyping tool.

The platform also comes with an assortment of features, such as real-time design presentations and collaboration tools that enable users to improve their design meetings.  

It is very easy to receive feedback from clients and stakeholders since they can leave comments directly on your designs, which eliminates the need for lengthy and frustrating changes of emails and unrecorded input.

File Hosting Tools

When it comes to developing a product, you must ensure everyone can share vital documents. It needs to be done in a secure manner, accessible only to those involved in the project. File hosting tools that allow them to store and share these critical documents are needed if you want your team to succeed in creating a quality product. 

Dropbox

Dropbox is one of the top file hosting services on the market. It provides users several beneficial features such as cloud storage, file synchronization, personal cloud, and client software.  

It enables users to create special folders on their computers, which are then synchronized. That allows the user to access the same folder, regardless of which device they are using to view the documents.  

Anything you add onto Dropbox is automatically shown on every device that has access to it, including the Dropbox website. That means users can access it from any location as long as they have some way of doing so.  

Product managers can share a link that grants people access to these folders. That makes it much easier for them to share and collaborate with the teams and departments involved in the development of the product. 

Conclusion

Product manager tools are crucial for the success of any organization. If a product manager doesn’t have the tools required to manage all aspects of the project, then the whole project will start to slow down.  

If none of the tools we have listed here fit your needs, then make sure to check closely around the net. There are tons of tools available for product managers. Each one can suit the needs of a particular organization.

If you’re ready to start prioritizing your users feedback to build a better product roadmap, then give our software a try!