Product Management Software

Product management is an extensively multi-disciplinary responsibility that involves managerial tasks, technical management, market research, and much more. 

Previously, product managers had to use general-purpose tools to carry out these tasks, such as project management software, spreadsheet tools, and CRMs. Now, however, purpose-built product management software can support all stages of the product management lifecycle with unique features that are designed with product managers in mind.

In this glossary article, we describe product management software as well as the various product management tasks it can streamline. We also provide different examples of product management tools available today.

What is Product Management Software?

Product management software is designed to carry out product management tasks. They can automate processes and make it easier to do these tasks, or offer new capabilities to product managers.

Product management software is explicitly designed from a product management perspective. This allows it to offer features that are tailored specifically to product managers, which non-purpose-built software may not have.

What is the Importance of Product Management Software?

In a fast-paced, agile-driven product world, product management software is practically a requirement to be competitive. 

Product management software offers an array of benefits to product managers that can improve every stage of the product management life cycle.

1. It Increases the Product Manager’s Effectiveness

Product managers have many areas of responsibility that span several fields and departments. Wasting their valuable time on tedious tasks, like manual data entry and generating insights, is not an effective use of your product manager’s time. Product management software can take away the tedium as well as automatically perform many simple product management tasks. This gives the product manager more time to focus on making strategic decisions. 

2. Good Product Management Software is a Boon For Collaboration

It’s inefficient to employ disparate general-purpose tools that don’t mesh well together for each product management task. Dedicated product management software often interfaces with your existing workflow and fosters collaboration among your team. The best tools allow product managers to seamlessly assign tasks across multiple departments. Even when working with different parts of the product management lifecycle.

3. It Leads to Better Decisions

Product management software that explicitly deals with product-related analytics and insights can give product managers more information to work off. This new information, which might not have been exposed through normal tools, can help product managers make better and also information-based decisions.

Types and Examples of Product Management Software

Let us consider the key responsibilities of the product manager:

• Creating a product vision
• Market research into audience preferences and also competition
• Product strategy development
• Project management, task prioritization, and sprint planning
• Product testing and validation
• Ensuring product alignment with high-level business goals
• Product marketing strategy
• Collection and analysis of user feedback

For each of these responsibilities, there is an associated product management tool that can reduce the workload of the product manager or open up new opportunities for them. 

Here are a few of the biggest categories as well as leading examples of each:

1.  Product Analytics Software

Product analytics is the process of automatically gathering information about your product’s users using tools that are integrated directly into the software. It can show you how your users engage with your product and how you can improve it. 

Product analytics can expose deep insights about your customers which wouldn’t be possible with standard surveys. To maximize how you use that data, you need product analytics tools to identify trends and opportunities in your data.

One key example of product analytics software is Amplitude, which helps you discover what delights your users, uncover friction points, and get a full view of the user journey.

2. Omnichannel Customer Feedback 

Your product may receive feedback from a variety of customer-facing sources and channels. Keeping track of all of them can be tedious and even overwhelming. By using omnichannel customer feedback software, you can centralize feedback from all sources and prioritize the feedback that needs action first.

3. Agile Project Management Tools

There are certainly a lot of project management tools available on the Internet. However, these might not be able to accommodate the unique requirements of software development. For instance, agile frameworks, such as Kanban and Scrum, have unique organizational needs that might not be efficiently executed in standard project management software.

By using product management tools that deal explicitly with software development, you can make it easier to manage your team’s Agile needs and guide them towards project success.

For example, the highly popular Jira platform allows for support for Agile needs such as kanban boards, user stories, and sprint planning. It also allows you to customize your workflow and includes thousands of add-ons, apps, and integrations that let you add functionality and integrate with your existing tools.

4. Product Design

Standalone design tools are useful for simple projects. However, more advanced product design tools allow for extensive team collaboration, the creation of interactive prototypes, and integration with various parts of the product development process.

One of the most popular tools for design and prototyping, Figma, does far more than allow you to design, collaborate, and prototype. It also lets you gather feedback from stakeholders, create multiple branched iterations of each design, and track analytics of asset usage by your teams.

Elevating Product Management With Modern Tools

Adding product management software to your workflow can have a great impact on even the smallest projects. There is immeasurable value to getting more out of your time and effort’s worth, and your product’s success is reliant on using these tools to become a more effective leader.