Best Product Management Tools in 2020
Product management includes prototyping, road mapping, planning, designing, marketing, as well as deep analysis of analytics and user feedback to continually improve the features and functions of a software application. A product manager needs to constantly oversee the performance of the product using all the above activities to get the best results. To successfully handle all this there are many tools that will help a product manager perform those activities properly without working 20 hours a day to do it.
Before going for any particular product management tools or software you should give considerations to a few things such as your available budget, your company size, number of users/customers or expected number of users/customer, value of each user or customer acquisition, priorities of the product team or stakeholders.
Now, let’s start looking at the best product management tools we have seen in 2020:
- Prototyping tools
Prototyping visualizes the actual product and finds out if there is any issue in the product before it is confirmed for mass production. Methods such as MoSCoW stands for must have, should have, could have, and would have which aids in designing and smooth customer experiences. For prototyping in 2020, we suggest proto.io, InVision, Sketch, Axure, etc.
- User Tracking and Analysis Tools
These tools give you the knowledge and insight about how the user of your product is interacting with the product and whether they’re facing any issues as well as they’re satisfied with the product or not. In this era of E-commerce user tracking tools such as Amplitude and Pendo can give you real time data about the users and how you can upgrade the product or service.
- Road mapping Tools
Having a roadmapping software is mandatory tool for effective product management in 2020. Roadmapping helps to understand the direction, vision, and progress of the product by sharing these data to the team. ProductPlan software is our number one pick right now and comes as a blessing for visual roadmapping in a way that is easily shared with team members and can be understood by people in the business that aren’t involved in software application development teams, project management or product management.
- Task management
Task management tools are necessary for every management job but it’s more important for product management as the product manager has to keep track of the development and delivery of product features and also meet product targets. In such situation, JIRA is still the leading and best software to help you meet production targets on time, and get back on track through effective task management, especially for agile software teams.
- Survey tools for customers
Customer surveys are one of the most important aspects for modern businesses to success especially in the space of SaaS and similar types of applications. Even eCommerce sites are getting more and more customer focused to the point of running workshops and understanding their users in depth. Surveying customers gives deep insights about the customers pains, demands, and future demands which drastically helps to improve current products. There are many web-based survey tools such as Survey Cake, SurveyMonkey, Typeform, etc. which might be of great help but for us, we prefer to use HotJar because we can really understand the user and align their survey feedback with analytical data collected.
- Team messaging tools
It’s crucial to maintain constant communication with the product development team and to have recordings of all communications regarding the development of the product. Cloud based tools such as Slack, Microsoft Teams, Discord are very helpful in facilitating easy communication and also recording of all communications. For flexibility and all of the available integration possibilities, we are going to say slack is our number one choice still for 2020 in team messaging.
