How do you use tools for product management?

The most important tool needed will be commitment. The first and foremost step towards building a great product is to understand the user needs. One to one interviews, market survey, focus groups are used to understand customer pain points. Digital media such as surveymonkey, conjointly are used to get feedback and customer insights. 3rd party data can be used to understand market trends, marketline is one such website. Getting feedback for a prototype can be done by dog feeding, online scrapping of data via social media. Use of A/B testing to figure out the funnel metrics and take data backed decisions Keeping a constant check on how the customer is reacting to your product is of great value

In the realm of product management, the role of tools in research and discovery transcends the mundane. Think of them as "Innovation Navigators." These tools aren't just data aggregators; they're creative compasses. They help you explore uncharted customer needs, guiding you through the fog of uncertainty. These tools whisper trends and emerging market dynamics, enabling you to chart a visionary course. They're not just instruments; they're co-pilots on your journey to innovation, helping you unearth insights that fuel groundbreaking products. So, when using tools for research and discovery, don't just see them as instruments – envision them as your trusted guides in the adventure of product creation.

"In the world of product management, tools aren't just software; they're skills." Every PM should master these three essential tools: 1. Effective Communication: PMs are meant to serve as a pivotal information channel after of course the knowledge base, delivering clear, detailed messages to all stakeholders. 2. Data Analysis: Develop a keen ability to interpret data, drawing insights to inform data-driven decision-making. 3. User Experience Design: Familiarize yourself with tools like Figma to create wireframes and mockups, and use visual aids for idea communication.

Picture product management as directing a blockbuster movie: Audience insight: surveys are your casting calls, revealing the stars your audience craves. Storyboarding: prototyping tools help draft the first script, setting the scene for action. Rehearsals: usability tests are your rehearsals, refining performances before the premiere. Audience journey: journey mapping is your story arc, ensuring thrills at every turn. Box office numbers: analytics are your box office, measuring the blockbuster buzz. Reviews: feedback tools collect the cheers and jeers, your cue for an encore or a new direction. Crew coordination: tools like Trello are your production meetings, keeping the cast and crew in sync for a stellar show.

A couple of tools that you can explore, which provide a host of use cases for PM, are: 1. Miro 2. Whimsical It has some predefined templates which will help you get started easily.

Product management is as much an art as it is a science. If you agree with such a statement, then the tools you use would mostly reflect it. If you work in an early-stage startup where resources are spread extremely thin, you may end up using a very limited number of tools: - Google slides for strategy (provided to you by a founder or given to you to be shaped) - Google Spreadsheets for business case evaluation - Google slides or Miro for Roadmapping - Figma for designs - Miro for team collaboration or visualization of problem space/solution ideation - Trello or Jira for the execution of a strategy In a bigger company, you may end up with 10*X tools Important to remember that tools are as good as the user’s understanding of the process

i can recommend using the following frameworks and tools - analyze and update Lean canvas model for your product, make sure the solution is aimed to solve Customers' & Users' problems - Use the Impact mapping technique to create a clear traceability from Business Goal -> to affected actors (staekholders/users) -> to user scenarios and problems -> to solution features designed to solve the stakeholders' issues.

I would not call above simply a tool but it is means to get things done. I would prefer to call a tool like Jira, Productboard, Azure ADO, Excel, PowerPoint, Word, Cloud drive, Version One, etc which can provide you a better way to communicate and synchronize with your team on product vision, mission, strategy, roadmap, themes, features, backlog, user stories and perform collaborative work to get things done and ultimately solve user problems to create and maintain lovable products.

For better planning and prioritization, I use several tools on my day-to-day, specifically: - AHA! to manage the roadmap and the several features; - Jira and Confluence for any details on the product development or to generally maintain proper documentation. - PPT, Excel, Word, and OneNote for various tasks like presentations, data analysis, documentation, and note-taking.

For planning, I start with a bucket of ideas and solutions on sticky notes on a Miro/Mural/Lucid board. I use these boards to brainstorm with multiple stakeholders and cross-functional teams. This allows looking at customer problems from all perspectives and taking comprehensive feedback. But to prioritize, I use tools like Aha for all roadmap items. Finally, I summarise roadmaps using a few slides with different narratives, impact and estimates based on the level of detail needed by stakeholders.

A PM can greatly improve their collaboration and communication by using different categories of tools and mapping those to different scenarios. I recommend: ? a suite of some sorts that tackles both sync and async comms in a one-to-one and one-to-many setting (e.g. Teams or Slack) ? a video tool for sync (Teams, Slack, Zoom) and one for async (recordings of the former, or Loom) ? a tool for async and sync collaborative sticky note sessions (e.g. Miro - nothing beats good old sticky notes) ? a generic async knowledge management tool (e.g. Confluence, SharePoint, Notion or Obsidian) ? a tool to asynchronoisly display progress to stakeholders (e.g. Jira, Wrike, Asana) ? a tool for async roadmapping (e.g. Productboard, ProductPlan, Craft.io).

The "best" tool is the one that aligns with your specific needs and promotes effective communication, collaboration, and ultimately, project success. In instances where swift responses are imperative, platforms like Google Chat or Microsoft Teams prove invaluable, are perfect for those thriving in rapid exchanges and real-time cooperation. For scenarios demanding focused thinking, options such as email, project management platforms, or document collaboration features take precedence. They facilitate deep work and documented discussions, ideal for structured and detailed deliberations. Understanding the purpose, work style, and team dynamics enables the selection of the ideal toolkit to empower your team and drive efficient collaboration.

The best products emerge from strong collaboration between engineering, design, and product management. - Julie Zhuo Effective teamwork is built on: → Clarity: Ensures understanding. → Trust: Fosters open innovation. → Transparency: Builds a foundation of honesty. → Active Listening: Integrates valuable feedback. → Adaptability: Enables swift pivots in strategy. → Inclusive Decision-Making: Broadens perspectives. To support these principles: → Celebrate progress. → Use visual aids for clarity. → Maintain regular check-ins. Enhancing Tools: → Slack / Zoom / Trello / Asana / Linear / Jira: Facilitate seamless collaboration and communication.

Collaboration shouldn't be 1 way. Collaboration with effective communication channels helps to deliver the outcome faster. Being a product manager, you have a vision and collaborating with different stakeholders and seeking their feedback, listening to their opinion helps in team bonding and also helps to get a different perspective of the same problem. Documentation is the top priority for a product manager. It not only keeps a record but also helps stakeholders to understand the bigger picture. Communication channels can be used as per the flexibility viz. Chat apps, email, video call etc.

As a product manager, you should spend more time communicating than executing. Communication doesn’t mean filling up your calendar with different types of meetings just to stick to a specific agile methodology. Communication means allocating enough time to prepare for meetings, and to follow up after so your team can get the most out of it during those interactions. Here are some examples: spend time thinking, talk with customers, analyze metrics, analyze market trends, do competitive research, review your backlog and roadmap, attend conferences, talk to other product managers, prepare presentations, etc. Another benefit of not packing your calendar is to have time to proactively communicate with stakeholders on an as-needed basis.

From my experience, one of the most underrated tool for PMs during design phase is balsamiq. I have been using it for the past 8 months and it's been incredible. I see many PMs recommend to learn figma, but as a PM our job is to make designer understand our perspective of UI/UX rather than designing the most perfect design in terms of components, colors,fonts etc. Other than that figma has a lot of learning curve and it's meant to help designers for designing only Balsamiq in this case, help a lot in creating mockups clearly and in a much faster . It has lot of ready made design components (more than miro & whimsical) ,which can speed up the process. I can also make changes quickly in balsamiq after design reviews with my manager.

Design Prototyping: Figma, Sketch, or Adobe XD for creating interactive prototypes and mockups. Collaborative Design: InVision, Zeplin, or Avocode for collaborative design handoffs and version control. Version Control: Git and platforms like GitHub or Bitbucket for version control and collaboration among developers. Code Review: Pull request tools in Git platforms, or dedicated tools like Crucible for effective code reviews. Documentation: Swagger, Confluence, or GitBook for creating and maintaining API documentation and development guides. Bug Tracking: Bugzilla, Jira, or Mantis for tracking and managing software bugs and issues.

Take shortcuts and learn how other companies solved a specific UI/UX problem. Dribbble.com is your friend and if you can find a company that already did what you have in mind, you can focus less on the foundational UI/UX in design, and more on the things that will make your product special and set you apart from the competition.

Wireframing, Mockup, and Prototyping Tools like Figma and Sketch aid in visualizing and refining design concepts, fostering effective communication. Code Editors such as Visual Studio Code enhance the coding experience with features like syntax highlighting. Version Control Systems like Git, in tandem with platforms like GitHub, manage changes and facilitate collaboration. Testing Tools such as Selenium ensure product quality through automated testing. Deployment Tools like Jenkins automate the deployment process, minimizing errors during feature releases. This comprehensive toolkit, aligned with industry best practices, facilitates seamless collaboration, and efficient code management.

If you read this, and you have no event tracking tool in place yet, DO. IT. NOW! One of the key mistakes companies make is implementing the tracking too late, and then it becomes a hassle and burden. Implement event tracking early on, clearly define your events based on the customer journeys, and educate your engineers on the importance of emperical evidence on your product. I'd personally recommend Mixpanel for tracking and analysis, but there are many great tools out there!

Right now I'm exploring the functionality of Tableau and Microsoft Clarity. I use Tableau for collecting and sorting the big RAW data, and making the necessary B2C metrics. With Clarity usage I'm searching for the necessary segment of the user, UX behavior on special pages, summarizing some technical metrics with page loadings, as an example.

The most simple and powerful tool most PMs use is excel. For bigger tasks, there are other tools like SQL and its variants like BigQuery, Redshift, PostgreSQL , etc are available. For Visuals- PowerBi/Tableau But, tools are only as powerful as their wielder. Dhoni or Dhanush might hold the same bat, but only Dhoni can hit a century with it. To be like Dhoni, you need to understand the data. What are the data points available to us? Does having data point x imply y. For eg, suppose you have a data point that shows that the #users who sign up for your product increases on rainy days. Does this mean that rain causes more folks to use the product? Not really. Factors like seasonality, marketing campaigns, or word-of-mouth, may be at play

I use analytical tools for the following types of work: To analyze competitors from Similarweb. For product discovery, user behavior analysis tools include Clarity, GA4 and A/B test tools such as Crazy egg. For manage projects from Jira. For document and provide analysis from confluence and BPMN2, use case, UML and...

Your job is not done with the new product development. Analysis and evaluation is necessary to keep the product/ feature evolving. Being a product manager, if you are good with numbers, data will be your goldmine. While SQL is not a requirement for every product manager but it is an added advantage which helps in looking into numbers. Tools like Hotjar, Crazy egg, Mouseflow, VWO etc helps to understand user heatmap and their behaviour. Tools like Tableau, QlikSense, Power BI help to visualise the data metrics. Google Analytics is equally helpful in data slicing. You should have the right approach to use the tools to understand product performance. After all, it helps to evolve the product with continuous iterations.

As a Product Consultant I’ll use whatever the client has or wants. But I’ve used em all and here are my favourites: Productboard for Strategy Fullstory for Research Figma for Design Monday Dev for Delivery Amplitude for Growth

Use tools specifically designed for PM. General-purpose tools like Excel, note-taking apps, and project management software can offer basic functions, but they can't address the actual needs of product work, like 1. Strategic alignment of product planning and prioritization with overall business strategy. This is crucial when you have lots of teams and products. There you need a PM tool with an embedded OKR feature. 2. Prioritizing features and initiatives based on market demands, resource availability, and strategic value, so your decisions are informed. 3. Easier, clearer communication with stakeholders, with roadmap visualization, and scenario planning. 4. Integration with various data sources, for insights crucial for decision-making.

I'm of the opinion that product leaders often mistake a tool to be able to solve a broken process. A tool can both enhance or destroy a great product development process. Yes, there are tools that are necessary for development -- for example, you need a ticket management solution, a design platform, and a document repository for specs. The actual tool you use for each purpose matters only at different stages of the company/size. At a small startup, it matters very little as you're moving so fast that any tool will work - the outcome is what matters. When at a larger company, it does matter more as you need to interface with so many more stakeholders.

Using tools should always be a 2nd layer of action. For example: 1. Use events tracking tool only when you have a clear sense of WHAT you are looking for or hypothesis related to the same. 2. Use channel marketing tools when the basic level flow and process is ready on pen & paper. 3. Use figma or any design tool when wireframes or basic structure is clear. This is because tools can only facilitate the direction in which we are headed, knowing this can help us get the outcomes a bit faster.

Some of the tools that I can think of would be follow- Project Management Tools: Jira, Asana, Trello Communication and Collaboration Tools: Slack, Microsoft Teams, Zoom Product Roadmap Tools: Confluence, Productboard User Feedback and Customer Insights: Surveymonkey, Microsoft Forms Design and Prototyping Tools: Sketch, Figma, Adobe XD, InVision Version Control: Git, BitBucket Documentation Tools: Confluence, Sharepoint, BPMN