Top 10 Product Management Tools to Simplify Your Work

Product management tools are a great way for your employee to improve their quality of work, whilst making it easier on them through the variety of technology we now have available to us. There are lots of tools out there to make use of when it comes to working as a product manager in product development.

In this article, we’ve put together ten of the best product management tools that can help simplify your work and to ensure every product development goes smoothly. These tools vary from product analytics software to development tracking tools, all of which are essential in today’s role as a PM.

Maze

For any product development, user testing is a key influence to the success of the product once it hits the market. Maze is a great tool to ensure that every product you develop is providing the best UX possible. When it comes to product management tools, this one empowers you as a manager and your team by offering invaluable user insights. 

Providing rapid testing, a process that may often take up a sizable chunk of time and resources, can be reduced significantly with this tool.

Asana

Asana is a popular choice for those who need a software that can help manage all the necessary tasks that need delegating to the team involved. It comes equipped with many different features that are essential when facilitating management to your employees.

One of the main challenges that a product manager faces is a lack of role clarity. 35% of product managers feel this way and so Asana can help bring more clarity to who does what within your teams.

Like many of the other project management tools, Asana can be accessed whenever and wherever the team may be located. It might be that some of your team are working remotely and not within the office itself. As a platform it’s very collaborative and allows each individual member to feedback on areas of the development.

Propad

In product development, there’s likely a lot of ideas floating around that you’re trying to manage. Having a tool that can prioritize these ideas within the company is useful and that’s where ProPad can help.

With a roadmap-style approach, this tool can help those who aren’t necessarily from a product management background. The whole team can utilize this platform to see what their colleagues are working on so that it avoids any confusion or duplication of work. As communication is a key part of any project, having a tool like Propad in your stack can quicken the development process.

Basecamp

Basecamp is ranked as one of the best for product management tools with over 8 million projects managed by the platform currently. The platform is catered to both small and large teams, meaning those with less experience or a limited budget, can still make use of a highly effective tool.

This tool is also available for iOS, Android and Windows Phone. With 6.4 billion mobile users worldwide, Basecamp is one of the smart product management tools on the market to recognize the importance of mobile compaitabiltity. The tool also offers a 30 day trial, which is a great way to try it out before you commit to it.

Pendo

Data can be a great insight into what your consumers are after in a product. Whether that’s how your software’s users are behaving or who is approaching your website. A good analytics tool can prove very useful in collecting this data and allowing you to capture what your customers are doing.

A tool like Pendo can offer useful information on your user’s journey and to improve upon those areas that your users are having issues with. With a software like this, it can help you deliver the best digital experience possible for your target customers.

SurveyMonkey

SurveyMonkey is a tool that can be effective in collecting feedback and information from your customers. As a web-based survey tool, you can offer a range of pre-formatted questions that you can tweak and tailor to the data you’re wanting to get back from your customers.

85% of people are likely to provide feedback when they’ve had a good experience and 81% will provide it if even they’ve had a bad experience. That’s a substantial percentage of customers that are willing to provide feedback regardless of their experience. It would be a loss for your future product developments if you were to ignore the importance of gathering feedback for analysis.

Zoom

Zoom has certainly rocketed in popularity during the pandemic and it’s still an important software to make use of when it comes to product management. 

A lack of communication between team members can lead to silly mistakes that could directly impact the progress of the project, as well as the product’s success. Again, it’s another tool that can connect remote users and those who may be working on the project externally from your organization.

Keynote

A presentation tool can be a great way of helping communicate your vision, strategies and plans to others within the organization. The same goes for managing expectations for key stakeholders and investors into the product or service you’re creating. 

Keynote, like Powerpoint, has all the features you need to make high-quality presentations as and when they’re needed. It’s a great tool to have in your product management stack and an invaluable one at that.

Hotjar

HotJar is another beneficial tool for understanding your user’s behaviors, with their Heatmap feature being a customer favorite. A heatmap can help you discover what parts of a product or site that the customer is engaging with and what they may be avoiding.

It can help unearth problems that you never knew existed prior and with the data it provides, helps you make more informed decisions in relation to your product.

Google Drive

Google Drive is a great central resource for your team, particularly for remote workers and the work that’s often done out of office hours. This is a useful business productivity tool that can not only capture your team’s ideas but organize insights, share documents and notes from team meetings.

For any project manager, these tools can be an integral part of any projects you have ongoing or need assistance with. Whether you need to improve communications or learn more about your users, you’re sure to find a benefit in using many of the above product management tools for your work.