We we cover:

• What is product management software?
• Where do these tools sit in a product management tool stack?
• What are the benefits of having the best product management software?
• What features do the best product management software tools have?
• Cost and pricing for product management software
• What are the best product management software tools in 2024?
• Frequently Asked Questions about product management software

Let’s get into it…

What is product management software?

It’s software that helps you do product management. Sorry, that sounds facetious… but in all seriousness, that’s what these software tools are designed to do – help Product Teams communicate their plans, run their processes and track their results. The very best product management software tools will help Product Managers make informed, smart decisions about the direction they should take their products and provide the tools to turn those decisions into actions and outcomes. 

But there are lots of different types of product management software tools. And that’s because the discipline of Product Management is so far reaching. Afterall, Product Management encapsulates almost everything involved in getting a product to market and then working it through its entire lifecycle. 

That includes initial ideation (market research, competitor analysis, discovery, prototyping, user testing and more) right through the development process (prioritization, speccing, delivery planning and more) and onto launch (release planning, beta launching, customer feedback gathering and analysis and more), and beyond!

And once that process has been worked through for a brand new product, the cycle continues for each new iteration and each new feature as you manage the product through its lifecycle. 

That’s a lot of very different jobs to be done there, and an awful lot of variation. Because of that, there is a plethora of Product Management software solutions available on the market today. Some will cover multiple stages of the Product Management lifecycle, some will focus on one particular task.  

The particular flavor of product management software we’re going to focus on in this list is the complete platform – the all-in-one tools that promise to provide you with one central home for all your Product Management work. While they may not help you with ALL the jobs you have to do as a Product Manager, they should allow you to connect all the pieces into a centralized hub, providing an easily accessible place to go for anyone interested in your product decision-making and process. 

Typically these complete product management software platforms focus on the core PM triad of product roadmapping, idea backlog management and customer feedback management. 

Where do these tools sit in a product management tool stack?

The product management software platforms we’re going to concentrate on here today form a solid base from which to undertake everything you have to do to manage a product, or indeed a portfolio of products. But they won’t directly solve every single Product Management problem or need that you have. You’ll want to combine them with a few point solution tools to ensure you have everything covered.


Let us illustrate this with a graphic. Using a complete product management software tool means you can reduce vendor management significantly without flattening your stack too far and leaving yourself with capability holes. Instead of 11 different product management tools, you’re using one of our best product management software tools to reduce that stack down to a far more manageable 7. 

You’ll want a central product management software tool to act as a single source of truth, covering:

• OKR management and goal setting
• Roadmapping and portfolio management
• Idea management
• Feedback gathering and analysis
• Knowledge management and documentation

Then individual point solutions to help you with:

• Prototyping and wireframing
• Delivery planning and your development backlog
• Testing and experimentation 
• Product engagement and adoption
• Product analytics
• Customer comms 

You’re better to have one of the best product management software tools surrounded by a few point solutions instead of struggling with a huge mix of endless individual products. 

What are the benefits of having the best product management software?

Alignment

When everyone has access to the bigger picture and the plan, teams can truly work in sync. With easy access to the strategy, teammates stay aligned with the broader vision and objectives, minimizing the risk of anyone missing out on what’s most important. 

The best product management software provides a straightforward way to be explicit about the objectives you’re focused on, keeping everyone on the same page.

Transparency

Visibility is key to building trust. When everyone can see both the strategy and progress in real-time, they gain insight into your decision-making process. Stakeholders will appreciate seeing your prioritization logic firsthand, and with updates available to them directly, you’ll spend less time fielding questions. 

With one of the best product management software platforms handling goal setting, roadmapping, and customer feedback all in one, you’ll be providing everyone in your organization with full transparency into your workflow and decision-making.

The Golden Thread

This is a term our Co-Founder and CEO Janna Bastow likes to use. The best product management software give you the power to connect the dots—linking every decision, objective, and customer need with your product roadmap. 

This “golden thread” shows the relationships between each element of your work, allowing you to track how each piece supports the overall strategy and helps you create a cohesive and meaningful product journey.

Simplicity and Ease

Centralizing all your product work in one platform makes life so much simpler. Gone are the days of tracking down different versions of documents, sifting through files, or hunting for updates. With everything in one place, you can save time, avoid miscommunication, and focus on what matters most.

A Bird’s Eye View

Bringing together your roadmap, idea backlog, and customer feedback into one of the best product management software tools allows for a comprehensive overview. Advanced tools, like prioritization frameworks and feedback analysis, enable you to quickly identify the most common customer pain points and spot the highest-potential ideas in your backlog. This kind of high-level analysis is a game-changer, letting you make informed decisions with ease.

Tools Tailored Specifically for Product People

Rather than wrestling with a generic tool and trying to bend it to a Product Management process, the best product management software is designed specifically for your needs. With purpose-built features and an intuitive setup, you can hit the ground running. Plus, you’ll find an array of unique tools and features crafted for the challenges product managers face every day.

You’ll find a whole bunch of tools and features that you won’t find anywhere else. Built for you and your challenges as a Product Manager. Which brings us nicely onto….

What features do the best product management software tools have?

So, you now know why product management software is important, what it can do for you and broadly what it includes, but now’s the time to get more specific. Exactly what features should you expect from one of the best product management software tools. 

Typically, these complete PM platforms will include:

• Customizable product roadmaps
• Idea submission
• Backlog management 
• Prioritization tools
• Discussion boards per idea to capture collaboration and decisions 
• Documentation repository
• Workflow management 
• Integrations with your development tool, your organization’s communication tools and more
• Customer feedback capabilities: portals, integrations with internal tools, email, browser extensions and more
• Ability to link related feedback to ideas in your backlog

And the very best of the best product management software tools will also have:

• Strategy space to declare your vision, value, personas and more
• OKR management and goal setting tools
• Ability to publish versions of your roadmap publicly  
• Feedback analysis tools
• Reporting 
• Plus the most robust and extensive integrations to allow you to capture ideas and feedback from more places, and collaborate with the rest of your organization through connection with the tools they are use

Nearly all the best product management software examples included on our list come with features from that first list above, and the truly great ones will also let you enjoy the additional capabilities from the second list. 

Cost and pricing for product management software

Sounds good right? Fancy some of that action? So how much will one of the best product management software tools set you back? 

Looking across all the best product management software tools on our list here, you’re looking at between $100 and $200 dollars per admin/editor user per month for a passable level of capabilities. However, most of the companies on our list put a whole bunch of restrictions and limitations on their self-serve, explicitly priced packages, and instead insist that you ‘get in touch’ with their Sales Team to get a price for everything you’ll need to do things right. 

The most common features that are hidden behind the enterprise pricing and sales consultation are OKR management, strategy tools, unlimited feedback portals, integrations, AI assistance, portfolio management, user access controls, SSO and SAML, and even access to your own Customer Success Manager. 

However, with ProdPad you can enjoy much more transparency and get all of that and more as part of either our Essentials or Advanced plans. To get the full capabilities of all three modules of ProdPad (Roadmaps, Ideas and Feedback) you’ll pay $116 per admin/editor with unlimited free Reviewers who can both submit and collaborate with both ideas and feedback. You’ll also enjoy the help and support of our Customer Success Team. Because we’re people people and love nothing better than talking to our customers!

What are the best product management software tools in 2024?

It’s time to actually put some products to the features we’ve been discussing.

As mentioned, the best product management software, in our opinion, always compromises roadmapping, idea and backlog management and customer feedback management as a minimum. What we’ve compiled here is a list of the best all-in-one, complete product management software platforms to act as your centralized Product Management hub.

They are all tools that will let you:

• Capture and evaluate product ideas
• Prioritize them onto product roadmaps
• Communicate and share those roadmaps
• Manage the execution through workflow processes
• Gather and analyze customer feedback to help evidence your existing ideas, guide your prioritization decisions, or spark new thinking. 

So without further ado, let’s get to the shortlist. 

1. ProdPad

Are you surprised? Of course we’re going to put ourselves at the top of the list, but we promise this isn’t unfounded trumpet blowing.

ProdPad was actually the first complete product management software on the market and has continued to lead the way in terms of innovative problem-solving, providing solutions to more and more PM challenges and pain points over the years.

From inventing the industry best-practice roadmap format, Now-Next-Later, many years ago, to being the first PM tool to use AI technology to automate backlog management, right through to our current day innovations that make our AI assistance the most mature and the most exciting of any other tool. 

Who is it for? 

ProdPad is best suited to outcome-focused Product Teams that work within an agile environment and want to move quickly to build-measure-learn, support continuous discovery and ensure everything they do is targeting strategically important objectives and aiming to deliver proven outcomes.

Whether you’re a small team managing a single product, or a large organization with a complete portfolio of products, ProdPad has the tools you need to set strategic Objectives and Key Results and capture your overall product strategy and vision. This bigger picture information sits right next to your Now-Next-Later roadmap making sure no one loses sight of the overall goals.

ProdPad is the best product management software built to keep teams strategically aligned and focused on delivering outcomes, rather than merely shipping features and counting outputs.

ProdPad is also particularly well suited when you want to ensure consistency of process across your entire Product organization. ProdPad comes with best practice built in, with tried and tested formats, templates and process workflows already set up by default. This also makes ProdPad a great tool for any teams looking to greatly improve their processes and significantly impact their core business goals. 

Assessment of core capabilities

Roadmapping

ProdPad is unique in that it is a tool that grew up from a truly innovative new approach to Product Management that has now become the definitive industry standard – namely the Now-Next-Later roadmap format. ProdPad’s Co-Founders invented this approach to roadmapping as a solution to all the problems they were facing as a result of using a timeline roadmap. As such, you can trust ProdPad to provide you with the right tools and the proper processes to work within this agile, lean approach and truly stay focused on delivering outcomes.

ProdPad also has the most mature publishing capabilities when it comes to roadmaps, meaning you can not only save multiple filtered views, but also publish those views externally. In this way you can work from a single roadmap and dynamically update the multiple stakeholder views that you’ve shared both internally and externally.

But most importantly of all, ProdPad is the only tool that is structured, by default, around a two tier hierarchy, allowing you to prioritize at the problem level with Initiatives, and then nest different Ideas under each. This structure leaves you open to experiment, test and iterate on the feature you plan to build, without needing to fundamentally rework your entire roadmap should your intended solution change. 

Idea Management

ProdPad excels at being a centralized repository for contributions from across your organization. So, with ProdPad it is super easy for anyone (whether they have a ProdPad user account or not) to submit Ideas for your consideration.

You can then enjoy automatic backlog refinement, with powerful AI de-duping ideas and linking related feedback. Once you’ve triaged your unsorted list of ideas, you move them into your backlog and track them through your workflow using the built-in workflow tool. This means you have the ability to manage your ideas through pre-development stages like defining, discovery and design, before pushing them into your preferred development tool and syncing the status updates (and content) to track the delivery progress from within ProdPad.  

ProdPad also provides customizable prioritization tools meaning you can set your prioritization scales and then visualize your entire backlog in a unique chart to quickly and easily see the idea worth developing further. 

Feedback Management

Alongside having the strongest set of feedback-gathering integrations of any of the best product management software tools on this list, ProdPad provides you with the powerful Signals tool to automatically analyze all that feedback and surface the themes to feed your product decisions.

ProdPad AI will also suggest which feedback should be linked with which ideas, so you never miss relevant insight to help inform your thinking or support your ideas.

Closing the loop is also made super simple with ProdPad. Every time a feature ships, you’ll find a list of everyone who gave feedback around that problem, and all you need do is click to let them know their feedback was listening to and a solution has been released. 

Strengths

• AI capabilities: ProdPad truly was the first of the best product management software tools to offer unique ways of boosting efficiency and improving results with AI-powered features. From generating your written work, to suggesting roadmap initiatives, product goals and even ideas based on your feedback, right the way through to coaching you on Product Management best practice and offering suggested improvements to things like your product vision and more. ProdPad AI has been proven to dramatically increase the velocity of Product Teams the world over. 
• Collaboration: Of the many advanced integrations ProdPad offers, the connections to both Slack and Microsoft Teams are often the most loved by customers. As well as pushing notifications from ProdPad to these important organization-wide communication tools, the ProdPad apps goes further and sync discussion threads between these tools and ProdPad – meaning you can capture entire conversations with the Product Manager in ProdPad and everyone else over in Slack.
  
  You can also select any comment or line of text in Slack or MS Teams and add it to ProdPad as either an Idea or a piece of Feedback – all without needing to log into ProdPad. 
• Workflow management: As mentioned above, ProdPad, unlike other tools, as a workflow tool as part of its product management software which enables a Product Manager to progress Ideas through their pre-development process and then sync with the delivery tool to track progress to launch, all from a single place. 
• Strategy & alignment: With ProdPad’s unique strategy canvas and a full OKR management tool, you can ensure that everyone you and the team are working on is explicitly linked to the strategic imperatives of the company and aligned to your product vision. With this bigger picture information sitting right next to your day-to-day workflow and roadmap, no one will lose sight of why you’re working on what you’re working on. 

Limitations

• No gantt charts: If you are absolutely determined to use a timeline as your product roadmap you might be better suited to another of the best product management software tools on this list. Although you absolutely can add specific dates to each Initiative on ProdPad’s Now-Next-Later roadmap, you won’t be able to lay out all your initiatives on a linear timeline ahead of them hitting delivery.

Pricing

ProdPad has a modular pricing structure meaning you only need pay for what you actually need. This means, depending on your needs, you pick and chose the levels and combinations of modules to suit your particular team.

One key difference with ProdPad’s cost over some of the other best product management software tools is the inclusion of unlimited reviewer users. While some other software options appear to offer the same, reviewers in ProdPad can do a lot more than in other tools. ProdPad reviewers can add and edit their own Ideas and Feedback, and view and comment on those added by others.

2. Aha!

Who is it for? 

Aha! would be a solid choice for a large organization that still maintains a traditional, operations-focused approach to Product Management. If, as a business, you’re focused on delivering against specific feature requests from customers, then Aha’s feature-request style ideas portal, alongside their single-level roadmapping tool will help you do just that. 

Aha! also offers a fairly advanced reporting suite that can help Product Managers deliver quite complex reporting on their operational processes if required to do so. So if you’re in an organization that puts emphasis on detailed operational reporting, then Aha! is definitively worth evaluating further.  

Assessment of core capabilities

Roadmapping

Aha! supports traditional timeline-based roadmaps, ideal for a feature-based approach to roadmapping. They also provide a portfolio roadmap view to give a coordinated view across multiple individual product roadmaps. Although they do offer a Now-Next-Later roadmap view, it only allows for single-level roadmap items so, in reality, is just a board view of a features list. 

Idea Management

Aha!’s approach to idea management is less discovery-focused than other tools on this list. The idea management tool within Aha!’s suite is structured around an Ideas Portal that is used to collect feature requests from customers which then become items on your roadmap. 

In this way, their approach to idea management is very operational, offering a process by which customer requests are taken at face value and worked through to delivery. Aha’s Ideas tool therefore lacks the flexibility to tie ideas to larger strategic Initiatives and then evaluate them as one possible solution to the problem you have prioritized on your roadmap..

Feedback Management

Aha! do not differentiate Feedback from Ideas, so rather than providing portals that encourage customers to share their feedback on your product, with Aha’s Ideas Portal you are asking customers for specific feature requests and asking them to vote on existing feature requests. In this way, Aha do not offer a distinct feedback solution.

Strengths

• Documentation: as a complete product management software Aha! do a good job of providing you with a centralized repository for all your product documentation. They have their own whiteboard tool that allows you to closely link any maps or collaborative session outputs to each feature entry on your roadmap, or into your central repository.
• Strategy: Aha! has a central area in the tool to allow you to capture your overall strategy. This comes with a number of useful tool templates so you can include things like SWOT analysis.

Limitations

• Single-level hierarchy: Aha!’s roadmap structure doesn’t support nesting ideas under initiatives, so teams are forced into a cycle of managing features rather than solving broader product challenges.
• Limited AI: Aha!’s AI assistance is limited, only providing generative AI in a few places to help you write up requirements or capture meeting notes. This means you’ll likely be left with a lot more manual work to do, compared to if you were using one of the other best product management software tools.
• Feedback gathering: As we’ve already said, Aha’s approach to feedback is actually more focused on feature requests, meaning you will struggle to effectively discover the root problem or challenges your users are facing. This restricts the ability you have to run discovery and find the best possible solution. This can lead to building features without validating their potential success and leading to feature bloat or, worst still, you becoming a feature factory. 

Pricing

In a similar way to ProdPad, Aha! have a modular approach to their pricing, with separate products for Roadmaps and Ideas. However, when you buy Roadmaps you’ll get the basic version of Ideas too.

To get both you’ll need to pay at least $59 per user, but to get features like OKRs, automation rules, user access controls, AI, feedback integrations and customizable portals you’ll need to pay over $200 per user.

3. Productboard

Who is it for? 

Productboard allows for a lot of customization and requires a significant amount of configuration, so if you think your Product Management process is particularly complicated or unique, you might want to put Productboard on your shortlist. As such, Productboard is most suited to mature Product Teams that already have an established process in place, looking for the best product management software to slot into that, rather than a tool to help drive significant improvements in process. 

Assessment of core capabilities

Roadmapping

Productboard offers a range of different roadmap formats to choose from. These include kanban and timelines which you can structure around releases, sprints or features. Productboard also purports to offer a Now-Next-Later roadmap, however it does not allow for the dual-level, initiatives + ideas structure that is inherent in the Now-Next-Later approach. Therefore, if you’re looking for the best product management software to support an agile way of working, Productboard would not be the best choice.  

Idea Management

Productboard will allow you to build a customized prioritization framework through which you can assess the ideas in your backlog. You can customize the view of that prioritization and see your backlog, sorted by your chosen factors, in either a grid or a matrix. 

However, Productboard doesn’t have a distinct workflow tool, separate from roadmaps. This means, after you’ve prioritized your idea backlog, the only way of tracking the progress of each idea through your process is to add it to a timeline or kanban roadmap. Productboard will not, therefore, give you the ability to track ideas through your validation process BEFORE they are deemed worthy (or not worthy) of appearing on the roadmap.

Feedback Management

Productboard has a robust set of integration options meaning you can gather feedback from multiple sources. Like ProdPad, they also offer an AI-powered analysis tool that surfaces the themes in your feedback.

Strengths

• Integrations: Productboard have a robust offering of integrations from whiteboarding tools like Miro through to AI analysis tools like Cobbaï.
• User access controls: Productboard, like ProdPad, is a tool that allows you to control the permissions and visibility each user has. This can be essential in larger organizations with multiple products and sensitive projects.

Limitations

• No strategy capture: Productboard does not have an area for you to document your product vision, values or add narrative to your overall, bigger picture, product strategy. This puts you at risk of misalignment and working on things that don’t help you achieve your strategic goals. 
• No OKR or goal management tool: Productboard allows you to capture board objectives only and does not have goal setting tools that allow you to set measurable and specific targets under those broader objectives. 
• Single item roadmap hierarchy: Like Aha!, Productboard only provides a ‘feature board’ by way of a time-horizon based roadmap, preventing you from communicating larger initiatives with multiple features ideas within them. 
• Complexity: This is a highly configurable tool which sees many users complain about the level of decision-making that has to happen before you can get started.
• AI only available for an additional cost: The AI assistance that comes with Productboard is only available with the top tier plans, or at additional cost, making these AI features less integrated or integral to the overall experience. 

Pricing

Productboard’s most popular package starts at  $59 per user with a minimum of two users. But you’ll need to pay extra for the AI capabilities at $20 per user.

On the $59 Pro package you’re also subject to quite a few limitations with numbers restricted for Objectives, feedback portals and roadmaps. You’ll also only be getting email support.

To get dedicated Customer Success and unlock things like SSO, Salesforce integrations and unlimited roadmaps, you’re going to need to pay enterprise prices and engage with their Sales Team. 

4. ProductPlan

Who is it for? 

ProductPlan began life as just a product roadmap tool but has gradually developed additional features in an attempt to become one of the best product management software solutions on the market. A lot of their capabilities outside of straight roadmap management and communication are more basic than other contenders on this list, making ProductPlan a possible choice for smaller teams that are just getting started with formal Product Management processes. 

Assessment of core capabilities

Roadmapping

As mentioned, this was ProductPlan’s original focus, and, as such, the area where their capabilities are the most robust. Once you’ve added all your roadmap data you can easily switch between a timeline, list or table layout.  You will however, be restricted to a single-level hierarchy and won’t be able to present broader initiatives on your product roadmap.

Idea Management

ProductPlan only lets you manually input ideas and lacks any tools or integrations to help you capture and gather ideas from different sources. While there is also on workflow capabilities aside from timeline roadmap, ProductPlan does allow you to tag ideas as being ‘in discovery’ and add a flag once they have been successfully validated. 

Feedback Management

ProductPlan has the most basic feedback tools of any product management software on this list. You can only manually add feedback into a ProductPlan account rather than being able to route feedback in through integrations. You then have the ability to tag that feedback and sort based on those tags. There are no tools to help you easily analyze the sum of what you have.  

Strengths

• Launch planning: ProductPlan has an adjacent tool included as part of the complete product management software offering that helps you run launch planning. This task management tool allows you to build to-do lists as you prepare for GTM launches and link those to the roadmap items as they approach the final stages. 

Limitations

• Integrations only for pushing info out: All of the available integrations for ProductPlan are for communicating outwards. There are no integrations available that will enable you to capture feedback, comments or contributions from across the organization via the tools different teams use. There are no CRM integrations, no Support system integrations and the integrations with both Slack and Microsoft Teams only facilitate notifications when changes are made to your roadmap – they don’t allow people to easily send feedback or sync comments from those tools. 
• Very basic feedback capabilities: If you have a large user base and gathering insight to inform and evidence your decision-making is of the utmost importance then ProductPlan probably isn’t the tool for you. ProductPlan’s basic and manual feedback logging system is only really usable for teams with a small and very manageable volume of feedback at any one time.
• No AI assistance: You’re on your own with ProductPlan, unlike a few of the other options on this list of best product management software. There are no AI enrichments at all, meaning everything is extremely manual and basic. 

Pricing

With ProductPlan you need to book a consultation to strike a deal. Unfortunately they offer no transparency into their pricing. 

5. Roadmunk

Who is it for? 

Roadmunk is a product management software tool designed to help both small and larger organizations, but is particularly relevant if you’re in an organization where a lot of importance is placed on stakeholder communication and presenting to leadership. It becomes particularly useful as your product management software platform if you’re juggling different stakeholder preferences in terms of roadmap communication and you’re unlikely to get buy-in for a consistent approach. With Roadmunk you have the ability to flip between different presentations of the same roadmap data. 

Assessment of core capabilities

Roadmapping

Roadmunk is another tool that started life as a roadmap-only solution but has recently branched out in an attempt to be seen as one of the best product management software tools around. As you’d expect from a tool that previously specialized in just roadmapping, the roadmap capabilities are robust. Roadmunk allows you to easily export roadmaps and present them to your stakeholders. However, Roadmunk do not offer a Now-Next-Later roadmap format so are less suited for outcome-focused Product Teams who want to retain some flexibility to do discovery, experiment, measure and iterate.  

Idea Management

Interestingly, with Roadmunk, only Product Managers are able to submit ideas to the backlog. This might work well if, for whatever reason, you feel strongly about retaining that level of control and not encouraging contribution from the rest of the team or the wider organization. However, if you want to be able to capture ideas from multiple sources, then Roadmunk might not be the solution for you. 

Feedback Management

Roadmunk recently introduced a feedback portal, so now you can spin up a page into which your customers can add their product feedback, however that is currently the only way that people externally or internally can get feedback into your list, without having to log into the tool and manually add it themselves. 

Strengths

• Ease of use: Roadmunk prides itself on a super user-friendly interface and a setup that means you can get started quickly. 
• Portfolio roadmaps: Roadmunk have a pretty robust tool for managing higher level portfolio roadmaps that roll-up multiple individual product roadmaps to give an overall view. 

Limitations

• Limited integrations: Roadmunk only allow you to integrate with Jira or Azure DevOps to push items from your roadmap into your development planning. They do not have any integrations with communication tools or tools from which you could route feedback (like CRMs or Support tools). Nor do they integrate with Zapier, meaning you can’t easily create your own connections without getting down and dirty in their API. 
• No AI: Roadmunk doesn’t have any AI capabilities at all. So you’d be missing the opportunity to accelerate some of your tasks and create more time to focus elsewhere.  

Pricing

Roadmunk don’t offer the option of subscribing on a monthly basis, so you’ll have to commit to an annual package. You can get a roadmaps-only basic, single user account for $19 (paid annually only), but to get a comparable package to the rest of the best product management software on the list, and access the complete all-in-one capabilities, you’re going to need to pay at least $99 per user per month.

But again, if you want a Customer Success Manager and unlimited reviewers you’ll need to speak to them about enterprise pricing. 

6. Airfocus

Who is it for? 

Airfocus is a product management software tool that claims to be able to facilitate a myriad of different team processes and approaches within one tool. So if you’re part of an organization with disparate teams working in completely different ways, Airfocus’ customization might make this your best bet. They offer a modulized product, letting you pick out the different features and functions your specific organization needs.

Assessment of core capabilities

Roadmapping

Airfocus allows you to present both a Now-Next-Later roadmap and a timeline, so you have the flexibility to use the best suited to the shareholders you’re working with and presenting it to. You can tailor your roadmaps to specific audiences and share them to improve visibility.

The customization options of their roadmaps means that you’re going to have to spend some time getting everything set up in a way that works for you and that complements your strategy. 

Idea Management

Airfocus allows you and your team a way to collaborate, evaluate and priortize the ideas in your backlog. With features like prioritization poker, and customizable scoring frameworks, it can help you better manage your ideas and find the right ones that will have an impact.

While comprehensive, it could benefit from enhanced categorization options or automation to better sift through large volumes of ideas.

Feedback Management

Airfocus allows you to centralize all your feedback into one space, collating it from multiple touchpoints like email, chat, and other channels. You’re able to link this feedback to ideas in your backlog to help inform product discovery.

Their feedback management features also allow you to include customer insights when prioritizing problems, letting you surface frequently requested ideas to better understand what your customers need.

Strengths

• Modular flexibility: Airfocus allows extensive customization with adaptable workspaces and views, letting teams tailor workflows and roadmaps as needed to suit them. 
• User-centric feedback management: Airfocus’s feedback capabilities centralize input from various channels, linking feedback to ideas and features for end-to-end visibility. Integrations with tools like Intercom and Slack make it easy to gather insights.

Limitations

• Learning curve: Due to the flexibility and customizability, new users may find initial setup and navigation challenging.
• Dependence on integrations: While Airfocus has strong integrations, it relies on them heavily for detailed workflow tracking, and reporting, potentially making it cumbersome for users without these tools.

Pricing

You’re looking at a minimum of $59 per user for the base package with Airfocus. But to get features like prioritization tools, user access controls, more than 1 feedback portal, customer success, and AI assistance you’re going to need to ‘get in touch’ about their Scale package. 

OKRs, Reporting, a lot of the integrations (Salesforce), SAML and SSO are further restricted to the Enterprise package only – which again, requires contacting their Sales Team.  

Wow, that was a long list with lots of detail! We hope you learnt a few new things about the best product management software and have started to formulate an idea of which would be worth evaluating further. We sincerely hope that ProdPad is on your shortlist and recommend you hop into a free trial and take it for a spin. But to go even deeper and get all your questions answered, why not book a demo with one of our product experts.

The post 6 Best Product Management Software in 2024 appeared first on ProdPad.

• What are product roadmap tools? 
• Why use product roadmap tools?
• Key features of the best product roadmap tools
• What are the alternatives to product roadmap tools? 
• What are the benefits of purpose-built product roadmap tools?
• Key considerations for choosing from the best product roadmap tools
• The best product roadmap tools 

So, let’s dive into the seven best product roadmap tools you should be considering in 2024 and how they can help you stay outcome-focused.

What are product roadmap tools? 

I’m going to assume you all know what a product roadmap is. Of course you do. You know you need a roadmap, you’re looking for the right tool to help you manage it. For anyone looking for clarity on what a product roadmap is just check out our Ultimate Guide to Product Roadmaps. 

But we’re here to talk about tools.

Product roadmap tools are designed to help Product Teams plan, communicate, and track their product strategy. They give you a clear visual of where your product is heading and how you’ll get there. But the best product roadmap tools go beyond just listing out features or release dates – they help connect your product strategy to your business goals and provide clear evidence to your stakeholders of why you have made the roadmapping decisions you have.

The best product roadmap tools help you communicate a roadmap that effectively answers questions like:

• How does this initiative align with our objectives?
• What customer problems are we solving with this update?
• What outcomes have we driven with each completed initiative?
• What stage of the development process is each initiative at? 
• Why has this initiative been prioritized over others?
• What different ideas have we explored for each problem area?
• How do we know the chosen idea is likely to be the best solution?

In short, the best product roadmap tools help you shift from feature factory mode into a more strategic approach, ensuring your team is working on the right things for the right reasons.

The best product roadmap tools don’t just help you communicate your strategic priorities in such a way that adds transparency to your decision-making process – although they certainly should do that. The best product roadmap tools also provide you with all the features and functionality to help you actually make those decisions, and then act on them. 

The best product roadmap tools will also help you:

• Prioritize your idea backlog to help you find candidates for your roadmap
• Link to your customer feedback so you can be sure you’re solving the right problems
• Speed up your ideation with AI assistance
• Generate supporting documentation 
• Collaborate with your teammates and stakeholders across your organization
• Capture all your product work and decision logs in one centralized place

Why use product roadmap tools?

Do you have to use a specific tool for your product roadmap? Can you not just draw it up on a piece of paper and be done with it? No. No you can’t. 

Because in Product Management, alignment is everything. The best product roadmap tools make sure everyone – from the developers to the executives to your customers – has a live and dynamic view of not just what you’re building, but why you’re building it. These tools give you a clear, shareable view of what’s in the pipeline and how it ties back to your broader business goals. 

A piece of paper on your desk doesn’t give anyone else visibility into your product strategy and progress. If your roadmap is not in an easily accessible and dynamic format, you’re going to spend every waking moment having to answer questions from stakeholders and teammates who have zero visibility of what is happening and why. 

Also, if your product roadmap is sitting there on that bit of paper, isolated and lonely on your desk, how often do you think you’ll be looking at it? 

Without your roadmap in a product roadmap tool – a central product tool in which you do most of your work –  it’s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day grind and lose sight of that bigger picture plan. Before you know it, you’re a Project Manager pushing through features and not a strategically focused Product Manager delivering impact. 

Key features of the best product roadmap tools

What should you expect from the best product roadmap tools? If you’re going out shopping for a roadmap tool, what’s on your must-have list? Let’s start with the minimum requirements and then list out the features you can expect from the very best product roadmap tools. 

The best product roadmap tools should have:

• Dynamic, interactive roadmaps
• Customizable roadmap views that let you create different versions with different levels of detail
• The ability to publish versions of your roadmap externally
• Integrations with the tools your wider organization use
• Connection to your customer feedback
• Collaboration tools 
• Integration with your product management workflow
• Connection to your idea backlog

The VERY best product roadmap tools will also have:

• Outcome-based roadmaps
• A hierarchy that enables you to stay flexible, work in an agile way and declare the problem to solve, not specific features
• AI assistance to help you work faster and smarter
• OKR management to keep you laser focused on driving outcomes
• Portfolio management and the ability to scale if your needs increase
• Collaboration tools that do not require stakeholders to log into the product roadmap tool, but add their contribution from the tools they already use

What are the alternatives to product roadmap tools? 

Spreadsheets and slide decks

We’ve already discussed the piece of paper. But surely no one would actually do that with their roadmap?! Some Product Managers, however, do use spreadsheets, slide decks and document files for their roadmaps. 

I know. Why would you ever do that? 

Spreadsheets, slide decks and documents are often static files, saved on a drive somewhere. They’re not dynamic and always up to date. The problems with this are extensive. You’ll be faced with endless versioning headaches and you can’t ever be confident everyone is looking at the most up-to-date version. You’ll have huge admin overheads, having to manually update your roadmap document all the time. You’ll end up having to repeatedly remind people where they can see the roadmap because no one ever remembers different filing systems or where something is saved. 

Even if you keep your spreadsheet or slide deck in the cloud and manage to remove the versioning headaches, how inspiring is a spreadsheet or presentation file ever going to be? There are better ways to visualize your product roadmap so people actually understand what they are looking at.

A product roadmap confined to a spreadsheet or similar document is also completely detached from everything else! Where’s the link to your customer feedback, your backlog, your release planning, your design files? This makes it extremely hard to keep your roadmap at the heart of everything you do. Increasing the risk of ‘everything you do’ becoming detached from the strategic plan. Which is when you start slipping into an output mindset instead of delivering outcomes. 

So, in sum, don’t use general tools like spreadsheets, slide decks or document files. 

Project management tools 

But what about those generalist productivity tools that are designed to help you manage tasks and track projects? Are they an option? 

I mean, sure, maybe if you’re just getting started and have no budget for a proper product tool. If you want to have an initial stab at creating a roadmap in a dynamic tool and you already have a license for something like ClickUp, Asana, Trello, or monday.com  then sure, give it a go. But, be aware of the limitations. 

Remember, a product roadmap isn’t a project plan, it’s a strategic communication tool. Don’t forget the distinction between a product roadmap and a delivery or release plan – don’t get them confused or try to solve both problems with one tool. If you use a tool designed for task management for your product roadmap, you can very easily fall into the trap of presenting your stakeholders with a timeline project plan Gantt chart instead of a high level strategic plan. 

The other option some Product Managers will try is using whiteboard tools or wiki software. Although they can offer better visualization capabilities than project management tools or the dreaded spreadsheet, they lack the connection to your execution workflow. 

You need the best of both worlds – an easy-to-understand visualization of a bigger picture strategic plan, alongside the ability to drill down if needed and follow a thread all the way through to the detailed release plans. 

This is why purpose-built product roadmap tools exist. 

What are the benefits of purpose-built product roadmap tools?

The biggest advantage of using one of the best product roadmap tools, specifically designed for product teams and roadmapping requirements? The help it gives you to work in line with modern Product Management best practice.

Work within best practices

If you use a purpose-built product roadmap tool you should (assuming you’ve picked one of the best ones) find a structure and a bunch of built-in features that guide your process, behaviors and even the wider organization towards proven best ways of working. 

Not least of all will be the connection to objectives and key business goals. Because, as we’ve already said, the very best product roadmap tools will help you stay laser-focused on outcomes. You’ll have far better:

• Strategic alignment: Your roadmap will be clearly tied to your product strategy and business objectives.
• Clarity of communication: Everyone can see what’s coming up and how it fits into the bigger picture.
• Adaptability: As priorities shift, your roadmap will be able to keep up. The right tool will allow you to make updates without losing sight of your overall goals.
• Stakeholder visibility: Get buy-in from execs and other departments by showing how your roadmap connects to business growth.

Move faster

You’ll also be able to move a lot faster. Everything is set up specifically for the requirements of a Product Team, so you won’t need to get your head around how to bend and adapt a generalist tool to fit your use case. 

You’ll have ready-made product roadmap templates right off the bat, you’ll have suggested workflow stages already created, you’ll have default filters and suggested roadmap views ready to share.

Key Considerations for choosing from the best product roadmap tools

So, now you understand what product roadmap tools are and what makes purpose-built tools like this the best option. But you’ll still need to narrow down a fairly long list to find the best product roadmap tool for you. How do you decide? 

There are a number of questions you need to ask yourself. 

Are you outcome-focused?

This has to be question number one. What does your business value most? Is it more important that you can demonstrate volume of features or improved metrics and results? Hopefully you’ll be answering in favor of outcomes and results. If you’re not, you may need to have a word with your senior stakeholders and help them see the light about the importance of outcome-based roadmapping. We’ve got a ready-made presentation deck you can use for the job! See below

If you can confidently say that outcomes are your key focus, then you need a product roadmap tool that allows you to run an agile-friendly Now-Next-Later product roadmap. If you need to know more about the time-horizon-based roadmap format (the antithesis of the timeline roadmap), we have you covered. 

Do you want to foster a product culture across your organization?

Is part of your objective for revamping your roadmap and how you communicate it, to help promote a ‘product mindset’ across the company? Do you want to get more stakeholders engaged with the product process in the hope that you’ll convince them of the alignment, strategic importance and success of the Product?  Are you hoping to encourage collaboration from other teams and stakeholders so there is more transparency on how you work, how you reach decisions and why you have to balance priorities and sometimes say no?

If so, look for a tool that has the most robust publishing and sharing options, the right collaboration integrations and the clearest visualization of why things are where they are on your roadmap. 

Also look for a tool that will allow you to add everyone in your organization as a collaborator for free. And make sure you understand what they can do as a ‘collaborator’ or ‘reviewer’ or ‘contributor’ or whatever the user type is called. Can they only view? Or have they got the ability to submit feedback, add comments, join in discussions or even submit ideas to your roadmap initiatives? Spoiler alert – free reviewer accounts can do all that and more in ProdPad. 

Do you need your tool to play nicely with other tools in your organization? 

If you answered yes to the previous question then you’ll definitely need to consider this. The whole point of using one of the best product roadmap tools is so you don’t have a roadmap that sits in isolation from everything else. So think about how you need your chosen tool to integrate with your existing systems. 

Think about…

• Where your developers manage their sprint planning
• Which CRM your Sales Team uses
• The Customer Support tools your customer-facing teams use
• The messaging app your wider organization favors

What does the future of your team look like?

You don’t want to be back here in a year’s time looking for a new tool because your chosen one isn’t able to scale with you. So consider if you’ll be likely to add new products or new product lines and will need to manage a portfolio or even multiple portfolios. 

Also consider all the security implications of a growing team. Look out for the right type of Single Sign On capabilities and security compliance. 

The best product roadmap tools

OK, full disclosure, you’re on the ProdPad blog so you can guess which tool is top of the list. Yes we obviously have a degree of bias , but we seriously do stand by all the reasons why ProdPad is the best product roadmap tool for forward-thinking Product Managers. 

Having said that, we’re not about to start bad mouthing our competitors all over town. That’s not our style. We’re all product people building tools for product people, after all. And some of these folks have built some really great software tools, with some solid features that have given us food for thought over the years. 

We’ve included the tools we believe are the absolute best suited for product roadmapping – they are all purpose-built and all have a proven track record as an established player in the market. 

So let’s delve in….

1. ProdPad

Who is it for?

ProdPad is the best product roadmap tool for outcome-focused Product Teams of any size. ProdPad is structured around the industry-prefered Now-Next-Later roadmap format which was actually invented by our very own Co-Founders and allows Product Managers to present a roadmap that follows an Initiative > Idea structure.  

This two level structure to roadmap items is the key to staying flexible and working in an agile way. Instead of pinning exact features to your roadmap from the start, with ProdPad you create roadmap Initiatives that are focused on a problem to solve. You then attach various different Ideas to each Initiative as your thinking develops, working each through discovery until you find the best solution to the problem you have prioritized. 

This also makes ProdPad the best product roadmap tool for PMs looking to communicate their roadmap in a way that does not create stakeholder expectations tied to arbitrary dates. ProdPad’s roadmap flexibility provides stakeholders with a clear picture of the product priorities, with broad time horizons for the stuff that is further out, moving to more exact time periods as Initiatives move further down the line. 

In this way, Product Teams spend less time reworking their roadmap when discovery work invalidates one Idea and means changing to a different feature Idea. They can stay true to a roadmap that is agile, flexible and focused on the outcomes they want to drive, not exact feature outputs. 

Whether you’re in a startup or an enterprise, ProdPad’s flexibility and emphasis on strategic alignment make it the go-to tool for teams that refuse to compromise on quality or clarity.

Best features – ‘The Pros’

• Outcome-driven roadmapping: Unlike most tools that focus on features and timelines, ProdPad helps you build roadmaps based on business outcomes and customer needs. All Initiatives are linked to Objectives and the whole roadmap can be viewed by Objectives. Each roadmap item includes a space for you to capture target outcomes and record release outcomes. You even get a unique Completed view of your roadmap so you can easily demonstrate your outcomes to stakeholders.  
• OKR management: ProdPad’s product roadmapping tool comes complete with a full OKR management system that allows you to set, manage and track general objectives and specific goals. Importantly you can then link each Initiative on your roadmap with the particular Objective and Key Result it seeks to achieve. 
• Strategy canvas: Another unique feature of ProdPad. For each portfolio, product line and individual product there is a CAnvas to record and develop the product vision, value, positioning and more. This gives PMs a flexible space in which to document the broad strategy, stored next to the roadmap so no one loses sight of the bigger picture. 
• Integrated customer feedback: Part of a complete product management platform, ProdPad also collects, organizes, and prioritizes your customer feedback, meaning you can link your evidence directly to your roadmap to support your decision-making.
• AI Assistance: ProdPad also has the best and most mature AI capabilities of any other tool on this list. ProdPad has been able to automatically de-dupe your backlog for many years, but with new AI features being released every week the tool is even further ahead of competitors. Honestly, the AI is game-changing.
• Collaboration-ready: ProdPad’s product roadmap tool is specifically designed to foster communication and alignment across teams. It comes complete with, for example, the most robust Slack and Teams integrations of all the tools on this list. This means anyone in your organization can contribute and comment on your roadmap and its Initiatives from the safety of the tools they already use day-in, day-out. 
• Prioritization tools: ProdPad has built-in prioritization tools like our Prioritization chart which makes it quick and easy to spot the Ideas and Initiatives that will deliver the most impact relative to the effort and feasibility.
• Portfolio management: As standard with ProdPad, you can create an unlimited number of roadmaps so you can easily use the tool across your whole organization. Full portfolio management is also available meaning you can have specific roadmaps, OKRs and strategy canvases at each level. 

Restrictions

• No timelines here: If you are fighting against stakeholders who don’t understand how agile roadmapping works, we feel for you. We would be more than happy to help you convince your stakeholders that timelines are bad for business – so please reach out if that’s of interest. Because ProdPad doesn’t have Gantt chart style timeline options. We do enable target dates to be added to all Initiatives – so your stakeholders can understand when something is coming, but that doesn’t dictate the whole layout of your roadmap. We also have two-way syncs with development tools like Jira or Azure DevOps so you can happily link to your release planning for that complete view. But if you want a product roadmap in a timeline format this ain’t the tool for you. 

Pricing

Starts at $24 per month, with custom plans available for enterprise organizations. You can also purchase just the product Roadmap tool from ProdPad’s full suite and later add the Customer Feedback and Idea Management modules as you need. 

G2 Rating

4.5/5

2. Aha!

Who is it for?

Aha! is a well-known option for Product Managers working in large organizations. Aha! Is underpinned by a more traditional approach to Product Management so may be better suited to those that approach Product from more of an operational perspective. 

Best features – Pros

• Strategy tools: In a similar way to ProdPad, Aha! provides an area for PMs to capture their Personas, Strategy and Vision (although it’s at the overall account level and not sitting next to individual roadmaps). There are also a number of strategic framework tools available as templates to help you do, for example, SWOT analysis. 
• Customizable reports: Aha! provides a very customizable suite of reports that enable you to drill down into the data and create analysis into your product process. The customization takes a bit of time to get your head around, but this capability is interesting if you find yourself spending a lot of time crunching numbers in spreadsheets.

Limitations – Cons

• Single item roadmap hierarchy: Even with Aha!’s Now-Next-Later roadmap, there is only a single level hierarchy. This prevents you from capturing the problem area as the Initiative and nesting different ideas within that. That, unfortunately, means you will end up just pushing features around a board view rather than managing a truly agile, lean roadmap. 
• No goal management: With Aha! you cannot set and manage specific goals, relevant to each Objective. This means you will be without the SMART goals that will help you understand if you have achieved your Objective. 
• Next to no AI: Aha! is yet to release any AI capabilities in their roadmap tool

Pricing

Starts at $74 per user, per month on their monthly plan, however, they do have annual plans available too. 

G2 Rating

4.3/5

3. Productboard

Who is it for?

Productboard is worth considering if you’re looking for a complete platform that will help you manage your roadmap, ideas and customer feedback. The setup is rather complicated but if you think you might need deep customization and configuration Productboard should be on your list. In fact, Productboard can be so complex that the team there offer a professional services level of support that you can purchase to help you grapple with the setup.

Best features – Pros

• Integrations: Productboard have a robust offering of integrations from whiteboarding tools like Miro right through to AI analysis tools like Cobbaï
• User access levels: Productboard, like ProdPad, is another tool that provides you with a lot of control over the access levels and permissions that each of your users has. This can be very important in larger organizations or where sensitive projects may be in play.

Limitations – Cons

• No strategy capture: Productboard does not have an area for you to document product vision, values or add narrative to your product strategy. 
• No OKR or goal management tool: Productboard does not offer an in-bulit tool to help you set and track your product objectives making it harder to align your roadmap with priority outcomes. 
• Single item roadmap hierarchy: Like Aha!, Productboard only provides a ‘feature board’ by way of a time-horizon based roadmap, preventing you from communicating larger initiatives with multiple features ideas within them. 
• Basic reporting: Productboard’s reporting features are minimal, which can limit how well you track progress or demonstrate strategic alignment.
• Complexity: The user interface can feel cluttered and difficult to navigate, and many users complain about the level of decision that have to be made before you can get started.
• AI only available on the highest price plan: The AI assistance that comes with Productboard is only available with the top tier plans, making the tools less integrated or integral to the overall experience. 

Pricing

Starts at $19 per user, per month for their Essentials Plan.

G2 Rating

4.4/5

4. ProductPlan

Who is it for?

ProductPlan is a good option for teams that want a super simple, visual tool to present their roadmap. 

Best features – Pros

• User-friendly: ProductPlan’s drag-and-drop interface is simple to use and great for teams looking for a quick visual solution.
• Launch project management: ProductPlan also has an adjacent tool for managing launch plans and collaborating with GTM teams. It helps you create and track tasks and assign due dates for the launch phase of a feature release. 
• Sharing: Decent for sharing roadmaps with non-technical stakeholders, they allow for easy external link sharing. 
• Great resources: ProductPlan has a great resource center to help you navigate your way around the app and tackle general product management problems. 

Limitations – Cons

• No customer feedback management: ProductPlan doesn’t have tools to help you collect or prioritize customer feedback.
• No idea management: ProductPlan is a roadmap only tool, so you won’t be able to manage your backlog and easily link ideas and their related documentation to your roadmap items. 
• No AI assistance: ProductPlan doesn’t have any AI-powered tools to lighten the load.

Pricing

ProductPlan no longer advert their pricing on their website and seem to be offering custom enterprise packages only that necessitate a call with the Sales Team. 

G2 Ratings

4.5/5

5. Roadmunk

Who is it for?

Roadmunk is a decent option for teams that need flexible roadmap views. If you are forced to balance unwavering stakeholder demands for timelines with a desire to work more flexibly then Roadmunk may be the solution that gives you both avenues. 

Best features – Pros

• Multiple views: Offers flexibility in how you display roadmaps, which can be useful if you’re battling with different stakeholder preferences.
• Portfolio level roadmaps: Allowing you to have different levels and roadmap effectively across your organization.
• Prioritization: Provides some fairly robust prioritization features, so you’re able to assess your product ideas against a range of different criteria.

Limitations – Cons

• Limited integrations: There are only two integration options with Roadmunk – one for Jira and the other ADO, meaning you’re going to hit roadblocks when trying to sync data from other platforms like CRMs or Support tools.  
• Weaker strategic focus: Roadmunk focuses more on visuals than on providing the tools needed to build a strategy that drives outcomes.
• No Now-Next-Later roadmap: Although you can do a swimlane roadmap, Roadmunk don’t offer a proper Now-Next-Later roadmap format. 
• Limited customer feedback management: Roadmunk is primarily a roadmap-only solution but in recent years they have added some basic ways to add feedback into the tool, however they aren’t as robust as other product roadmap tools.  

Pricing

Starts at $19 per user, per month. However, this is only for the single user, you’ll need to upgrade to the Business Plan at $49 per month for your team to get access.

G2 Rating

4.3/5

6. Jira Product Discovery

Who is it for?

Jira Product Discovery is best for teams that are already deeply integrated into the Jira ecosystem and are struggling to find budget for a more robust roadmapping solution. Like ProdPad, Jira Product Discovery only facilitates the Now-Next-Later roadmap format so it’s a solid choice if one of your priorities is keeping your team working consistently and in line with best practice. 

Best features – Pros

• Easy Jira integration setup: If your team is already using Jira Software for development, the integration here is obviously set as standard. You won’t need to set it up and confirm authorization between the two tools. 
• Now-Next-Later customization: Offers flexibility to play with the Now-Next-Later structure and adapt it (although…beware you don’t end up with something that doesn’t fulfill the outcome-focus of a true Now-Next-Later)

Limitations – Cons

• Single level roadmap hierarchy: Like a couple of other contenders on this list, Jira Product Discovery does not allow you to nest Ideas within Initiatives on your roadmap, therefore limiting the flexibility you have to remain agile and adapt to your discovery findings.
• Fewer ways to gather feedback: Although Jira Product Discovery does allow you to capture feedback to inform your roadmap, the tool is missing the integrations that would make this feedback flow consistent and effortless.
• No feedback analysis tools: There are no tools to help you uncover insights from your feedback to inform your product thinking.
• No AI assistance: Jira Product Discovery is yet to offer an AI assistance. 
• No roadmap publishing: You cannot publish your roadmap externally meaning all viewers will need to have their own login. 
• Lack of collaboration tools: You won’t be able to integrate other communication tools and have your stakeholders contribute to your roadmap planning without actively logging into Jira Product Discovery and using the tool directly. 
• Limited standalone value: It’s a good add-on for Jira users but doesn’t stand alone well as a comprehensive product roadmap tool.

Pricing

Starts at $10 per user for teams of  1 – 25

G2 Rating

Oh sorry, Jira Product Discovery isn’t actually represented on G2.

7. Dragonboat

Who is it for?

Dragonboat is a solid choice for large teams managing multiple products or portfolios. It positions itself as a Product Operations platform and has a focus on portfolio decision making and business leadership considerations. 

Best features – Pros

• Portfolio management: Great for multi product organizations and portfolio managers looking to make strategic decisions across multiple product lines. 
• Outcome-focused planning: It offers good tools for linking initiatives to business objectives.

Limitations – Cons

• Complex interface: Dragonboat’s UI can be difficult to navigate, especially for new users. Users have been known to crumble about the outdated UI.
• Overly robust: The feature set may be too much for teams that aren’t managing portfolios or large-scale product organizations.

Pricing

Dragonboat no longer advertises their pricing publically, you can contact their Sales team directly to discuss options. They have a Standard Plan and a Business Plan available. 

G2 Rating

4.5/5

What now?

Think there’s a couple there that could work well for you? The next steps are to book yourself a demo and let the expert teams behind these tools show you how they work in detail. Then you’ll have all the info you need to make the right decision.

Why not start with ProdPad?

The post 7 Best Product Roadmap Tools in 2024 appeared first on ProdPad.

Why use user onboarding software?

We don’t need to tell you the importance of nailing your product onboarding, right? If you don’t help your first-time users quickly and easily understand your product – what it does, how to use it and why it will be valuable to them – they won’t continue to use it, adopt it or pay for it. Your product will fail. 

So we’re agreed that it’s crucial to guide your users through their first use of your product and give them a specific onboarding experience to ensure they come back for more. But why do you need to use a user onboarding software tool for this job? Why is it better to add a tool to your stack for this, rather than just building your own product tours and onboarding flows directly into your own product? 

There are a couple of pretty compelling reasons.

You have full control

Using user boarding software for your product tours and onboarding flows will give you, as a Product Manager, far greater control. These no-code solutions mean you can just jump into the tool and create your flows, add your copy and make all the tweaks you want to, when you want to, without having to beg, borrow or steal time from your developers.

You can move faster

You can also move a lot faster because you won’t have to rely on any help from developers. 

If you choose to build your own onboarding flows and product tours directly into your product, you’ll need to factor that into your development planning. That will likely mean you need to add that to your product roadmap and prioritize the work amongst everything else. 

Whereas if you use a ready-made tool for this job, then you can just get on with it yourself and you won’t need to disturb the product roadmap. You can get this initiative up and running concurrently to the other initiatives on your roadmap. 

So, you can move faster AND avoid impacting the rest of the product development you want to do.

What is user boarding software?

Regardless of whether you use these tools in your own product yet or not, you will have experienced the work of these tools yourself when you’ve first signed up for a new app. Those tool tips, modals, pop-ups and notifications that guide through and show you how to use the product – that’s user onboarding software in action.  

User onboarding software is the behind-the-scenes toolkit that creates and powers these smooth, helpful experiences for new users.

These tools are typically SaaS products that provide you with a low to no-code way of creating these onboarding flows and integrating them into your product.

What should you look for in user onboarding software?

There are a lot of user onboarding software tools on the market right now and it can be hard to work out which ones are worth evaluating. That’s why we’ve compiled this list – to give you a shortlist to pick. But what are the fundamental features and functionality you should expect from a user onboarding software tool? Let us walk you through the key things you should be looking for in a decent product tour tool.

No-code necessary

The beauty of using user onboarding software rather than building your product tours directly into your product is the ability it affords you as the Product Manager to crack on with it yourself. As we’ve already said, it means you can get in-app tours up and running without having to plan it into your development sprints and patiently wait until it gets prioritized. 

All the tools we’re recommending on this list allow you to build and publish your flows from their own UIs. All you’ll need to do is add a one-time script to your product and then you can create, tweak and publish to your heart’s content.

Analytics to measure performance

The whole point of creating these product tours is to guide as many new users as possible through certain activation tasks and valuable actions. So you need your user onboarding software to tell you how successfully that is being achieved. 

You need to use a product tour tool with a robust analytics suite that will allow you to see things like views and completion rates for complete flows, as well as individual steps. Ideally you would also be able to filter the analytics by different user segments so you can drill down further. 

Analytics for individual sessions can also be useful, providing details of the events and the timings so you can form a picture of how your users are moving through the flow step by step. 

Customizable branding & design

You need to be able to customize the appearance of the pop-ups, tool tips and guidance notes that appear for your users so your tours are blended into the overall app experience and don’t feel jarring. It’s important that these tours feel part of a consistent experience and not a bolted-on addition. 

All of the tools on our list have robust out-of-the-box design customization that should allow you to pick your font, colors and more. Some of these user onboarding software tools also offer custom CSS so you can tweak the appearance of any of the tour elements even further, should you need to. 

Integrations

You should consider the integrations you might need when it comes to your user onboarding software. You’ll want to push data into your chosen tool to help improve the targeting of your product tours, and you’ll likely want to push data out to communicate and measure results and to help inform other experiences across other channels. 

So, think about the rest of your tech stack – what integrations would you ideally need? And would you be happy with using something like Zapier to connect the apps, or would a native integration be better? 

Consider the following integrations when selecting your user boarding software:

• Your product analytics tool
• Your CRM
• Calendar tool to book demos or onboarding calls
• Your Live chat tool

Triggers and targeting options

At a basic level you’ll need to be able to set the triggers for when your product tours pop up. That could be a particular page in your app, or it could be based on a particular action a user has taken. You’ll need some level of control on when the product tour first fires so you can be sure it comes in at the right time. 

Some of the user onboarding software tools on our list will allow you to get more sophisticated with your triggers and enable you to segment your users and show different flows to different cohorts. 

Templates to get you started

It’s always helpful to see examples to help kick-start your thinking, so consider whether you’d ideally like your chosen user onboarding software to come with some ready-made template onboarding flows that you can pick up and adapt. They’re a great way to get started and can help you move that bit faster.

A/B testing and experimentation

You’re a Product Manager, so experimentation is in your blood! You’ll want a tool that will allow you to test different flows and measure the results so you can learn and iterate. If this sounds like something you’d want, be sure to double check your chosen tool has the ability to A/B test flows at least.

Common features of user boarding software

Here’s a quick checklist of features you’d typically expect to have in a good user onboarding software tool. 

• Product tours
• Checklists
• Announcements – banners, modals
• Surveys
• Hotspots
• Tooltips
• Analytics
• Segmentation and targeting 

Now you understand the lay of the land when it comes to user onboarding software, let’s dive into our list of the best 9 solutions on the market right now.

The Best User Onboarding Software

In no particular order…

1. Chameleon

Chameleon is a fairly extensive user onboarding tool offering all of the features listed above. They have product tours, tooltips, surveys, widgets, modals, banners and checklists. 

Chameleon also recently launched a universal search bar facility, which is pretty interesting.  It’s called Helpbar.ai. You can connect it to your help center and use it to offer your users the ability to search within your content and to get AI answers to their questions. 

There’s a cool way to try this out. Just add your help center URL into their website and you can instantly use the search functionality to get an AI generated answer to any question. Check it out for yourself. 

They also have a great Inspiration Gallery on their website that showcases a whole bunch of in-product guidance examples including tooltips, onboarding flows, upsell modals and more.

Pricing

Chamelon offers three pricing tiers, from Startup to Enterprise. The cost ranges depending on your product’s userbase. For 2000 monthly users, the Startup tier is priced at $279 a month. A nice bonus is that The HelpBar functionality of Chamelon is free is to use. Find more details on their pricing here. 

2. Appcues

Appcues are one of the major players in the user onboarding software game, with some big SaaS customers using them like AdRoll, ProfitWell and Vidyard. 

Appcues have one of the largest selection of integrations – 28 of which are native. Also, kudos to them on the integrations page on their website – thats some really nice web and UX design right there!

If you’re looking for a product tour tool that will work across both desktop and mobile and/or on mobile native applications, then Appcues should be one of your front runners. They have a particular focus on mobile with the Appcues Mobile tool. 

They also offer AI-powered localization that will deliver your onboarding flows in each user’s local language. So no matter what language you use in your product, you can deliver that all-important guidance and tutorial content in the user’s own language.

Pricing

The cost of Appcues scales depending on your average monthly user base. For 2500 monthly active users, Appcues Essentials plan will cost $249 a month, while their Growth tier costs $879 a month for the same monthly users. There’s also an Enterprise plan with custom pricing. Find out more on their pricing here.

3. Userpilot

Userpilot comes with an analytics tool that goes beyond the engagement with your product tours, so you can use this tool as your overall product analytics tool. Userpilot also has event auto-capture, allowing you to create all your tracking events without needing developers’ involvement.

The analytics for the user onboarding flows in Userpilot also offers the ability to set what they call ‘growth goals’ which you can use to measure your ongoing success rate. For example, you could set a goal of achieving 300 demo bookings with a particular product tour and the grow goals feature will track progress against that goal and surface an easy-to-understand goal report. 

Pricing

Userpilot offers three plans, a Starter, Growth, and Enterpirse tier. Their cheapest plan starts at $249 a month, with their Growth tier costing $749 a month when paid annually. If you’re looking for a pay monthly option, their Starter plan increases to $299 a month. Get the full breakdown of Userpilot pricing here.

4. Product Fruits

From a team based in the Czech Republic, Product Fruits specializes in AI generated product tour content. So if you’re not sure where to start or want to get off the ground particularly quickly, this could be a good way to spin up something as an initial test. 

These guys also allow you to deploy their snippet via Google Tag Manager, so you can get setup and have user tours published to your product without needing to bother your dev team at all.

Pricing

Product Fruits offer three tiers from ‘Core’ to Enterprise. Their lowest package starts at $79 a month for up to 1500 users. They define users as unique, active monthly users. Find more details on their pricing here.

5. UserGuiding

The folks at UserGuiding claim you can get completely set up and running in just 15 minutes. UserGuiding positions itself as the easiest of the user onboarding software tools, with the simplest implementation. 

Interestingly, you actually build your tours through their Chrome extension. This allows you to create and test the tours on top of your product right away, in real time. 

Pricing

UserGuiding offers three different options, a Basic, Professional, and Corporate Plan. The basic plan starts at $89 a month, with the Pro plan costing $249 a month based on a product with 2500 monthly active users. For their Corporate Plan, get in touch directly to get a quote. All the details of UserGuiding’s pricing can be found here.

6. Userflow

Userflow claim that their script has a 5 – 10x smaller footprint than their competitors. This could be a deciding factor for you if you’re concerned about the impact of these user onboarding software scripts on the speed of your app.  

Userflow also allow you to run multiple environments, meaning you can build and test your onboarding flows on your staging environment first before replicating on production. This means you can have one Userflow account and publish to more than one place.

Pricing

Userflow pricing starts at $240 a month for their Startup plan, designed for products with less than 10,000 monthly active users. To access their Pro plan, pricing starts at $680 a month, but scales up based on your overall active users. Find more details on their pricing here.

7. Whatfix

Whatfix, as a user onboarding software, goes a little further than some of the other tools on this list. Whatfix has three core areas to its product. Alongside their ‘digital adoption platform’, they also have a product analytics tool and something called Whatfix Mirror. 

Their Mirror tool is a simulated web application package that lets you create replicas of your web app to use like a sandbox environment for hands-on user training. Pretty cool right? This means, you can spin up a replica of your app without needing to borrow development time to do it. 

Within their user onboarding software tool they have a nice feature which allows you to export any of the content or tours you’ve created as videos, slide decks, how-to articles and PDFs. This is a great feature for helping you to scale your training materials quickly and easily. So every time you create a new product tour, you can spin it out into a whole range of different materials which your CS teams, Sales people and even Marketing can use as content.

Pricing

Whatfix offers three different plans, their Standard, Premium, and Enterprise tiers. In terms of pricing, you’re going to have to ask them directly. You can find out more about what each tier offers and request pricing information here.

8. Intercom

Intercom is first and foremost a Customer Service tool. You might even use it in your company to run your Help Center, live chat and Support tickets. But did you know they also offer a user onboarding tool? 

Needless to say, their product tours integrate seamlessly with the other elements of Intercom including their live chat interface. This means that you can surface relevant product tours to customers when they ask specific questions in the chat window. So, if a user hops into the chat to ask how to use a particular feature, rather than surfacing a help article on it, the chatbot can surface a link directly to the product tour for that feature. Neat hey? 

So if you’re already using Intercom as your Support tool, it could be well worth taking a look at their product tour functionality before you start evaluating brand new tools.

Pricing

Intercom starts at $39 per seat per month for their Essential plan, and rises to $139 per seat per month for the Expert plan. You can also choose to add on Proactive Support Plus for $99 a month to get advanced in-app and outbound support. Learn more about Intercom pricing here.

9. Hopscotch

Hopscotch doesn’t restrict the number of product tours you can create, no matter what pricing tier you are on, which is a nice touch. They also offer discounts for early-stage startups.

With Hopscotch, you can create your own tour templates, making it easier to create more and more tours and have other people on your team build experiences for your users. 

However, if you need to run your tours across both desktop and mobile, Hopscotch won’t be the tool for you as they don’t currently support mobile applications. 

Pricing

Hopscotch keeps things simple, offering a single plan that you can choose to pay monthly or annually. When paid annually, it’ll cost you $6.67 a month, or $79.99 for the year. Their pay monthly plan costs $9.99. Learn more about their pricing here. 

That concludes our list of the best user onboarding software tools. You should find a tool that works for you in terms of both functionality and budget from that lot. For the record, here at ProdPad we use Userflow. If you want to see that tool in action, why not start a free trial of ProdPad and take a look at our onboarding flows. We’d love to know what you think!

The post 9 Best User Onboarding Software Tools appeared first on ProdPad.

We will cover:

• Why it’s important to train them
• What does useful product feedback look like? 
• The challenges of getting good feedback from your customer team
• How to train your customer teams to speak to the roadmap 
• How to structure a training session
• How and when to deliver the training
• Examples of good product feedback to show them
• Don’t let them forget! 

You’ll also get a downloadable, editable, ready-made slide deck to use with your teams to deliver this training.

But first…

Why is it important to train your customer teams to get useful feedback?

Because it will make your job easier, faster and more successful. Simple as that.

If what your customer teams submit as feedback from users is the best it can be, it will significantly cut down the amount of time you have to spend deciphering, interpreting and extracting insight from each piece of feedback. 

It’ll require less follow-up questions from you, less digging and delving. If you’ve coached your customer team mates to ask the right questions and capture the right insight, then that is a job you don’t have to do. 

Nearly all the Product Managers we speak to have experienced the same problem at one point or another. A Support rep submits some user feedback to the Product Team which just reads “customer wants a calendar integration”. Sigh. Now you have to send the customer an email, or pick up the phone and ask them why. Why do they think they need a calendar integration? What is it that they think a calendar integration will do for them? Are they hoping to reduce the number of missed appointments? Are they just wanting to cut out the need to manually update their calendar? Or maybe they want everyone else in their family to know about the appointment? What is the problem they need to solve? 

Because it’s only once you know the fundamental problem they have, that you can evaluate the best way to solve it. And yes, that might end up being a calendar integration, but it might equally turn out to be a new push notification or an automated SMS. 

If you don’t uncover the problem to solve for each piece of user feedback, then you’ll end up in what Janna Bastow (our CEO and Co-Founder and inventor of the Now-Next-Later roadmap) calls The Agency Trap. If most of the pieces of feedback your Customer Teams send over are actually feature requests, then you can easily end up building to order. Functioning like a software agency rather than a product-led organization. 

So, to be truly effective as a product company, you’ll want to be finding out the problems your target customers have and solving them in the best possible way. And training your customer teams to get to the heart of the problem, is one of the important ways you can achieve that. 

What does useful product feedback look like?

Before we launch into how to go about this training, let’s decide what the end goal is. What exactly is useful feedback? What does it look like? 

Here are the core principles of useful product feedback.

• It’s clear who the user is and what type of customer they are  
• It explains what the customer is trying to achieve
• A problem or challenge has been articulated
• There’s an understanding of how often this problem is felt
• There’s an indication of how important solving this problem is for the customer
• The situation or context of the customer is noted
• The motivation for getting this task done has been identified

Now, I must caveat that list. That is the absolute dream. If every bit of feedback ticked all of those boxes you would be flat out winning at Product Management and Customer Experience. The reality won’t be quite so perfect… but this gives you something to aim for! 

What it boils down to is this… you want feedback to tell you the customer is trying to achieve, what problem they have encountered and how important solving that problem is to them.  

The challenges of getting ‘good’ feedback from your customer team

Over in our article 5 Ways to Get Customer Teams to Share User Feedback, we covered the reasons why it’s often hard to get any sort of feedback shared by your Customer Teams. But here we’re concerned with the quality of that feedback. 

So why is it hard to get the right kind of feedback from these colleagues? 

The customer is always right

You’ve heard this right? Customer Service or Support reps will have this mantra gently whispering away to them all day long. They’ll have grown up on this principle – it’s ingrained and underpins all their customer interactions. You don’t disagree with the customer, you don’t argue with them!

And, of course, we don’t want them to disagree with the customer! We just want them to delve a little deeper. We want them to help the customer really understand what is at the heart of their request. It’s about not just taking what they’ve said at face value and reporting it back to Product verbatim. 

But this isn’t easy and maybe it doesn’t come naturally to Customer Teams. They aren’t therapists after all. 

It takes longer

Customer-facing colleagues are often super busy (isn’t everyone ), so taking the time to dig deeper can often be something they don’t have the time to do. 

It is far quicker to just make a note of what the customer has said and ping it over to Product. Done job. 

How to train your customer teams to speak to the roadmap 

This is another advantage of having your Customer Teams well versed in delving into the problems underlying their customers’ feedback. 

Let’s say a customer declares that they need a certain feature. Once your customer teammate has successfully taken that request back to the underlying problem they want to solve, now they should be able to talk to the different ways that problem is already being looked at by the Product Team (if it is). 

This is why it’s important to have your roadmap structured around problems to solve. It makes it super easy for a CSM to hear a problem, find said problem on the roadmap and advise the customer of where that sits in the priorities. And maybe even give them some sneaky previews into the different ideas that are being explored as a part of the initiative to solve that problem. 

They can even invite the customer to be part of the discovery or testing of the solution! That will go a long way to making them feel listened to, valued and invested in the product.  

They will have flipped a simple feature request into an exploration of the customer’s struggles or desires at the same time as giving them a window into the scientific workings of the Product discipline, tirelessly working to discover the best solutions. Trust me, the customer will walk away from this feeling impressed. It’s win/win. 

How to structure a training session

By now I think we’re clear on what useful feedback looks like and why it’s important to coach the Customer Teams to be able to deliver it. But how do you actually go about coaching this stuff? How should you explain it to them? What tips and advice can you give to help them coax out the most useful insights? 

Here’s how you should structure your training. 

1. Tell them why it matters
2. Explain what is in it for them
3. Be clear about what the most useful feedback looks like
4. Give them examples of great feedback
5. Outline the questions to ask
6. Show them examples of flipping feature requests into useful feedback

Tell them why it matters

When it comes to training your colleagues around this, the first job is to win their enthusiasm for the task. You need to convince them that working to delve deeper into customers’ feedback is worth their time and effort. So start by focusing on winning them over to actually being coached in the first place. If you fail to explain how important this is, in a way that means something to them, then they ain’t gonna be listening all that well. 

Explain what is in it for them

Which is why it’s worth giving them the overall benefits to the organization – providing you the right insights to ensure you can build the most valuable product for your customers and therefore increase retention and acquisition – but ALSO the more immediate benefits that will directly impact them and their job. 

Those might include:

• Better relationships with their customers (thanks to talking for longer, digging deeper and increasing their understanding), making communication easier and interactions happier.
• Being able to deliver more positive news more often – rather than saying ‘no we don’t have that feature’, they can say ‘we’re actually exploring how to solve that problem in a better way’.
• Having to deal with far fewer disappointed customers who expected a feature request to be actioned, but instead understand that their problem is going to be explored.

Be clear about what the most useful feedback looks like

Next, you’ll want to be explicit about what useful feedback looks like. So take the principles we’ve covered above and explain them to your trainee. But don’t just use the theory, make it crystal clear with some concrete examples. 

Give them examples of useful feedback 

Whether you actually find a great example from your real feedback inbox, or you make something up to illustrate the point, make it crystal clear by showing them something concrete. 

Outline the questions to ask

Now they’ve seen what the end goal is, take them through the best ways to get there. Here you need to arm them with a list of questions to help them dig deeper, help the customer unpick what it is they need, and get to the heart of the problem. 

Those questions could be:

• What do you think that feature would do for you?
• Why do you feel you need that particular functionality?
• What is the problem you believe that feature will solve?
• What are you trying to do?
• What is the outcome you want to achieve?

Show them examples of flipping feature requests into useful feedback

This is a top tip from our Head of Product here at ProdPad, Kirsty Kearney-Greig. She has done this with our Customer Teams to great effect. It involves picking out a real piece of feedback that they have submitted to the Product Team and flipping it from less useful feedback to some very valuable insight. 

Having the two interpretations side by side is extremely helpful when it comes to understanding the difference. 

Original piece of feedback:

“The customer wants access to the revenue fields via the API.”

Improved feedback after delving deeper and asking the right questions:

“The customer has a monthly report for the Board that requires them to add their revenue numbers per agent per week. Cutting and pasting them from the Rental Report in our product is taking about 2 hours of their time each month. This is time they don’t have to spare! They were wondering whether they could access the right revenue fields via the API and set up an integration that will automatically feed the data into the Board report. They need a solution that greatly reduces the time they have to spend on this task, if not remove it completely.”

How and when to deliver the training

You can’t just email this around and expect much to change. This is coaching that needs to be delivered face to face (well, face on a screen to face on a screen at least). You want to speak directly to your trainees and be able to see their reaction (so you can respond accordingly). 

Do it properly – use a slide deck

So I would urge you to deliver this training to them formally. By that I mean that you’re explicitly standing in front of them, with a slide deck, at a pre-planned time. Don’t worry, that’s as formal as it needs to get. I’m not suggesting everyone has to wear a suit and keep a straight face. The important thing is that this doesn’t come in the form of a passing comment or two. You need to get across the importance and therefore you should give this training the gravitas it deserves. It will help set the right tone and expectations with the team. 

If the thought of creating a slide deck for this fills you with dread, do not worry! We have you covered. We’ve knocking up a ready-made deck for you to download and use with your team. So all you need to do is book in the time with them.

Get a slot in their regular team meetings

In terms of when to deliver the training, there are a few pointers I can give here. If you can, try and deliver the training to multiple customer-facing colleagues at the same time. And try to ensure their managers and leaders are in the room. It’s a good idea to speak to the commercial leaders beforehand and stress the importance, asking for their support in encouraging their teams to work in this way. 

But, if your customer-facing teams are doing a good job, their calendars will be full with customer or prospect calls. So finding a time in the diaries can be extremely tricky. Therefore, it’s a good idea to get yourself a slot in their existing, regular team meetings – that way you know everyone will be there and you don’t have to struggle with finding a time. 

Or do a roadshow

If even that is proving hard, then you could consider taking your slide deck on the road. Yes this will take up more of your time, but I’m hoping you’re sold on the value this could bring! Slot yourself in with each team member for half an hour and run them through the training. 

Make it part of onboarding

Then, once you’ve gotten around everyone, you’ll need to think about new starters. Here I would suggest you speak to HR or the team leaders and ensure this training becomes a standard part of any new starter onboarding for any customer-facing role. 

Don’t let them forget! 

Once you’ve delivered the training to your customer-facing team mates, don’t dust your hands off and walk away. You need to keep reiterating this message if you stand any chance of it becoming a habit for your colleagues. 

This should be considered as ongoing coaching rather than just one-off training. So whenever you spot a piece of feedback coming from a team mate that falls into the ‘not as useful as it could be’ category, take it to them and give them that feedback in the moment. Work with them on how it could be delved into and the exploratory questions they could have asked. 

The post How to Train Customer Teams to Get Really Useful Feedback appeared first on ProdPad.

Why is it important to get internal stakeholders to share product feedback?

But first, why do you need to bother with this? You speak to your customers and users right? Isn’t that enough? Why do you need to struggle away trying to extract insight from other people in the organization?

Because, wonderful as you are, you can’t possibly gather ALL the feedback yourself. A big part of your role as a Product Manager is to speak directly with the users of your product, listen to their feedback and explore their problems. But you have customer-facing team members in the organization who are engaging with multiple individual users all day, every day. If you’re not tapping into that, you have a big hole. 

As Kirsty Kearney-Greig, our Head of Product here at ProdPad says…

For Kirsty here at ProdPad, it’s especially important that her and her team hear all the feedback coming in from customers, because, without it, there’s a risk that she could become blinded by her own experiences. 

I’ll let her explain…

Without a broad range of customer feedback, from as many different flavors of your user base as possible, you’ll fail to understand the whole gambit of experiences and needs and, as a result, fail to take them into account when you’re prioritizing your roadmap, assessing product ideas and deciding what you build and when.  

The challenges of getting stakeholders to share customer feedback 

Getting your hands on all that great insight your customers are sharing with other colleagues is easier said than done. And that is for a number of reasons. 

1. Everyone is busy

Tell me the last time you managed to get through every single thing on your to-do list, exactly in the order you initially planned it. It doesn’t happen right? And especially if you’re in a reactive, customer-facing role. Hopping from one customer or sales call to another all day long. It’s hard to fit in requests from other colleagues. They will certainly get pushed down the priority list as urgent issues come in from customers or revenue-generating activities need to happen.

You tend to get a lot of “oh, I’ll log that feedback later” – with people planning to come back to it at the end of the day and add all the feedback they’ve heard. That’s high-risk for you as a Product Manager. If ‘share feedback’ becomes an item on a to-do list instead of happening in the moment, then there’s a high chance it gets bumped down the list and might not even happen at all. 

2. It’s your job, not theirs

This sounds harsh, but it’s real life. When customer-facing teams are measured on call volume, response time, resolution time and revenue, they are always going to prioritize the tasks that most immediately impact those metrics. This is another reason that sharing feedback can, all too often, slide down the to-do list, in favor of those activities that relate directly to their own KPIs. 

Obviously, longer term, sharing customer feedback and having that impact the decision-making in Product will ensure the product develops in line with customer needs. That will lead to improved customer satisfaction, fewer sales objections and more revenue. But there’s a longer tail to realizing that benefit, and when you have immediate KPIs to hit, it’s not always front-of-mind. 

Even when you do manage to convince your colleagues to send through feedback to you in the Product team, there are challenges around how that is delivered to you and the format it arrives in. 

3. You’re getting feature requests and product ideas rather than feedback

Does this sound familiar to you? A colleague has spoken to a customer and sends you a message (in whatever format that comes) to tell you ‘the customer wants X feature’. End of message. 

How useful is that to you? Not very. Why do they think they need that feature? What do they think that feature will do for them? What is the problem they are trying to solve? THAT is what you need to know. Because maybe X feature isn’t the best way to solve that problem. Maybe you have a better way of solving the problem already on the roadmap. If not that, then you can at least take that problem and run it through discovery to explore a bunch of possible solutions to find the best and most efficient one. 

If you’re just taking feature requests and building to order, then you are falling into what our Co-Founder and CEO Janna Bastow calls ‘The Agency Trap’. 

If your Customer teams are taking feature requests and telling the customer that they will submit it to the Product team, they are setting the expectation that that exact feature will be considered. This can set everyone up for a fall. It’s much better to delve into the route of the problem, listen to the frustration or need the customer has, and have them feel heard and that a solution will be thought about. But we’ll come to how you help your customer teams flip feature requests into genuine feedback in a moment. 

First let’s talk about the challenge of format….

4. The format is all over the place

If you don’t have an organized and communicated way of submitting feedback to the Product team (and sometimes, even if you do), then you’re no doubt getting it in all sorts of shapes and sizes. 

Ultimately, we would always say that some form of feedback submission is better than none at all. So, at least you’re getting something here. But still, there’s room for improvement if feedback is flying in at you from all angles and in a variety of different states. 

One CSM tends to ping you a message on Slack, another fires off an email to you, a third person always forwards you entire recordings of hour-long customer calls, another mumbles a few sentences at you during a meeting. That creates a lot of work for you to collate it all, turn it into something useful and consistent, before you can even start to analyze what you have. Not ideal. 

5. They’re always asking for progress updates

It is absolutely reasonable that your stakeholders request updates on progress when they share feedback with the Product team. They need to keep their customers informed. But there are ways to make this less of a time drain for you as the Product Manager (and we’ll come to those ‘ways’ a little later on). 

Otherwise you will spend far too much of your time fielding questions and digging around for answers. If every time a CSM has a customer call, they come to you asking for updates on all the feedback that customer has given… and you have to do that for every CSM and every call they have… well, you won’t have a lot of time to do much else! 

Yes, those are the challenges, but how do I overcome them, I hear you shout. 

Fair enough. Let’s get to the solutions…

How to get your internal stakeholders to share feedback with the Product team 

1. Make it super easy to submit

Like we’ve said, everyone is busy, focused on their day job and their primary KPIs. They are all working in their own context and have their own work to do. So, if you want your colleagues from other teams to regularly and routinely share their customer feedback with you, you need to make it fast and convenient to do so. 

Let’s face facts, if you require them to log into a different tool which isn’t their own – not one of the tools they already use day-in, day-out – it ain’t gonna happen. Or at least not as often as you’d like. 

If your Customer teams have to leave their context to share feedback with you, then it’ll almost certainly end up as a to-do list item that they plan to come back to at the end of the day – log in once and get it all done in bulk. We’ve already talked about how infrequently those good intentions actually happen. You don’t want this. 

To get the most feedback from other people in your organization, you want them to quickly and easily fire it over to you in the moment (or, at least, immediately after the moment). If you stand any chance of making that happen, you need to give them fast ways to do so without leaving where they are. 

As Kirsty says,

Luckily we can help you with this. If you use ProdPad as your tool, as the central repository for all your feedback from multiple sources, then you can give your internal stakeholders a veritable plethora of fast and easy ways to share their Feedback with you. 

Those ways include:

• A browser extension
• An email drop box
• Through Slack or MS Teams
• Via an unlimited number of customizable Feedback Portals which can be embedded wherever you need 
• Directly from your CRM (like Salesforce)
• Straight from Support tools (like Intercom or Zendesk)

None of these routes require your stakeholders to log into ProdPad. They can simply send the Feedback in with a quick email or a click on the browser extension, or, with the CRM and Support tool integrations, they don’t need to do anything at all. They can just record the customer interaction as they usually would in their own tool and you can have that automatically route into ProdPad as Feedback. 

2. Let them see it makes a difference

It’s important to show your internal stakeholders that the Feedback they share with you actually contributes to the product planning. Otherwise you risk them thinking it’s a pointless exercise and ceasing to do it! I’ve heard Salespeople (in other companies – obviously not ProdPad!) saying “There’s no point telling Product. They just ignore it.” Don’t let that happen in your organization!

Being open and transparent about your product process. Giving everyone full visibility on your flow and prioritization is the best way to ensure you don’t fall foul of this with your Sales or Customer teams. 

If you currently have all your product planning hiding away in spreadsheets or slide decks you need to speak to us here at ProdPad! Having an easily accessible, always up-to-date home for all your product planning is the best way to ensure full transparency into the process. This will mean everyone in your organization understands how Product work and exactly how Feedback feeds into product ideas and prioritization decisions. 

You can also ensure that your internal stakeholders and Feedback submitters see the specific progress relating to particular pieces of Feedback when you use ProdPad. This is the powerful proof they might need to feel assured that their Feedback does impact the product strategy. 

For example, let’s say Customer Success Sally sent some Feedback in through Slack, advising that her customer was frustrated that she’s not spending as much time using the product as she’d like because she’s traveling a lot at the moment. As a Product Manager, analyzing your Feedback, you spot that ‘use when traveling’ is a theme across a number of customers (because ProdPad’s AI Signals tool has highlighted that for you ). So you create a Roadmap Initiative to address this problem – ‘How can we help our customers use our product on the move?’. You come up with a bunch of different Ideas in ProdPad and your AI Assistant automatically links all the related Feedback (including the piece sent in by Customer Success Sally) to the Ideas. 

Next time Sally has a call booked with that customer, she can hop into ProdPad and see a list of all the Feedback she’s submitted. She simply finds this piece and gets an instant update on the workflow stage of the related Idea. She knows, with one click, that you explored three different Ideas, validated a mobile app as the best solution and that mobile app is now in QA testing. What a wonderful update for Sally to deliver to her customer! 

I tell you what, Sally is convinced of the value of sharing Feedback with the Product team. You’ll be enjoying a steady flow of user insight from Sally forever more. 

You might not always be able to show that an individual piece of Feedback has resulted in a corresponding product Idea that hits the roadmap, but you can and should reassure your internal stakeholders that their Feedback contributes to a critical mass of Feedback which feeds the theme analysis. 

Kirsty, our Head of Product, has another top tip to help you convince your stakeholders that their Feedback submissions are important…

3. Make it easy for them to track progress 

We’ve talked about how time draining it can be for you to be constantly dishing out updates to all your customer-facing colleagues. So let’s explore how you can empower them to self-serve this information. 

Because, if they can quickly and easily check up on the Feedback they send through then they’ll be encouraged to keep sending it!

We’re not saying that there shouldn’t be an onus on you as PM to provide these updates, but the right tool can take the weight of this from your shoulders. You then just need to acknowledge receipt of the Feedback and give an indication of what you might do with it, and let the tool help you in terms of smaller incremental updates.

Take the earlier example of Customer Success Sally and the updates she was able to see about the mobile app in QA testing that was linked to her Feedback about using the product while traveling. Sally was able to go into ProdPad, look at her Feedback list and quickly see the workflow stage of the linked Ideas. It looks like this

With ProdPad, you can show all your customer-facing team mates how to set up their Feedback view, customize it to show the information they most care about, and let them hop in here whenever they need an update. You’ve just saved yourself a bunch of time. 

As Kirsty says,

4. Give them clear guidance on what to submit and how

Sometimes people don’t do things because they’re not quite sure how. That’s human nature. So remove all doubt from your colleague’s minds and be crystal clear about what and how to submit Feedback to you. 

We’ve already talked about the propensity to have product Ideas submitted when, in fact, they should have been framed as Feedback, having identified the problem to solve. So, step one here is to give everyone clear guidelines on what is an Idea and what is Feedback. 

Publish, share and socialize those clear guidelines and make sure it’s easily accessible for all your colleagues. Make sure you put it where your Customer teams spend time so they don’t have to hunt around for it.

Consider spreading the word in the following ways:

• Join a Sales meeting and present the guidelines to the team
• Do the same in other customer-facing team meetings
• Post the document on your intranet
• Pin it in relevant Slack or Teams channels (or whatever communication tool you use)
• Email it around
• Find out how to flag it in a prominent place in the CRM, Support tool or whatever tool your customer-facing colleagues use every day

Make sure they are always on hand, so your stakeholders don’t have to hunt around to find it. Because, let’s face it, they won’t. 

What should those guidelines look like? 

Well, we’ve gone ahead and created a template document with a ready-made distinction that you can download and distribute to your team. It’s based on the definitions we use here at ProdPad for our own customer Feedback and product Ideas. We hope you find it useful!

In essence, the distinction looks something like this:

Submit product Feedback if it is about:

1. Improvements on existing features
2. Bugs and issues
3. User experience (UX) enhancements
4. Performance
5. Aesthetics and design

Submit a new product Idea if it is about:

1. A new problem space
2. New markets or use cases
3. Innovative idea
4. Complementary products

Remember, any format is better than nothing at all. But if you can give them easy frameworks to submit their feedback it will reduce the time you spend, as the PM, interpreting what they’ve sent. 

You have to strike a balance between making it easy for them to submit feedback versus helping them to craft it into the most meaningful thing it could be. We think we’ve struck that balance here at ProdPad with our own Feedback processes, so download our template (as soon as it’s ready) and see how it works for you. 

5. Train the team

Our final piece of advice to maximize the amount and the quality of the Feedback you get from your internal customer-facing colleagues, is to spend some time coaching and training them. 

Be gentle obviously. You don’t want to bowl in and start telling them how to do their jobs. But you do need to give them some practical ways to extract the most valuable insights from their customers, in terms of product experience. 

Help them understand how to delve deeper into customer requests or comments, to get to the heart of the problem they need solving. You want this to become a habit for them, so every time a customer says “I need your product to have this feature”, they pause, reflect, then ask the right questions to flip the feature request into a problem to solve. 

Those questions could be:

• What do you think that feature would do for you?
• Why do you feel you need that particular functionality?
• What is the problem you believe that feature will solve?
• What are you trying to do?
• What is the outcome you want to achieve?

Another top tip from Kirsty:

For example, if a customer is asking about API capabilities, you don’t just want your Customer Support people to simply list off what capabilities are and are not available. You want them to delve deeper and ask the customer why they want to know about the API – what do they need to use the API for? What are they trying to do via the API? What is the outcome they want? What problem are they trying to solve

When that has been answered, bang, there’s your Feedback. 

Another of Kirsty’s top tips is to make an appearance at the customer team meetings and deliver this coaching en masse. Rock up to a Sales meeting with the examples on slides, join a CS meeting and take everyone through this training. Then make sure you’re consistently reinforcing this training. Give feedback on the Feedback – not only is this great for acknowledging receipt, but it will also help make this extra level of analysis a habit for your Customer teams. 

How are you going to manage all this Feedback??

If you implement all our suggestions here you’ll be enjoying a consistent flow of useful Feedback from all of your customer and prospect facing team members. So, you better make sure you’re using the right tools to help you manage all that insight. Come speak to one of our Product Management experts here at ProdPad and we can show you all the tools you’ll ever need to gather, analyze, prioritize and action all this customer feedback. 

The post 5 Ways to Get Customer Teams to Share User Feedback [with free template] appeared first on ProdPad.

The whole ‘UX vs UI’ thing has been bamboozling product teams since time immemorial. But it needn’t be all that complicated. When it comes to UX vs UI, you just need to know your look and feel from your user journeys. And – importantly – who’s responsible for which part of the pie. 

So let’s put this to bed once and for all: here’s everything you ever wanted to know about UI vs UX (but weren’t afraid to ask, since you presumably Googled it and landed here)…

What is UX?

UX stands for user experience. For digital products like apps, websites and online services, it’s an overarching term that generally speaks to the way people navigate, explore and, well… Use the thing.

That covers navigation and information hierarchy, as well as overall accessibility and ease of use. Great UX is all about answering a core question: can our users do the thing we want to enable in a way that makes sense? You get there via market research, user testing and fine-tuning until you have a user experience that’s super seamless and intuitive.

And yeah, we know; that letter ‘X’ is doing some heavy lifting here. UX just scans better than UE. It is what it is.

What is UI? 

UI stands for user interface. And for all intents and purposes, ‘interface’ here is synonymous with what most people think of when they think of the word ‘design’. 

Well, kinda, anyway.

See, if you give a designer access to Figma and absolute free reign they’ll let their imaginations run wild. That’ll give you something incredible to look at, but potentially confusing to use. Great user interface design, then, is all about massaging those cool ideas into something that feels unified, coherent, and obvious to the user.  

In other words, UI builds on the skeletal work done by UX teams, focusing more on the cosmetic and aesthetic parts of your product’s DNA. 

UI designers are obsessed with color schemes, the way buttons look, the readability of interactive elements, the feel of transitions and animations, and whether everything is crystal clear to the end user. 

UX vs UI – what’s the difference?

This is where it gets a bit complicated – since the latter is actually a subset of the former. While the two are different disciplines, everything you do as part of user interface design should be done in the interest of your product’s overall user experience. 

After all, if you’re fussing over drop-down menus on a product that’s fundamentally broken on a UX level, you may as well be rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic. 

With UX vs UI, the differences between the two disciplines are probably best described with some handy analogies. If you’re a chef dreaming up a new meal, UX design would be the thought process behind the ingredients – do they work together? Are the flavors complimentary? UI design, on the other hand, is the presentation, the plating and the garnish.

If you’re making a giant, city-destroying robot, UX would cover the fundamentals of movement, the specifications, and the stomping motions. UI would ensure that the robot’s face and voice feel consistent with your destructive intentions.

UX vs UI design vs PX

Product experience (PX) is a slightly different beast, as it has a wider, more all-encompassing focus. So, while user experience looks to fine-tune the actual usage and flow for each customer journey, product experience takes a much more holistic view of everything to do with it. 

That includes the product’s look and feel, sure – but also its marketing, customer service, third-party touchpoints, back-end engineering, userbase, and even how it fits into the world in a contextual sense. 

UX tasks and responsibilities

User experience teams look after a range of jobs that coalesce to bring a seamless, simple flow to the product:

1. Hierarchy and architecture

When a user lands on the front page of your app or website, what are they looking at? What information or tools do they need first? What are they there to achieve? Answering those questions helps UX teams decide what’s most important and, ideally, shove those things front and center so that users don’t have to go digging around.

2. Navigation flows

That hierarchy work will also influence your product’s general navigation – which includes what’s in the main nav menu, but also the page-to-page flow for every kind of user journey. These all need to make intuitive sense and provide users with exactly what they’d expect to see at each step.

3. Wireframing

Once you have your user journeys and information architecture nailed down, UX teams build basic wireframes of every page. These are stripped-back blueprints for the product, app or website that give UI design teams a structure to work with.

4. Testing and fine-tuning 

UX is never a one-and-done process. Instead, it needs constant testing and finetuning. Focus groups, heatmaps, eye-tracking tools and solicited user feedback forms all help inform areas of the user experience that fall short of expectations – or that highlight experience gaps you’ll want to close.

UI tasks and responsibilities

UI teams tend to pick up where UX leaves off, adding polish to wireframes and finalizing product design – albeit still with an eye on user-centricity. UI specialists look after…

1. Branding, fonts and color palettes 

AKA: the only part people tend to consciously notice, even though they’re benefiting from all the hard work that went into every other part of your UI and UX design behind the scenes. That’s just the way it goes, sadly. 

2. Layout and page density

UI designers need to carefully balance information density, white space, scannability, and a bunch of different psychological hooks that keep people using, scrolling, or pushing buttons. There’s an art and a science to this that requires iteration and user testing. The goal of great UI product design is clarity and useability that implores people to stick around.

3. Interactivity design

It sounds obvious, but people need to know – in an instant – that a button is a button and not just a graphic or aesthetic piece of page furniture. There’s work to be done here in creating a design language that’s easily readable and stays consistent across the whole user journey. Nobody likes surprises, and nobody likes clicking on things that do nothing.

Where do UX and UI overlap?

While it’s ideal to have dedicated people for both UI and UX in your product team, the reality doesn’t always work out like that. So, whether you have dedicated Designers for each discipline, or Designers straddling both areas, you should always understand that they are different skills with different priorities – as we’ve outlined already.

But there is one key facet that UX and UI Designers share: They both need to be intensely user-first in their thinking. 

That may be obvious for UX – making the user journey and flow feel intuitive is the basis of the job. But it’s also true for UI design because success in this space means only making design choices that add to the user’s experience. The alternative is to design fluff for the sake of fluff.

UX and UI examples

Example time! Let’s take a look at a couple of hypothetical products, and dissect what UX and UI teams would handle for each one:

eCommerce website

UX team: What problem are we trying to solve, and how best can this eCommerce website do that job? Your UX team would first get stuck into some research on customer needs and pain points, alongside their existing online shopping behaviors. From this, they’d design the overall user flows for browsing, searching and buying. That would then lead to the creation of wireframes and prototypes that can be used to test, validate and iterate.

UI team: Your user interface team would step in to take those prototypes and turn them into visually appealing pages, complete with your company’s branding. The goal here would be to build a cohesive UI that enhances every step of the journey – and encourages purchases. Once finalized, UI design teams work with front-end developers to ensure these designs translate into the final product without anything getting lost in translation.

Mobile banking app

UX team: The key job in this case would be to figure out the various journeys users want to take in their banking app, list them in order or priority, and design an overarching navigational flow that doesn’t get in their way. That would ideally come alongside some competitor research, where you might uncover something your rivals do poorly. Maybe sending money to friends is a pain and should be enabled with a big, no-nonsense prompt on the front page? UX designers need to balance these needs while also adhering to accessibility and regulatory guidelines.

UI team: Once the wireframes are in, your UI team’s job is to take that experience and make it unequivocally yours – so that no one can mistake it for any other bank’s. That’ll be alongside adding flourishes that give satisfactory feedback that your users have done what they think they’ve done. Maybe confetti rains down on the screen when they receive money? Maybe a button jiggles when they enter information wrong? These are the touches that make an app’s UI feel compelling.

How do you measure good UX vs UI?

For both user experience and user interface, you’ll use focus groups, heatmaps, eye-tracking and other types of user feedback to stress test everything and generate a host of relevant metrics and qualitative statements about your product: 

So, while those metrics might be in the form of core KPIs (like Time to Value, which measures how long it takes users to get what they came for out of your product), they could also be a written statement that the app doesn’t work on their device – or even that the color scheme gives them a headache. 

In either case, these metrics and statements will generate questions that can help you improve things. And the nature of those questions will differ whether you’re looking to improve UX or UI:

Questions that drive successful UX

• Is every user journey catered for?
• Do people know how to achieve what they set out to do?
• How long does it take them?
• What’s slowing them down?
• Are users getting lost?

Questions that drive successful UI

• Does this represent the brand?
• Are page designs distracting users too much?
• How can we simplify?
• Are people clicking on non-interactive elements?
• Are users scrolling below the fold?

Why do product managers need to know about UX and UI?

In short? UX and UI are the bones, organs and skin of your product. Even if users aren’t explicitly aware of all the scientific tweaking that goes into great UX and UI design, they’ll definitely feel the results if yours is lacking – and they’ll love your product if you’ve nailed the core tenets of both.

In other words? Product managers need to work closely with UI and UX teams to ensure that the initial vision for the product has made it through the conception and design processes – and all the way to the end product – without getting twisted into something that doesn’t serve its user base. 

The post UX vs UI: Understanding the difference appeared first on ProdPad.

So, that’s what we want to help you do – understand exactly where you add value to the business and how to present that to the leadership team so they are left in no doubt about the ROI they get from your salary! 

One of the major ways you deliver ROI as a Product Manager is through the work you do in product discovery. That’s what we’re going to cover today. But, remember, product discovery is only one way in which Product Managers deliver value and return on investment to their organizations. If you’re looking to craft your argument on the ROI you deliver to your employers, this is only one string to that bow. Be sure to consider every aspect of your role and outline how you deliver impact in each instance. 

As well as the work you do in product discovery, you also have a significant financial impact through:

• Prioritization and decision-making
• Strategic planning 
• Momentum and progress monitoring 
• Outcome tracking and measurement
• Feedback analysis 

Luckily we’ve written a complete guide covering each of these areas and how to articulate the economic impact of your work. The guide also includes five different calculations you can use to put real numbers behind that value and prove the ROI you deliver for your organization. 

For today, we’re going to drill down into the ROI of product discovery specifically. This article is designed to provide you with a clear and effective way to articulate what you do in this area and how it delivers real, financial results for your organization.

So, whether you’re forming an argument for the future of your role, trying to convince stakeholders for more resource, or simply want to feel good about your work, let’s take a look at the very real value that comes from product discovery.  

What is product discovery? 

I ask that question… but then I’m not actually going to answer it. You know what product discovery is – you’re already doing it. What you’ve come here to learn, is how to articulate WHY this work is so important to the success of your business. 

Having said that, if you could do with seeing a definition so you can be certain we’re talking about the same thing, or you want a simple explanation to present to your stakeholders, we have an in-depth article all about what product discovery is, what it involves and how to do it well over in our Product Management Glossary. So check it out. 

But, today’s topic is WHY discovery is important and HOW it delivers real, tangible financial returns to your employers. 

The business value of product discovery

Product discovery is, ultimately, a risk-reduction strategy – a proactive, risk-prevention tactic that mitigates against building the wrong thing and wasting costs, time and resources on outputs that don’t drive business-critical outcomes. 

The discipline of product discovery is about verifying assumptions, validating ideas and refining product hypotheses. In this way, it’s the crucial due diligence that provides assurances and confidence that what you invest in as a business is valid and has the potential to be successful. 

Product discovery de-risks the expensive investments made into product development. No business leader would acquire another business without undertaking due diligence and ensuring the business’ financial grounding is sound. Equally, a business should never invest the considerable costs of software development until the product or feature idea has been validated and the hypothesis has been affirmed. 

No matter how experienced and knowledgeable a team is about their target user/consumer any new product ideas they come up with will always be based on assumptions that are just that – assumptions. All assumptions have the potential to prove invalid. 

An example of product discovery

Let us illustrate this with an example.

Imagine you have a mobile banking app. There is a product idea for a new feature that allows people to scan checks using their phone camera and pay them into their bank accounts. 

One of the assumptions here is that people actually have checks that they need to pay into their account. Imagine not running through product discovery to test the assumption that bank customers needed to pay checks into their account, and finding out, once the design team had spent 3 days designing, the dev team had spent 2 sprints developing and the QA testers had spent a day testing, that none of the existing customers regularly, if ever, received checks. No one wants this feature or cares about it. Usage is zero. No new customers are acquired as a result of this feature. 

Yet some product discovery work could have uncovered that truth fairly quickly with a delve into the data from the in-branch paying-in activity, or a quick survey out to the current mobile app users. 

OK, maybe that example feels like an obvious wrong move, but only the most arrogant and foolhardy risk-taker would throw caution to the wind and forgo due diligence on their loose ideas and hunches. Surely? 

Remember, the output of product discovery work isn’t always a straight yes or a no. It’s not always the difference between a product or feature being built and not being built at all. Product discovery, done well, can help you refine an hypothesis, mature the idea and improve the chances of success. Product discovery de-risks from failure. 

Product discovery as a risk-prevention tactic, is crucial to ensure long-term business stability and growth. Without consistently delivering features and products that answer user problems, customers will cease to find the product valuable and will stop paying for it, thus stability is impossible to sustain. 

Growth (whether coming from new customer acquisition or expansion revenue) is dependent on offering revenue-generating features that more and more people are willing to pay for. The more things you build without thorough validation, the less chance you have that the things you ship will hit the mark, therefore reducing the percentage of your output that is effective and, potentially, revenue-generating. Thus growth will be slower if not non-existent. 

Who is responsible for product discovery?

If you’re putting forward a case for the importance of your role as a Product Manager and the specific value YOU deliver to your organization. Then you should make this clear…

Product discovery needs to be conducted by Product Managers.

It’s as simple as that. Yes other team members can and should be involved – like Product Designers, UX Researchers and even Developers (when it comes to technical feasibility) – but without Product Managers leading the charge, you risk discovery negatively affecting your overall velocity. 

Let me explain. To deliver the highest possible ROI from product discovery work, it needs to be conducted as part of a dual-track agile process. That is, discovery should be running concurrently to the rest of the development work – while one thing is being built, another thing is being researched and validated. This ensures there is always a consistent stream of valid product ideas with the highest chances of success entering the delivery phase. This is how you work smart and move fast.

If Designers or Developers were responsible for discovery work, the ability to operate in a dual track way collapses. If Devs or Designers have to conduct their own discovery before picking up a product idea to work on, velocity plummets and output decreases. 

Let’s also understand the skill-set needed to get the best results from product discovery. Not only do you need significant research expertise, but you also need to be experienced in customer and user communication. This is another reason why product discovery work is best owned by Product Managers. 

How to calculate the ROI of product discovery

As we’ve already outlined, the value of product discovery comes from risk-reduction and prevention of lost costs. The work you do as a Product Manager in the area of discovery is about de-risking product development to ensure maximum return and minimal cost inefficiencies. 

Understanding how to quantify the financial value of that risk prevention is one of the fundamental ways you can present an air-tight argument for the importance of the Product Management function and the impact of your role as PM. 

What is ROI?  

So, if someone has invested in you as a Product Manager, and you’re running product discovery, what results should they expect? 

Return on investment is calculated as: 

Benefit – cost / cost x 100

In this calculation ‘benefit’ can be either revenue or cost saving.  In our case, the benefit is the potential costs saved as a result of the risk-prevention work conducted by PMs. We therefore need to propose what those potential lost costs would have been and center our argument around that. 

Thorough discovery guards against teams wasting time and resource (and therefore money) on a feature or product that no one needs or is willing to pay for. This point is best demonstrated with one specific example where a piece of discovery work gave a significant return in the form of cost saving. 

Can you think of any examples in your recent history where you had a product or major feature idea that was dismissed after discovery? Use that as the basis for your ROI calculation to illustrate your point. 

Here’s how you would go about calculating the potential lost costs should that feature have gone ahead only to find it generated no revenue. 

Essentially, it comes down to the costs of discovery work to find out that an idea is not valid versus the cost of the development, delivery and launch activity, then have the feature generate no revenue. 

1. Calculate cost of resource to take the feature to market

Example: Let’s say there is an idea in your backlog about a significant new feature that you intend to create as an add-on to your current product and charge existing and new customers for it. Let’s map out the scenario where that feature goes ahead without discovery work and is later found to be unwanted and not valuable to your audience. 

*The thinking behind those sales hours is as follows: let’s say you have a team of four Account Managers managing 50 customers each who will be trying to sell this new feature as upsell. They each spend one hour writing an outreach sequence to all 50, then an hour trying to reach the top 10 prospects (2.5 hrs), they book a few of initial calls off the back of that (1.5hrs), from that they book one full demo (1hr), following this they try and close the business over an extended period of time (4 hrs invested). They spend another hour with pipeline management, logging feedback and admin around the deal.  They ultimately sell nothing because the feature does not answer a customer problem. 

2. Calculate costs of discovery work

Now let’s work out the costs of the alternative path where product discovery was conducted and the feature was dismissed as a result. 

Here a Product Manager spends one week in discovery – conducting research, looking at usage, competitors, talking to customers – and concludes that the proposed feature has insufficient demand to make it viable. The product idea is archived and not progressed. Therefore, the total costs of the project are (roughly speaking) only the cost of the PMs time to run discovery.  

3. Calculate the cost saving

That makes the potential cost saving of this discovery work $43,528 (the potential full lost cost of developing the feature without it resulting in sales, minus $2,600, the cost of the discovery time in salary).

4. Calculate the return on the investment in discovery based on the benefit of cost saving 

In our example here, the ROI of that discovery work is:

$43,528 – $2,600 / $2,600 x 100 = 1574%

That’s a pretty compelling return-on-investment. Any business leader would feel confident in their investment in Product Management or a PM role if they were shown to be getting that sort of return.

Therefore, whether you feel you need to present a case right now, or you just want to have some proof points in your back pocket, I would urge you to go and find an example or two from your archived product ideas and run the costs to prove the cost-saving return your product discovery work delivered.

More ROI calculations for Product Managers

That’s one way in which you can crunch the numbers and present a financial result from your work as a Product Manager. But it’s not the only way. As we said at the start of this article, you deliver a return on investment from each aspect of your role. To present the most complete picture of your business impact, you’ll want to cover each area in turn and support them with their own ROI calculation. 

Download your copy of our complete guide to proving the ROI of Product Management and get a step-by-step explanation of five different ROI calculations to help prove the financial impact of your work.  

The post How to Prove the ROI of Product Discovery appeared first on ProdPad.

Where did Jira Product Discovery come from?

So, as you all know, Jira Software has been around for a long time. It’s been a lynchpin of the Atlassian offering for many years. The original Jira tool was built as a project management tool specifically tailored to tech delivery, sprint planning and dev ops. The tool is for engineering teams, but as product management developed as a discipline, some product managers found themselves trying to bend the tool to their roadmapping and backlog management needs. And, again, as I’m sure you know, that never ends well.

Jira Product Discovery therefore, represents Atlassian’s realization and acknowledgement that Jira Software is not the place to run product discovery and strategy planning. It is a system for delivery and release planning and Product Managers need a space to do their ideation and prioritize what to work on next. 

Product Managers within organizations who used the Atlassian suite would typically either struggle along with Jira Software or they would get themselves a purpose-built product management tool like ProdPad with deep integrations with Jira Software so they could run their strategy and discovery in ProdPad and push things over to the engineering team, via Jira Software, when something was ready to be built.  So the creation of Jira Product Discovery is an attempt to get a piece of that latter pie and give PMs a dedicated space for their product management… 

But does it go far enough? 

Does Jira Product Discovery go far enough in providing a dedicated strategic space for product managers?

In short, no. Jira Product Discovery facilitates a new issue type of Ideas and allows you to prioritize those on a Now-Next-Later roadmap, attaching feedback and creating tickets to pass over to Jira Software… but it’s a very manual tool that does nothing to free up your valuable time or guide best practice. Neither is it the tool to help you establish a product culture outside of your immediate team and foster collaboration across the whole organization. 

ProdPad, on the other hand, is the only complete product management platform focused on saving you time and getting you to impactful product decisions faster. Through advanced AI, deep integrations and best practice workflows and suggestions, ProdPad helps Product Managers not only enjoy their own dedicated space, but actually save time, move faster and deliver more. 

What is Jira Product Discovery missing?

Jira Product Discovery is a tool to help you tack roadmapping and backlog management in front of the sprint planning and release planning the engineering teams might be doing in Jira Software. 

It delivers a smooth and efficient process for moving Ideas from the product backlog into delivery, but discovery, validation and the customer feedback loop appears not to be part of their focus. 

Jira Product Discovery is missing some of the most important features to help you:

• Develop a solid strategy both top down and bottom up
• Easily communicate that strategy with all stakeholders 
• Enjoy the benefits of a single source of truth for all things product
• Successfully facilitate collaboration across the organization

Jira Product Discovery has…

Feedback

• No integrations with CRMs or support systems to automatically (or manually) route feedback from customer-facing teams
• No feedback portal or widget to gather feedback from your users
• No tools to surface the themes in your feedback
• No easy way to distinguish between the feedback you have triaged and the feedback still to look at

Strategy

• No strategy canvas or place to describe your overall strategy or capture your product vision
• No OKR, product objectives or goal management tool

Roadmapping

• No hierarchy or nesting ability to the roadmap items – just one flat issue type
• No external roadmap sharing or embedding
• No portfolio management or view across different roadmaps
• No in-built document creation for specs, PRDs, designs or anything else – all that must sit externally 

Other

• No email notifications to help you drive action from the team and collaboration
• No AI assistance to help lighten the load and unlock more time for the most valuable work

Is ProdPad the best Jira Product Discovery Alternative?

Spoiler alert: everything listed above, that is missing in the Jira Product Discovery tool, is available in ProdPad

But let’s map that out for you feature-by-feature. 

Jira Product Discovery vs ProdPad feature comparison

	Jira Product Discovery	ProdPad
Roadmapping
Now-Next-Later roadmap
Completed and candiate roadmap columns by default
Toggle to view roadmap grouped by Product Objective
AI Roadmap Initiative and Idea generation
Porfolio management and roadmaps
Roadmap publishing and external sharing
Initiative > Ideas hierarchy
Strategy
Product Strategy Canvas to map out Vision, value and more
Central documentation repository
Full OKR management with goal setting
Personas
AI Product Coach
Idea Management
Idea management
Jira Software integration with 2 way sync
Impact vs Effort prioritization chart
Customizable prioritization scales
Confidence rating mapped to prioritization chart
Unsorted and backlog lists for refinement and triaging
Idea Canvas to guide your ideation and discovery
AI Assistant to automate backlog refinement
Bulit-in product specs and document creation
AI Assistant to automate backlog refinement
Generative AI for idea descriptions, etc
Workflow management for pre-delivery planning – discovery & validation
Feedback Management
Chrome extension for feedback capture
Slack and Teams integration
Customer feedback portal & widgets
Integrations with support systems and CRMs to pull in feedback
AI feedback theme analysis
AI feedback summarizer
Collaboration
Free, unlimited contributors
Email notifications
Comment discussion board integration with Slack, Teams & email
And there’s more!
Customizable automation rules
Comprehensive API access

Let’s dig into some of ProdPad’s key differentiators – the headline benefits if you will. 

Only with ProdPad will you get: 

• Effortless feedback gathering and deep AI analysis
• A home for your vision, strategy and OKRs – guiding your roadmap and prioritization
• All the tools to easily communicate a clear roadmap and keep everyone informed
• A central hub and single source of truth for organization-wide collaboration 
• An AI-powered assistant and coach to help you automate the grunt work and deliver more value

Gather feedback from more places and more people

ProdPad has the most advanced feedback gathering capabilities of any all-in-one product management tool. There are more ways to submit or automatically route feedback into ProdPad than in Jira Product Discovery. 

We’ve already suggested that feedback analysis isn’t a big focus for Jira Product Discovery, but the team here at ProdPad have prioritized the development of our feedback management tool precisely because they recognize the fundamental importance that user feedback plays in informing and shaping the product strategy and your prioritization decisions. In fact, it’s through these feedback tools that we were able to identify that effective feedback management is a primary need and problem to solve for y’all! 

In short, ProdPad’s feedback management tool is designed to ensure as many people in your organization as possible can submit feedback to the product team without having to log into ProdPad itself. Our powerful integrations, extensions and widgets mean your customer-facing colleagues can manually, or automatically fire feedback from wherever they work, directly into your feedback repository.  

With ProdPad you can gather feedback in the following ways: 

• Customer feedback portals and widgets (add your own branding) 
• Push feedback directly from Slack or MS Teams
• Integrate your CRM (like Salesforce) to easily get feedback from sales teams
• Connect your support system (like Zendesk) to automatically route feedback from your customer teams
• Email feedback directly into ProdPad
• Fast-add feedback from your browser with our Chrome extension

With Jira Product Discovery, aside from manually adding feedback directly into the tool, you can pull in feedback through:

• Slack and Teams integrations (but only from a dedicated #product-feedback channel)
• Chrome extension
• Jira Service Management integration

Jira Product Discovery has:

• No customer feedback portals
• No CRM integrations
• No support system integrations (aside from Jira Service Management)
• No email dropbox

Analyze your feedback to help fuel your thinking  

Of course, it’s not enough to just collect feedback – you need to understand what you have and use that insight in your decision making. Where Jira Product Discovery offers no feedback analysis tools at all, ProdPad has multiple ways to extract insight from your feedback faster. From the frequency charts that help you spot trends, to the AI Signals tool to surface the common themes. 

ProdPad’s AI Assistant will help you:

• Generate succinct summaries of any long pieces of feedback
• Automatically link feedback to relevant Ideas in your backlog
• Analyze your entire feedback repository and surface the themes in moments

ProdPad helps you go from a list of feedback, to strategic insights in half the time. ProdPad is the best tool to unearth insight from your feedback and feed your bottom-up strategic planning.

Where’s the why? Keep your strategy close by 

Another difference between Jira Product Discovery and ProdPad is the emphasis put on the bigger picture. ProdPad comes with a unique Product Canvas area which allows you to keep your roadmap next to a description and articulation of your wider product strategy. This is designed to ensure alignment, remind the team of the bigger picture and make sure everyone understands the context in which you are working and making decisions.

ProdPad’s unique Product Canvas provides a space to map out your Vision, value, strategy and more, capturing that all important, overarching reason for being. It’s proximity to your roadmap (the very next tab!) means you’re never more than a click away from that north star, helping to keep you – and everyone who visits the roadmap – aligned to the ultimate goals. 

ProdPad can even provide coaching to help you better align your product Ideas with this strategy and Vision. Whenever an Idea is added to ProdPad, our AI Product Coach can compare that Idea to the Product Vision and give you considered, constructive guidance on how to improve alignment and focus on your core objectives. This can be a game changer when it comes to Idea submissions from different teams and other colleagues. Rather than you having to devise appropriate feedback to give to the Idea submitter, you can let the AI Coach handle that for you. You get a backlog of better aligned Ideas and you’ve saved a bunch of time feeding back on that Idea. 

Know exactly how you’ll measure success with OKR management

To stay truly outcome-focused you need to be clear on the exact needles you want to move and the results you need to see. ProdPad’s full OKR management system goes deeper, allowing you to set specific, measurable Key Results under each of your product objectives. Our AI can even generate key results for you, getting you from broad goals to exact targets in moments. 

In Jira Product Discovery you can only list objectives and attach them to Ideas, but you cannot set and measure specific goals or Key Results, nor can you flag progress against goals or targets. 

The home of the Now-Next-Later roadmap

Jira Product Discovery is a roadmapping tool built around the Now-Next-Later roadmap – a roadmap format and practice that we invented here at ProdPad. Our Co-Founders Janna Bastow and Simon Cast invented the Now-Next-Later roadmap as a direct solution to the problems they were facing as PMs using a timeline roadmap. 

So, ProdPad is the home of the Now-Next-Later and the right place to come for the best guidance and structure to properly work within the principles of lean roadmapping and the outcome-based Now-Next-Later roadmap. 

For example, while Jira Product Discovery provides an infinitely flexible roadmap structure that you can configure however you like, ProdPad actively helps you instill good habits and best practice, driving consistency across the team by providing some unique areas of the roadmap, by default. Those include a Completed area where you move those roadmap Initiatives that have been shipped and measured – helping you demonstrate what you’ve achieved and tell the story of your product evolution. And a Candidate area for you to store those potential Initiatives that may make it onto the roadmap in time. 

In ProdPad, you can also toggle to view your entire Now-Next-Later organized by Objective, giving you a color coded view of what you’re doing to impact each of your core product objectives. 

Each of these built-in, by default, settings helps you easily tell the story of your product strategy in different ways, ensuring you have ready-made views for demonstrating what you’re working on and why. 

The Initiative > Idea hierarchy 

As we’ve mentioned already, with Jira Product Discovery you get one new issue type, not already seen in Jira Software. By default that issue type is labeled Idea, but you have the flexibility to call that whatever you want. Which is great. But…. that issue type is flat. You do not have the ability to nest a secondary issue type within it. And that causes a problem if you truly want to work in an agile way.

You see, without a hierarchy within each roadmap item, you’re doing nothing more than moving a series of feature ideas around a board. That sounds like project management, nor product management. 

To be truly outcome-focused and customer-centric requires a hierarchy that enables you to prioritize and communicate a problem to be solved and not one single idea. Then you’re free to group multiple ideas beneath that higher problem, leaving you open to explore and test each one to find the best way to solve that problem. 

ProdPad works differently. With a Now-Next-Later roadmap in ProdPad each item on your roadmap is an Initiative, within which you can add and link any number of Ideas. With the Initiative you are declaring the problem you want to solve, and with each Idea you’re putting forward a different ‘experiment’ or possible way it could be solved. 

WIth the Initiative and Idea hierarchy you are therefore free to experiment, learn and iterate to find the best solution to the problem. This hierarchy ensures you are not nailing your flag to a certain Idea or feature too soon, cutting out the opportunity to discover the best path.  

This also provides you with a roadmap format far more suitable for customer communications. With Jira’s single issue type you have no choice but to show everyone a roadmap with details of specific Ideas – that or you’ll need to build an entirely new roadmap in which you present the roadmap items as the broader problems. But now you have two different roadmaps to maintain at all times For more on the best ways to present a public roadmap, check out our guide on the topic.

With ProdPad you can keep one central version of your roadmap and simply click to publish a customer-facing version where you toggle off the Ideas and just show your top-level Initiatives. That published roadmap will dynamically update as you manage and amend your roadmap.

Which brings us onto another key way in which ProdPad is the best Jira Product Discovery alternative, solving more of your product management problems.

Effortless stakeholder comms

As the custodian of the product strategy, communicating the plan is a decent chunk of your job. But it’s also a part of the job that can get in the way of doing what you probably would rather be doing – namely, discovery, testing and making product decisions! 

It’s important that you have a roadmapping tool that prevents you needing to update documents all the time, field endless questions from people around the organization and explain your progress and decisions all the livelong day.

So how does ProdPad stack up as the best Jira Product Discovery alternative in terms of ease of communication and helping you solve this problem?

I’ll start with the bad news…. Jira Product Discovery has no ability for external sharing of your roadmap. Everyone you want to share your dynamic roadmap with will need to have a Jira Product Discovery login.

Clearly that’s no good if you need to share with leadership executives, colleagues outside of your every-day teams or even the whole company. Nor does it help you communicate your roadmap externally – to your customers, investors or even publicly on your website. So, if you have your roadmap in Jira Product Discovery, you’re going to have to continue the pain of creating slides and answering all those ‘is this on the roadmap?’ questions. No thanks.

Now onto the good news…ProdPad provides dynamic roadmap publishing, allowing you to create unlimited customized views and share externally or even embed on your website. Phew. 

Now you can manage one central roadmap safe in the knowledge that your published versions will stay up-to-date and show each group of stakeholders exactly what they need to know. Our deep and detailed filters allow you to build views that are as detailed or as top-level as you want. 

So you can quickly throw up a roadmap view for, say, your Sales Lead and not have to think about it again. That Sales Lead now has a link to their own, customized view whenever they need it. Now if anyone wants to know if something is on the roadmap, they can see for themselves. 

With ProdPad it’s super simple to publish a customer-facing version of your roadmap that is an Initiative-only, broad overview – communicating the problems you’ll solve, not the details of the Ideas. Check out our own external roadmap to see how that looks in action. 

Power a product culture with a true collaboration hub 

To recap a few of the things we’ve discovered already about Jira Product Discovery… 

• No integrations with CRMs
• No integrations with systems the Customer and Support Teams use
• No ability to email in Ideas or Feedback
• No sharing of roadmaps with people without a login

This makes it very hard for people outside of the product team to interact with what you’re doing – to contribute and collaborate. Because, let’s be honest, no one is going to bother logging into a new and different system, one that isn’t primarily their tool, to help you do your job. With the best will in the world, that ain’t happening.

But you do need contributions from other teams! Of course you do. You need feedback to be shared with you, you need input and suggestions from other teams, you need to create transparency and help everyone feel invested and involved with access to the strategy and the roadmap.  And, to get the richest backlog you can, you should be encouraging anyone in the organization to submit Ideas if they think of something good! 

If you want to foster a true product culture across the organization, you need to have a product management tool focused on providing easy access and removing all barriers to engagement by your stakeholders. So, with this in mind is ProdPad the best Jira Product Discovery alternative when it comes to getting the whole company on-board?

Yes, yes it is. You see, ProdPad is integrated with more of the tools your wider organization use. You can invite and capture discussion, ask for feedback and give people an easy outlet for their product ideas – all without needing to log in to ProdPad. This is the key to truly fostering a product culture and collaborating cross-functionally. This is the tool leadership will thank you for.

Jira Product Discovery also fails to offer a place for your documentation. Your working documents – your specs, PRDs, notes – all that decision tracking and discussion has to happen elsewhere. 

ProdPad, on the other hand, offers a central document repository per product, and built-in specification documents, design tool integrations and more, against each and every Idea. So you can enjoy a single source of truth for everything you’re working on. 

The most advanced AI capabilities of any product management tool

This one is a biggy. For many people, it’s the main reason why ProdPad is the best Jira Product Discovery alternative. I’ll cut straight to the chase… ProdPad has the most advanced AI capabilities of any product management platform. But we’re not here to compare ProdPad to all other tools, you’re looking for the best Jira Product Discovery alternative. So what are Jira Product Discovery’s AI capabilities like?

They are nonexistent. With Jira Product Discovery there is no AI assistance to help you work faster or better. You are very much on your own.

ProdPad, on the other hand, is not just a complete platform to manage your product process, it’s a team member and coach – a tool to help you and your whole organization work smarter and faster – getting to the most impactful product decisions in half the time. 

The AI tools in ProdPad come in a number of different flavors, helping you do different jobs in half the time. They include:

• AI tools to automate the grunt work and free up your time
• AI tools to do the writing for you – generate descriptions, user stories, feedback summaries and more 
• AI tools to kick-start your ideation – generating Roadmap Initiatives, Ideas and even suggesting Key Results to focus your efforts
• AI tools to coach you to do your best work – offering constructive feedback and suggestions for improvement whenever you need it
• AI tools to run analysis and suggest what to prioritize

Portfolio management

This one is pretty cut and dry. Jira Product Discovery does not easily allow for portfolio management and is ill-equipped to handle the needs of multiple product companies who need both individual roadmap views that automatically roll up to a portfolio level view. 

With ProdPad you can manage everything from a product, product line or product portfolio level. You can set OKRs and outline a strategy and Vision at portfolio level as well as at the individual product level.

Maintaining a portfolio roadmap is effortless as each product roadmap automatically feeds its Initiatives up to the higher level. 

The same also applies for product lines. Within your portfolio you can group individual products together across different product lines and easily view product line roadmaps and assign OKRs and vision statements unique to that product line. 

In short, Jira Product Discovery only facilitates the creation of single roadmap only. Any product line or portfolio roadmap would have to be manually built up in a horrible big cut and paste job. Not ideal if you’re trying to drive efficiencies and maintain a consistent picture of what’s happening across your product organization. 

But what if you need a tight sync with Jira Software?

After all, if you’re evaluating Jira Product Discovery, the chances are it’s because you’re already using Jira Software for your delivery planning and you want a smooth handover from one to the other. 

Well Jira Product Discovery aren’t the only product management tool who can provide that. ProdPad has a powerful integration, complete with two-way sync, with Jira Software. And that’s both for the Jira Software Cloud solution and the Jira Server & Data Center on-premise solutions. So it really is proving to be the best Jira Product Discovery alternative.

This tight integration means you can not only easily import your existing Jira issues when you first start out with ProdPad, but you can enjoy a two-way content and status sync from the moment you decide to push an Idea over to Jira Software to be picked up by the development team. 

In fact, if you’re currently struggling with a product backlog in Jira Software and think Jira Product Discovery would provide the easiest transition, take a look at our very own CEO and Co-Founder Janna Bastow explaining how quick and easy it is to import that backlog into ProdPad and have our AI tools clean it up! 

The final verdict

I know I set out saying we wouldn’t be bad mouthing Jira Product Discovery all over town, and I hope you think I’ve stuck to that promise, but also, the more I write out this comparison, the more I realize that there’s really no comparison. 

So the final verdict from me is ProdPad is the best Jira Product Discovery alternative.

Yeah, I know, I would say that. So if you’re not happy to take my word for it, why not take a look at what people are saying about ProdPad on G2. 

But probably the best way to decide for yourself is to start a free trial and see what all the fuss is about. Either that or book yourself a demo with one of our product management experts and get all your questions answered. 

The post The Best Jira Product Discovery Alternative appeared first on ProdPad.

What could go wrong?

If you don’t do this right, there are a number of risks. You could end up with:

Disappointed customers

We all know the disappointment that comes with unmet expectations. If you put the wrong level of detail on your customer-facing roadmap, or structure it in the wrong way, you could be creating a whole bunch of very specific expectations across your customer base.

After all, if it’s on your customer-facing roadmap, they’re going to expect to see it. If you don’t deliver exactly what you’ve declared when you said you would, disappointment will reign.

Unhappy team

That level of customer disappointment could bum out the team, as instead of positive feedback from customers and nice reviews and comments, you’ll all be getting grumbles and complaints. That’s not going to help your product team feel good about their work. 

That will then lead to an unhappy team, and possibly talent leaving the business. And it won’t just be the product team who aren’t happy. Your customer-facing teams won’t be having a great time either, fielding all these complaints from customers, and having to apologize and placate. Not fun. 

Looking stale and slow-moving 

You don’t need me to tell you that product managers are super busy – spinning a lot of plates. Depending on the tool you use to publish your customer-facing roadmap, you might be left with the overhead of manually updating it.

If that slips down the to-do list and you don’t get to it, you’re going to have a customer-facing roadmap out in the world that hasn’t changed for months. That’s not a good look. 

Competitors pinching your ideas

There’s also a risk that you give away too much detail and pour your secret sauce right into the laps of your competitors. 

Having said that, you shouldn’t let the fear of competitors learning your plans put you off publishing a customer-facing roadmap. This risk is easily mitigated if you follow our simple advice and avoid making these common mistakes. 

That goes for all of the above risks. This is what COULD go wrong, but it’s easy enough to make sure these problems don’t arise. 

Which brings us to our 7 no-nos. 

The 7 common customer-facing roadmap mistakes to avoid

The customer-facing roadmap mistakes you want to avoid are:

1. Don’t include dates

If you’re familiar with our ethos here at ProdPad, and know the teachings of our fine leader Janna Bastow, you’ll know that we are the home of the Now-Next-Later roadmap (our co-founders actually invented it). This is a lean roadmap format structured around broad time horizons, rather than exact dates (as you’d find on a Gantt chart-style timeline roadmap). 

We’ve written extensively on the general pitfalls of having exact dates and deadlines on your product roadmap, but this is particularly true for your customer-facing roadmap. 

If you have actual dates against the things on your roadmap, you’re setting yourself up for a fall. You’ll be left with no flexibility to work on what you’re building for longer (to make it the best it can be), or respond to unforeseen issues, problems, or opportunities.  

Let’s face it, if you are ever asked for a date, it’ll always be based on best guesses and rough estimates. You cannot predict the future and you don’t know what won’t work as you thought it would, or who on the team will be struck down sick, or what hidden problems you might uncover that will take time to figure out. In short, it is very hard to hit a deadline that was based on an estimate way back before you seriously started building. 

So, don’t give your customers dates that you’re going to struggle to meet. Either you won’t make that date and you’ll disappoint them, looking unreliable. Or, you will meet the deadline, but you’ll have shipped something that’s of a poorer quality because of the pressures of the deadline and the fear of annoying your customers. 

Here at ProdPad, our advice is always to follow modern product management best practice and use broad time horizons like now, next, and later, that give everyone a feel for your priorities and timescales, without restricting your ability to learn, adapt, and improve.

2. Don’t talk about specific features or designs

You might have seen some customer-facing roadmaps like this for the products you use – roadmap items that are specific features. You read the details and get a fairly thorough picture of exactly what this feature is, how it’ll work, and what it will do for you. So that’s what you are expecting. You might start to think about how you’d use that feature and plan for its arrival. 

But then, when the feature actually ships and lands in the interface, it works a bit differently and doesn’t look the same. It doesn’t do exactly what they said it would, it doesn’t apply to the areas of the product you expected, and it’s not even available on your price plan. Instead of being impressed by the new feature that is there, you’re annoyed that it’s not what was described and what you were waiting for. 

The moral of this story is simple: Do not describe specific features on your customer-facing roadmap. You don’t need to! It’s enough to tell your customers that you’re going to build something that will solve a particular problem for them, answer a need, or bring a certain benefit. How that is achieved is yet to be seen. But they can be rest assured that their problem will be solved, and that will create happy anticipation rather than exact expectations. 

You then have the space to run proper discovery and explore all the possible ways in which you can solve this customer problem. You have the flexibility to test, learn, and iterate in order to improve what you finally ship at the end. 

3. Don’t give too much detail

You need to consider your audience here. This is your customer-facing roadmap – for your customers. These folks should see a version of your roadmap that is tailored to them. Don’t just have a single roadmap view for all – you’ll end up with a jack of all trades that is a master of no one’s needs and doesn’t serve anyone particularly well. 

I would urge you to think about all the different stakeholders who need to see your roadmap and create a tailored view with the right level of detail for each. In fact, we’ve listed out what each type of stakeholder is interested in, so you can go check that out.  

What is important for your customer-facing roadmap, is to keep it high level. I’ve already said it’s a mistake to talk about specific features, but I’d also suggest you leave out the list of different ideas you’re going to explore for each roadmap initiative. 

You will be clouding the important message if you include the kind of detail that your internal teams need to know. Your customers only really need to understand what problems you are going to solve for them, and the order in which you’re going to tackle them. 

There’s also the risk of giving your competitors too much insight into what you’re doing, if you have a lot of detail on your customer-facing roadmap. As soon as you start attaching designs, including specs or even outlining the feature ideas you’re exploring, you’ll be running the risk of competitors using that intel.

Sure, the chances of them getting ahead of you and building a solution first off the back of what they’ve seen on your roadmap is pretty slim. If something is on your roadmap you’ll likely have a decent head start on the competition. But, if they’re already looking at that same problem to solve then they could well take your learnings and discovery and adapt what they’re doing to be more in line with your solution. 

4. Don’t include internally focused initiatives 

Remember, this customer-facing roadmap should be a version of your roadmap – not the complete and unedited roadmap to rule all roadmaps. 

You don’t need to include every initiative that’s on your internal roadmap, on your customer-facing one. You’ll just be filling up space with stuff they won’t care about. Which might make it less likely that they spot the stuff they will care about. 

Don’t bury what will really excite your customers in a load of stuff that won’t. 

Some examples of internally focused initiatives that shouldn’t go on a customer-facing roadmap:

• Bring down hosting costs
• Improve IT infrastructure
• Attract top developer talent 
• Optimize the signup flow

5. Don’t give your initiatives really commercial-sounding titles  

As well as not including roadmap initiatives that your customers won’t care about, also think about the angle you’re coming from with the title and description of each roadmap item. Think about how your customers will respond to the way you’ve positioned the ‘problem to solve’. 

Let me illustrate this with an example. Let’s say you have a B2B SaaS product that is charged on a per-seat basis. As a business, you are looking to grow revenue (I mean, who isn’t?). You have identified that one way of doing this is to grow the average number of seats per customer account. So you create an initiative on your roadmap and call it something like ‘How can we increase the number of seats each customer has purchased?’.

Imagine you’re a customer reading that on a customer-facing roadmap. There’s no benefit there for you – why should you care about that roadmap initiative? You shouldn’t. That is all about them making money, not you having problems solved. 

But what if that same roadmap initiative was titled something like ‘How can we help customers painlessly onboard their teammates?’ or ‘How can we make it easy for customers to train their teammates to share the workload?’. The goal will still be the same – get more paying users, but the benefit is now positioned to be more about the customer needs and less about your bottom line. 

So, consider those commercial-focused roadmap initiatives. Do you remove them from your customer-facing roadmap altogether, or reposition them to highlight the benefit to the customer over the benefit to your business?

6. Don’t make it hard to find!

The next mistake people make is to put their customer-facing roadmap somewhere relatively inaccessible. Don’t make your customers work to find it! Because they won’t and you’ll have missed the chance of building confidence and trust with your customers. 

Don’t have your customer-facing roadmap as a subtle link deep in a help center article – get it up loud and proud on your website. Otherwise, what’s the point? 

If you’re reluctant to make it fully public for all to see, then at least make sure it’s clearly signposted on your customer portal. 

Your customer-facing roadmap can be a very useful tool for your customer and sales teams. It can help them talk to the future plans for the product and explain how your product will solve their problems. This can be a very powerful resource to help drive retention and grow customer acquisition.

Therefore, make sure these teams can easily point users and prospects to your customer-facing roadmap, and have them navigate back to it whenever they need to.

7. Don’t have a static document

Now, I don’t want to be sensationalist here, or cause anyone too much alarm…. But I have to tell you, that some people create their roadmaps in slide decks . 

I know. I know. 

Or, worst still, spreadsheets . 

I’ve even seen some PDFs knocking about. 

Having your roadmap in a static document like this is a straight path to versioning headaches, access issues, and extra work. 

You can never be confident that everyone is looking at the most recent version. You always run the risk of the latest version being overwritten. You’ll definitely need to recruit some sort of design help if you stand a chance of making a roadmap look engaging in these formats. Or, even worse, you don’t get design help and have a roadmap that looks like s#*t.   

And king among the disadvantages of keeping a roadmap in a static file is the overhead you will be faced with when it comes to keeping it up-to-date. You’ll have to maintain this customer-facing version of your roadmap, alongside your main roadmap (and indeed any other versions you may have). Every time you update something on your main roadmap, you’ll have to scoot over to the customer-facing file and update that too. Groan. 

As I’ve already said, that’s likely to be forgotten from time to time, or get pushed down your to-do list as more pressing tasks take priority. And then you’re left with a stagnant roadmap out in the world, giving off the impression that you aren’t improving the product or delivering new value. 

Luckily, it doesn’t have to be this way. By building and managing your product roadmap in a tool like ProdPad, you can easily maintain one central roadmap that automatically feeds your published customer-facing roadmap based on the filters you’ve set and the selections you’ve made. 

I wish you the best of luck with your endeavors into customer-facing roadmaps. Once you’re ready to build and publish your public roadmap, be sure to start a free trial of ProdPad and see how easy it is to do it there!  

The post 7 Customer-Facing Roadmap No-Nos appeared first on ProdPad.