Some of the best product management software has the potential to boost collaboration and streamline your product development lifecycle. But only if you choose the right tool for the job. 

More and more product management software solutions will continue to appear as the market is projected to reach $41.58 billion by 2030, growing at a CAGR of 7.2% from 2023 to 2030.

With so many options available, it’s no wonder that you’re stuck in a rut and can’t figure out which product management solution you need for your business. 

But with this guide, you’re all set for success. Read on to discover what product management software is, what features you should look for, and what the benefits are.

That’s not all — we’ve made a list with some of the best product management software solutions around so you can make an informed decision by the end of this article. 

What is Product Management Software?

Product management software is a tool that helps teams streamline the product development process, from brainstorming ideas to product launch planning. 

In a nutshell, such a tool provides the kit for creating product roadmaps, designing wireframes, assigning tasks, communicating in real time, and conducting user testing to see how consumers interact with your product. 

The goal of this solution is to shorten the product development lifecycle and get the finished product faster to your audience. 

But such a tool has plenty of features that help you create products faster, which makes it challenging to find the ones you truly need. 

We can help you with this. Continue reading to discover the must-have features of any product management tool. 

What Features to Look For in Product Management Software?

Any good product management software should have some (or all) of the following features: 

• Product lifecycle management (PLM): This refers to the management of the whole product lifecycle, from ideation to maturity to decline. This is important because it gives product teams a complete view of the product’s development and ensures everything is going according to plan. 
• Feedback management: At some point in your product strategy, you’ll need to test it, which means collecting, managing, and organizing stakeholder and customer feedback. With these valuable insights, you can make improvements and spot inconsistencies before launching the product. 
• Resource and task management: The tool you select should offer ways to manage your tasks and resources more effectively. This might mean kanban boards, roadmapping capabilities, assigning resources to the right people, etc. 
• Integrations: A product management tool alone won’t meet all your business needs. Make sure the software you choose integrates with the tools you already have in your workspace to save you the delay and hassle of switching tabs. 
• Templates: Some solutions have customizable templates that can optimize the product development process and make it easier to get started with building prototypes. 
• Brainstorming and collaboration tools: All new products start with an idea, so your product management tool should capture and organize ideas, no matter how crazy they are. This feature helps foster innovation and enhances team collaboration. 

Now that you’ve made a list of must-have features, you’re ready to see our list of the best product management tools of 2024. 

What are Some of the Best Product Management Software?

According to this report, only 28% of product managers believe that they have an “optimized” product development process. The rest of them may not have the right tools in place. 

But you can. 

Boost your productivity and embrace a new world of automation by taking a look at our list of best product management software programs. 

1. ClickUp — Best all-in-one tool for creating products using tasks. 
2. Asana — Best product management tool for setting goals. 
3. Jira — Best for tracking bugs and managing complex tasks. 
4. Confluence — Best product management software for remote teams. 
5. Aha! — Best suite of tools for product development. 
6. Productboard — Best solution for understanding customer needs. 
7. Trello — Best collaboration tool for organizing your projects. 
8. ProductPlan — Best roadmap tool with intuitive user interface. 
9. Slack — Best tool for enabling real-time teamwork. 
10. Miro — Best product management tool with infinite canvas. 
11. FigJam by Figma — Best solution for brainstorming and collaboration. 
12. Roadmunk by Tempo — Best solution for creating visually-engaging roadmaps. 

If one of these options caught your attention, you’re in luck. We’ll go through each of these solutions and describe them, so you can make an informed decision. 

1. ClickUp

ClickUp is a product management app that helps development teams of all sizes plan and organize their product lifecycle. 

Source: G2

The tool is easy to use due to its friendly interface, which means that anyone can easily gain insight into the team’s workflows, get customized reports, and make changes to all tasks. 

ClickUp integrates with over 1,000 tools, including Slack, GitLab, Salesforce, and more, which enhances collaboration and the user experience. 

“We can easily navigate through tasks, setting up projects, and assigning tasks are incredibly intuitive, even for those who are new to the project management tools.” 

Top features

• Task management: This solution offers 35+ ClickApps that can help teams customize their task management for the work they need, such as automation, custom fields, etc. 
• Dashboards: You can customize your dashboards however you want. In seconds, you can personalize this flexible canvas with Gantt charts, graphs, or lists. 
• Artificial intelligence: Connect all your company knowledge with AI to get instant answers to all your questions. 

Use cases

ClickUp is a good alternative for software development, design, marketing, and engineering teams. 

To make retrieving the right information easier, ClickUp integrates with Guru, a powerful knowledge management solution that gives you accurate results when you need them most.

See how the two work together here. 

2. Asana

Asana is a project management tool that helps teams reach company-wide goals faster and drives impact at scale. 

Source: G2

In a nutshell, Asana brings clarity to your product development process and speeds it up, from inception to strategic initiatives. To reach your business goals, Asana lets you see the progress in real time and keep stakeholders posted. 

Moreover, Asana’s new features include AI, which makes product planning faster and smarter. 

“The task-based nature of Asana and creating to-do lists for responsible parties makes it easier than ever to provide people with a picture of what is needed from them when you are working on projects with many moving parts.” 

Top features

• Status updates: Asana offers time-saving automations that allow you to see your progress. Moreover, you can program reminders so your team knows what to do. 
• Project views: Asana prides itself on its multiple project views, such as kanban board, list, timeline, calendar, and Gantt chart. You can easily switch between projects with a single click. 
• Custom fields: You can capture the right data by adding labels and custom fields. As a result, you can tag certain tasks by priority or status so everyone can quickly find the right project. 

Use cases

Asana is great for goal management, organizational planning, creative production, and more, by teams in the operations, marketing, and IT fields. 

The best part about this tool is that it integrates with Guru to make data retrieval as easy as pie. To get a glimpse into what this duo can do for you, check out this page. 

3. Jira

Atlassian’s Jira is an issue and project management tool that many developers use to build amazing products. 

Source: Capterra

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Usually, Jira manages every phase of the product development process, from brainstorming to releasing. But it also helps capture and organize issues, as well as visualize your work with boards, backlogs, etc. 

Plus, Jira helps break complex projects into manageable steps by creating milestones, map dependencies, and more, no matter where you are. 

“Jira makes project management incredibly simple. [...] It features numerous integrations and is completely customizable. [...] I can more effectively plan, manage, and complete projects thanks to its user-friendly interface.” 

Top features

• Timelines: With Jira’s interactive timelines, you can keep your team members and stakeholders in sync with all projects. 
• Scrum boards: This allows you to break complex projects into bite-sized tasks that are easier for your team to manage. 
• Automation: Jira has automation templates that let you streamline any task and process with just a few clicks. 

Use cases

Jira is often used by agile teams in the marketing, software development, design, and sales industries. 

Jira integrates with plenty of tools, including Guru. This powerful combo lets you retrieve company information more easily, which enables better collaboration and faster product development.

4. Confluence

Confluence is an open-source workspace that makes sharing knowledge and creating products easier for remote teams. 

Source: G2

With this collaborative tool, you can connect ideas and information to help your team do their best work and get them on the same page. You can take notes and refine your ideas on your own, or with the help of AI.

Confluence emphasizes team collaboration. You have in-line and page comments, likes, emojis, and GIFs that get your point across. Also, you can notify your team when you tag or assign tasks to them. 

“What I love the most about Confluence is the fact that it is so easy to use, considering that it has a vast amount of templates for different documents and projects.” 

Top features

• Whiteboards: This product feature allows you to brainstorm new ideas easily and create plans for tackling the process. 
• Personalized feed: Customize your personal feed with updates you’re interested in. 
• Valuable insights: With AI, you can turn messy notes into actionable insights or engaging presentations. 

Use cases

Confluence is built for marketing, project planning, software, and business strategy teams. 

Combine Guru and Confluence for better team collaboration. Together, you can create products faster, while also keeping everyone updated on the progress.

5. Aha!

Aha! is roadmap software that allows teams of all sizes to capture ideas and bring your products to life. 

Source: G2

This solution helps you create roadmaps in minutes. You just have to select a template and edit it until you’re satisfied with the result. Moreover, you can personalize it for different audiences, and make it as detailed as you want. 

Aha! also lets you define your product vision, meaning that you can build customer personas and set goals and initiatives for your processes. 

“Aha! is extremely feature-rich and infinitely customizable. It has everything you need to be a successful product organization, from product discovery to roadmap building.” 

Top features

• User feedback: Aha! has plenty of features that capture, organize, and prioritize ideas and analyze feedback trends. 
• Reporting: You can choose from 75+ pre-built product reports with key metrics that’ll help you measure progress against goals. 
• Integration: Aha!’s seamless integrations with Jira and Azure DevOps make collaboration easier and keep work flowing. 

Use cases

Aha! is suitable for planning and product management teams of all sizes. 

Guru’s integration with this tool will make you say “Aha!” as it is super easy to build products when you have all the company knowledge at your fingertips. Enable cross-functional collaboration now. 

6. Productboard

Productboard is a product management software suite that aids teams of all sizes in understanding what their customers want. 

Source: G2

This tool aims to get your products to the right audience faster and align your team with the roadmap, so everyone is on the same page while they’re working on the product. 

Moreover, you can improve your product decisions and deliver them faster to your customers with AI. Productboard AI helps you analyze feedback at scale and deliver what clients want faster. 

“I’m really into how Productboard fosters collaboration. [...] When we all join forces and see how seamlessly it connects to our project tools, it's like adding fuel to the fire of our product’s performance.” 

Top features

• Product roadmap: With this tool, you can create and share tailored roadmaps, which makes collaboration easier. 
• Customer insights: By centralizing customer feedback across all sources, you can uncover better insights. 
• Prioritization: Productboard helps you organize ideas and see which ones you should follow up on. 

Use cases

Productboard is great for product management, product operations, sales, and customer success teams.  

7. Trello

Trello is a visual collaboration tool that teams can use to distance themselves from cumbersome Excel spreadsheets and manual tasks and embrace a world of automation and flexibility. 

Source: G2

You can view your projects and products from every angle, as Trello offers tables, calendars, boards, timelines, dashboards, and maps. This gives you a fresh perspective on your product’s progress and you can break each step into tiny, manageable ones.

As a result, you stay on top of every bottleneck and change, while ensuring you get things done. 

“Trello is an excellent tool for teamwork, it allows you to keep track of the tasks and activities that each staff [member] is carrying out, raise support, generalize roles, and have better organization within the work area.”

Top features

• Templates: If you don’t want to start from scratch, Trello has templates you can use to get started on new products ASAP. 
• Automation: Trello boards have no-code automation built into their system, which makes it easier to create buttons, rules, and commands to automate actions. 
• Integrations: You can connect this tool with almost any popular app available, such as Slack, Zapier, Aha!, Zoho Desk, etc. 

Use cases

Trello is suitable for marketing, design, product, engineering, and remote teams, but also for startups. 

Drive even better collaboration with Guru + Trello. See how the two work by visiting this page. 

8. ProductPlan

ProductPlan is another roadmap software solution that’s easy to use when building visual plans that align with customer needs, which enables better collaboration among teams. 

Source: Capterra

This tool also allows you to share your roadmaps with teams, individuals, or your entire organization by clicking a single button. Moreover, you can push updates to Slack and even export the roadmaps as PDFs, images, or spreadsheets. 

“I like this software not only for the simple fact that you can have a sheet where you can see the products offered by the company and the marketing strategy and method, but you can also describe each product.” 

Top features

• Product strategy: ProductPlan has all the tools to support your vision and strategy and make it come to life by setting measurable product outcomes. 
• Discovery: With this tool, it’s super easy to collect ideas and manage customer feedback from one platform. 
• Launch: This feature allows you to create a product launch strategy that anyone can get on board with. 

Use cases

ProductPlan is for product managers from all industries. 

To make it easier to retrieve the right information when you need it most, ProductPlan integrates with Guru, a knowledge management tool that delivers instant answers wherever you are. 

9. Slack

Slack is a popular productivity and communication platform that brings your team together in a single place via real-time messaging, archiving docs, and search. 

Source: G2

Slack is a handy solution for connecting your people with the tools they work with daily, meaning that it integrates with all kinds of apps (and you can even build your own) such as Box, Zoom, Google Suite, Drive, Microsoft Teams, Asana, AWS, etc. 

As a result, your teams can pump out projects faster, without losing track of what’s what. 

“The best thing about Slack is its organized communication feature. Besides that, the search functionality is very handy for finding old chats. The customization and integration options are very cool...” 

Top features

• Workflow builder: With this feature, you can automate any everyday process, without having to write code, so you can get more work done. 
• Slack AI: This handy AI tool helps you find answers fast as it searches all projects, teams, and topics already found in Slack. 
• Huddles: If you need to clarify something with a teammate, Slack lets you connect over audio or video easily and share your screen. 

Use cases

Slack is suitable for businesses of all sizes and from every industry. 

Guru connects your conversations within Slack and lets you capture, share, and maintain knowledge automatically. Get the integration here. 

10. Miro

Miro is a collaboration tool and an online whiteboard platform that teams can use to collaborate and build, iterate, and design products faster. 

Source: G2

In this collaborative space with an infinite canvas, you can manage all your product workflows and ensure your team stays on track throughout the development process. 

Moreover, Miro enables your team to reach decisions faster, bringing clarity to them by providing relevant insights. As a result, you can craft quality products without wasting any time. 

“Miro allows teams to think out loud on an infinite canvas through the use of a flexible and purpose-built toolset. Quickly gather and develop ideas with stickies and shapes. Paste in relevant weblinks or company documents…” 

Top features

• Templates: Miro has various templates for different needs, including a customer journey map template, product development roadmap template, etc. 
• Goals: Miro enables you to set organization-wide goals that you can reach faster and so deliver higher-quality products. 
• Insights: Miro brings you valuable customer insights that help you better understand user needs, so you can create products built around them. 

Use cases

Miro is suitable for teams of any size, its use cases mostly consist of whiteboarding, wireframing, technical diagramming, and mind mapping. 

Miro has plenty of integrations that make product development easier, including with Guru. Together, you can connect your people with your company knowledge and get instant answers no matter where you are. 

11. FigJam by Figma

FigJam is a collaborative whiteboard created by Figma that empowers your organization to define ideas and build better products. 

Source: G2

It has a flexible canvas that allows you to find solutions to complex problems and get everyone involved in the project on the same page. Moreover, since FigJam works alongside Figma, you can design your product easily. 

FigJam offers templates for diagramming or mind-mapping so you can start planning as soon as possible. 

“I am in marketing and use FigJam for so many things: sketching designs, product maps, web maps, brainstorming, mapping workflows, visualizing marketing plans, etc. I love the ease of sharing with coworkers...” 

Top features

• Brainstorming: FigJam makes it easy for your team members to work together in real time and build on new ideas. 
• Workflows: Keep sprints moving forward and facilitate insightful conversations in retros, stand-ups, etc. 
• Planning: FigJam turns your ideas into action by building a robust strategy, from planning to roadmapping. 

Use cases

FigJam is suitable for UI and UX design, wireframing, brainstorming, team collaboration, agile workflows, etc. 

Plan your projects better by integrating FigJam with Guru. 

12. Roadmunk by Tempo

Roadmunk by Tempo is a product roadmap tool that lets you build engaging and visually captivating roadmaps in a matter of minutes. 

Source: G2

Roadmunk puts a heavy emphasis on both internal and cross-functional department work and simplifies collaboration. This means that stakeholders, team members, and managers can collaborate on roadmaps in real time, so everyone is on the same page with the product’s progress. 

“What] I like about Roadmunk is its user interface is _[nice, clean, and user-friendly, which makes it easy for teams to begin with making and handling roadmaps._” 

Top features

• Capture feedback: You can collect all user feedback in one place and even submit feature and improvement requests directly in Roadmunk. 
• Prioritize ideas: By using Roadmunk’s templates, you can prioritize high-impact ideas and promote them. 
• Create roadmaps: With Roadmunk, you can build strategies around objectives, milestones, and initiatives. But you can also tailor your roadmap to specific audiences. 

Use cases

Roadmunk is great for businesses of all sizes, from small ones to large enterprises. 

You know what will make this tool better? Integrating it with Guru, which allows you to keep your information organized and get instant answers with AI-powered searches. 

What are the Benefits of Using Product Management Tools?

You might think that you don’t need a product management tool in your life. Maybe relying on spreadsheets and other tools to communicate with people involved in the project is enough. 

But McKinsey & Company says, “The role of the product manager is expanding due to the growing importance of data in decision-making, an increased customer and design focus, and the evolution of software-development methodologies.” 

In a nutshell, you’ll not be able to keep up if you continue to live in the past. But what do you get out of using product management tools? 

Let’s see…

• Maintained consistency: Product management tools make it easier to keep track of the project’s progress. They help communicate the vision to everyone involved; plus, you can meet your customer’s needs easily. 
• Increased productivity: Most platforms automate manual tasks, which means that they reduce manual workflows. This allows your teams to focus on more strategic aspects of product development. 
• Boosted collaboration: With a product management tool, everyone works in a single platform, meaning that people are aligned with the product’s goals. 
• Better insights: These solutions can analyze product performance to provide data-driven insights that can help you align your product with customer needs. 
• Customer-centric products: By gathering user feedback directly into the product management tool, you can meet all client expectations. 

So, now that we’ve piqued your curiosity, let’s see how you can choose the best product management tool for your business needs. 

How to Choose the Best Product Management Software for Your Needs

If you’re ready to invest in such a solution, you’ve come to the right place. When choosing product management software, consider the following. 

• Why you need this software: The first step in any selection process is identifying what issues you’re trying to solve and, most importantly, who’s going to use it. For example, do you want to pump more products faster? Or create more customer-focused products? 
• Possible alternatives: Make a list of your top product management tools and evaluate each of them. You can even compare them against each other to see which one fits your business needs the most. Don’t settle just for one and always explore your alternatives. 
• The software’s features: After thinking about what you’re trying to achieve, look for tools that have the features that can complete your goals easily. Some of the must-have features are data management, collaboration, document management, and project management. 
• Integrations: Make sure the tool you choose integrates with your current systems, such as CRM, HR software, etc., and that it doesn’t create bottlenecks. 
• Pricing: As with all other tools, product management software comes in various pricing packages. Some have free trials, while others require a monthly subscription to use. Carefully plan your budget and choose a solution that doesn’t make too big a dent in your funds. 
• Learning curve: Product roadmapping isn’t challenging to grasp, but some team members might not understand it easily if the tool is too challenging. Choose a solution that’s simple to use so you can make the most out of it right away. 

The Bottom Line

Found the best product management software that fulfills your needs and product requirements? We’re happy to help!

But you know what’ll make product development better? Guru!

Guru is an AI-powered enterprise search, intranet hub, and company wiki — yes, an all-in-one tool. With this solution, you can search for everything, like chat history and docs, and get answers no matter where you’re working.

Test it yourself by signing up for free today. 

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