10 top product management tools
Tempo Team
As technology rapidly evolves, so does the field of product management. Product managers must stay updated on new tools and resources that can facilitate efficient project management; software drives successful product launches.
Numerous product management tools exist to streamline your workflow and elevate your overall performance as a product manager. Each is tailored to specific needs so you can find the right tool for your unique approach.
Picking product management software
Product management tools are the backbone of project planning and execution. They help teams coordinate their efforts, streamline workflows, and adhere to deadlines.
However, choosing the best software for your company can be tricky. Each option has unique features, making the selection process overwhelming. You must identify and prioritize the features your team needs the most. Whether it’s detailed reporting tools or advanced collaboration features, knowing what your team requires will help you choose software that best suits your business goals.
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In no particular order, here are 10 product management tools your team should consider based on specific use cases:
1. Heatmaps: FullStory
Where are customers clicking on your website or digital product? How far are they scrolling down the page? Where are they hovering?
Heatmaps show you what parts of the experience draw the most attention and which facets are underperforming. They show how web and mobile visitors behave when interacting with your website. You’ll learn whether your calls to action work and discover what user interface elements might be frustrating or confusing. With this information, you can adjust accordingly.
Our favorite: FullStory helps companies monitor the digital experience of their products, services, and websites – especially where customers need help understanding or using a specific feature. It also provides custom reporting with valuable insights into the root causes of these problems.
2. Immersive user research: Maze
User research or user experience testing software provides a cheaper, quicker alternative to focus groups. Deliver your product to end-users so they can try it out. Then, gather their feedback (typically via surveys or interviews) and adjust products as necessary.
Our favorite: Maze helps you validate new product ideas, feature updates, and roadmap decisions with usability testing and feedback options sent directly to end users. PMs can capture early-stage feedback on new products or create testable wireframes to get input before using prototyping tools.
If you don’t have a user base to sample, you can use the Maze Panel, a group of Maze-approved testers.
3. Roadmapping: Strategic Roadmaps (Roadmunk)
Product management roadmapping software visually represents your strategy, communicating the how and why behind feature releases. Roadmapping lets teams base their plans on honest customer feedback and set the right priorities. It reduces repeat questions and creates clarity and confidence for internal and external stakeholders.
Our favorite: Strategic Roadmaps (Roadmunk), of course! It’s geared toward user-friendliness and high visual appeal, keeping everyone aligned on managing product strategy. Varied roadmap templates help users start quickly, and integrations with Jira, Azure DevOps, Asana, Trello, GitHub, GitLab, and Shortcut eliminate duplicate data entry and keep everyone updated. You can also use the master portfolio view to roll up all your organization’s roadmaps for a bird’s-eye view of every project.
4. Product analytics: Amplitude
Product analytics tools help you gather and analyze various data points about how people find and explore your product, which types of customers are the most valuable for your company (e.g., subscription-based versus one-off purchasers), what might make customers leave, and more. Your team can better track, visualize, and understand engagement and behavior data to enhance existing products and develop new ones that tap into unmet customer needs.
Our favorite: Amplitude is a digital analytics platform that helps PMs discover the specific features and customer actions that generate loyal, high-value customers. It analyzes data you’re already collecting across your company to give real-time insights into customer acquisition, activation, engagement, and retention.
5. Product onboarding and feature tours: Appcues
Product onboarding software guides users through your product so they understand what it does and how to get the most out of it. Feature tours highlight new or essential aspects of the product experience. Ideally, the software feels like a seamless, on-brand part of the app, but you don’t have to task your developers with creating it.
Our favorite: Appcues helps PMs design, create, test, and publish onboarding experiences. It includes tooltips, short videos, and in-app surveys and lets you build targeted experiences for different types of users.
6. Presentation templates: Beautiful.ai
Instead of laboriously building a deck from scratch, presentation software provides templates and visual tools to quickly create high-quality presentations so PMs can express their product visions creatively and effectively.
Our favorite: Beautiful.ai has attractive, intuitive templates for individual slides and complete presentations. Smart templates follow design best practices, and you can easily incorporate your branding.
Beautiful.ai also has an impressive slate of integrations. For example, you can get Slack notifications about new comments on the deck, pull media from Dropbox, or quickly dress up PowerPoint presentations.
7. Collaborative video: Loom
Finding a calendar opening where the whole team can get together is tough, but a lengthy message on Slack or another text-based collaboration tool doesn’t always cut it. That’s where recording and sharing short videos comes in handy.
It’s often more accessible and impactful to talk through something (rather than type it). A straightforward video tool helps you asynchronously record and share information and conversations, which is a lifesaver for remote teams.
Our favorite: Loom has valuable features for collaboration. Viewers can add comments and reactions to videos. Users can enhance their presentations by drawing on the screen as they record. Presenters can also add calls to action to point their audience toward the next step in the collaborative process.
8. Cross-user/cross-team collaboration boards: Miro
A virtual whiteboard provides a visual space to mull over ideas together, especially during brainstorming around specific questions or goals. With a shared mind-mapping tool, your remote team can better plan projects and hold free-flowing discussions.
Our favorite: Miro lets you put your heads together and visualize ideas however you like – in hierarchies, flow charts, random sticky notes, or whatever suits the topic. PMs can use it to build wireframes and user flows, automatically import customer feedback from other tools, or help guide team conversations in a productive, strategic direction.
9. Data management: Segment
Companies store customer data across various locations, slowing down PMs who need it to make informed decisions. Data management tools help you find and organize data from multiple sources for more efficient use.
Our favorite: Segment helps companies integrate the data they collect and store in their tech stack. PMs can collect real-time user experience data from web and mobile apps to develop a comprehensive view of their users.
10. Persona and customer journey creation: TheyDo
Product teams, marketing, and company leadership require a shared understanding of who their customers are and what they need. Product managers can develop this understanding with tools that articulate user experience workflows and uncover the product features they value most. You need time to build and update personas and the customer journey; these tools make that work easier and faster.
Our favorite: TheyDo creates a big-picture view of all customer journeys. Unify all customer journeys in the application, increasing their visibility with filters. It has journey templates to standardize their look and feel, plus an automatic prioritization feature to improve your customer experience decisions.
Why product management tools matter
Product and project management tools aren’t just helpful; they’re must-haves. They make a team more efficient, effective, and organized. With centralized collaboration, everyone understands their roles and responsibilities.
Moreover, these tools let you optimize resources and the product development process. Companies with a centralized platform can allocate resources and manage tasks to maximize their assets and abilities.
These tools ensure high productivity and effectiveness by illustrating resource availability, efficiently assigning tasks, and monitoring real-time progress. For example, Kanban boards use cards to visualize work items at various stages.
Additionally, product management tools offer flexibility. They adapt as a business grows and changes, providing value during each product lifecycle stage. They track valuable data, facilitate communication, and ensure every process aligns with the overall strategy.
What to look for when choosing product management tools
When selecting the ideal product management tool for your business, consider these factors:
User-friendliness: The tool should be easy to implement. Does it offer user-friendly interfaces, onboarding workflows, and ready-to-use templates?
Features: The tool must meet your specific needs. Look for comprehensive task management capabilities and specialized features that satisfy your business requirements.
Integration: You need seamless integration with the software your company already uses. This ensures a smooth transition and operation for your entire team.
Customization and flexibility: The best product management tools enable customization and adaptability. Does the tool enable you to tailor workflows, features, or processes?
Collaboration capabilities: Look for a tool that fosters efficient collaboration among team members via shared task lists, streamlined communication channels, or accessible project updates.
The right tools for the product manager job
The best product management tool is the one that works for your specific use case and organizational requirements. Most software tools offer free trials and demos. The time you spend researching and onboarding a new solution will pay off in the long run, ensuring fewer headaches, better insights, and closer team collaboration.
Need help aligning your company’s strategic vision? Check out Strategic Roadmaps’ roadmap templates page to facilitate quick progress toward your big-picture goals.
