Jira
Product Management Software
Product management software allows businesses to more effectively:
- • Align their portfolio with the business strategy
- • Balance demand with resource capacity
- • Analyze the risk versus reward for various opportunities
- • Manage product initiatives from concept to closeout
Compare All Product Management Software
VSM Platform
VSM Platform
Flomatika is a Value Stream Management platform focused on helping mid-market and enterprise organisations pursue faster and more predictable value delivery. Our platform gives transformation, product and technology leaders end-t...Read more
monday.com
monday.com
monday.com, an award-winning collaboration and project management platform, helps teams plan together efficiently and execute complex projects to deliver results on time. monday.com team management and task management tool allows ...Read more
MeisterTask
MeisterTask
MeisterTask is a cloud-based project and task management solution that caters to businesses of all sizes. Key features include file management, time tracking and reporting. MeisterTask offers a dashboard that helps users view...Read more
Zoho Sprints
Zoho Sprints
Zoho Sprints is a cloud-based product roadmap solution for businesses of all sizes. The solution is designed to be used by agile teams and offers features such as user dashboards, reporting, scrum boards, timers and timesheets. Zo...Read more
Software pricing tips
Read our Product Management Software Buyers GuideSubscription models
- Per employee/per month: This model allows you to pay a monthly fee for each of your employees.
- Per user/per month: Users pay a monthly fee for users—normally administrative users—rather than all employees.
Perpetual license
- This involves paying an upfront sum for the license to own the software and use it indefinitely.
- This is the more traditional model and is most common with on-premise applications and with larger businesses.
Rated best value for money
Planview Clarizen
Planview Clarizen
Planview Clarizen is an award-winning enterprise work management solution for project portfolio management (PPM) and professional services delivery teams. The solution enables PMOs, EPMOs, PSOs, and ESOs to gain real-time visibil...Read more
Easy Projects
Easy Projects
Easy Projects is an award-winning collaborative work management platform designed to equip and enable medium to enterprise level companies to achieve quantifiable operational improvements. Whether in-house or remote, team members ...Read more
Targetprocess
Targetprocess
Targetprocess is a cloud-based enterprise visual platform which connects Portfolio, Products and Teams. The tool perfectly reflects the agile methodology and can help any company to adopt and scale agile across the enterprise...Read more
ActiveCollab
ActiveCollab
ActiveCollab is a project management solution for creative professionals. It offers cloud-based subscription plans or a self-hosting license. Projects are split into tasks and subtasks. Tasks can be filtered by the due date, ass...Read more
Priority Matrix
Priority Matrix
Priority Matrix is a cloud-based project management platform that helps project managers prioritize projects and tasks and enables them to achieve visibility and accountability across different projects. The solution enables ...Read more
ProductPlan
ProductPlan
ProductPlan a cloud-based visual roadmap platform. It helps teams of all sizes create roadmaps and customize them with legends, timeframes, milestones, tags and filters. Users can import items from JIRA, Pivotal Tracker or a ...Read more
Popular Product Management Software Comparisons
Buyers Guide
Last Updated: March 08, 2022Digitalization is causing a major disruption in the project management industry, prompting organizations to shift from a project model to a product model in order to more effectively manage technology investments.
Gartner predicts businesses that embrace this change now will outperform their competition in both customer satisfaction and business results. (Source: "Mastering the Role of Products in the Digital Era." Full report available to Gartner clients.)
We've created this guide to help you better understand all that product management encompasses and how it relates to the current project management marketplace.
Whether you're just starting to shift from a project to a product model, or you're a seasoned product manager looking to upgrade your current system, this guide can help you make a more informed purchase decision.
Here's what we'll cover:
What Is Product Management Software?
Product Management vs. Project Management
Common Capabilities of Product Management Software
Market Trends to Understand
What Is Product Management Software?
Product management encompasses the planning, production, marketing and managing of products over their life cycle, i.e., introduction, growth, maturity and decline. It brings together business strategy, customer needs/wants and technology investments.
Products can be tangible, i.e., physical goods, or they can be more intangible, such as software applications or a service you offer.
Gartner's Definition of a Product in the Digital Era
(Source: "Mastering the Role of Products in the Digital Era." Full report available to Gartner clients.)
Within the realm of IT and project management, product portfolio management refers to an organizational approach to managing technology investments (i.e., software and applications), both internally developed or purchased.
It involves grouping applications into product suites that align with, and deliver the capabilities required by, each business area. The goal is to deliver continuous value from software and applications over their life cycle, rather than a single delivery of value all at once at the close of the project.
Product management software provides support for these ventures, allowing businesses to more effectively:
- Align their portfolio with the business strategy
- Balance demand with resource capacity
- Analyze the risk versus reward for various opportunities
- Manage product initiatives from concept to closeout
Product Management vs. Project Management
These disciplines are closely related, but there are some key differences:
Product management involves developing and communicating a product strategy (that aligns with business goals). Product managers put together a product vision, outline high-level requirements, prioritize initiatives in the portfolio and drive the development of products in the product line.
Strategic planning in Aha!
Project management involves executing the strategy through individual initiatives. Each project initiative is designed to deliver specific requirements. Project managers govern those initiatives, coordinate resources, oversee schedules and manage all the details of the project from kickoff to closeout.
Project dashboard in LiquidPlanner
Common Features of Product Management Software
Product management software can range quite significantly in size and function, with some specializing in a single phase of the product life cycle and others offering an integrated suite of tools to govern multiple phases.
Expect to see some or all of the following capabilities as you evaluate the various product management systems on the market:
| Collaboration | Increase transparency into your product strategy and vision. Enable users to communicate and collaborate in a centralized workspace, share ideas and work together to accomplish goals. |
| Idea management | Create a forum where users can submit and discuss product ideas and build out a business case. Figure out what to work on next by grooming your product backlog based on impact versus effort. |
| Content management | Upload and store files such as product requirements, market research and competitor analyses. Set permissions and share files with approved users. This may be called a "research repository." |
| Product portfolio management | Build a product portfolio based on business strategy and current, near term and future goals. Design product lines and manage opportunities across the business. Communicate your product vision, value proposition, go-to-market plans and more. |
| Product research | Conduct research on users, build personas, test various designs for the best user experience. |
| Product roadmapping | Prioritize initiatives based on customer analysis and feedback. Break product requirements into features and put them on the roadmap according to priority. Roadmap options will vary across tools, i.e., team roadmaps, product roadmaps, portfolio roadmaps, release roadmaps. Discuss needs with vendors to ensure the product capabilities match your business requirements. |
| Application management | Support software and application products over their life cycles: Plan/gather requirements, put into design specification plan, develop/build it, test it, deploy application and maintain/support it. |
| Reporting and analytics | Organize data, analyze it, spot trends and identify patterns. Collate data from various sources on dashboards and build out custom reports or use an out-of-the box template. |
| Feedback management | Gather customer feedback and incorporate it into product decisions. Link feedback to product ideas and requirements on your roadmap. |
Market Trends To Understand
The shift from project to product portfolio management is happening faster than you might think. We surveyed managers and application leaders to find out how their organizations currently manage technology investments.
While 36 percent still manage all investments as IT projects, it's telling that 64 percent have a product component in their portfolio in some capacity.
This reflects a major change in how organizations are seeking to deliver value through capabilities, from strictly project-based to product-oriented portfolios.
Organizational Approach to Managing Technology Investments
![Organizational Approach to Managing Technology Investments [chart]](https://www.softwareadvice.com/resources/wp-content/uploads/1676202-product_management.png)
Gartner estimates that by 2020, three-quarters of digital business leaders will have pivoted from project to product portfolio management. (Full report available to Gartner clients.)
If you're part of the 36 percent who have yet to make the transition, here's how to get started:
- Direct your project management office (PMO) to include both a product and a project component in your portfolio moving forward.
- Empower existing product managers to lead your transition.
- Set up cross-functional teams (e.g., executives, product managers and their counterparts in IT and operations) to align your product portfolio and resources with your business strategy.
- Embrace business agility, agile development methods and the DevOps movement (if you haven't already).