Tools

A collection of tools I have found useful for Product Management.

Contents


Helpful Tools for Product Management

Aha!

  • Commercial. (https://www.aha.io/)
  • Expensive but full-fledged Product Development and Management tools.

Invision

  • Commercial. (https://www.invisionapp.com)
  • Has templates for things like Product Planning, Wireframing, Speedboat, Empathy Maps, Journey Maps, etc.

Leantime

  • Open source for self-hosted, paid cloud versions available. (https://leantime.io)
  • Developed around Lean principles.
  • I have a to-do to test this one out when I have time.

ZenTao

  • Open source for self-hosted (https://www.zentao.pm/)
    • Functionality is limited, paid cloud versions available.
  • Developed around Scrum principles, supports other Agile methodologies as well.
  • Baked-in Product Management tools.
  • I have a to-do to test this one out when I have time.

User Journeys

Edit.org

  • edit.org
  • Good selection of online-editable templates.

UserInterviews.com

Wireframe Tools

Balsamiq Wireframes

Usability Testing & User Interview Tools

Lookback

  • Commercial License. (https://www.lookback.com/)
  • Service that allows you to track participants navigating your apps/websites while interviewing them.
  • Incredibly easy to use but powerful way to gain real insight into what users are thinking.
  • Requires that you find your own testers/users.

Documentation Tools

VS Code

  • Free (https://code.visualstudio.com/Download)
  • Primarily a code editor, however, it has many plugins for working with markdown and markup languages and integrates well with git, making it well suited for writing and maintaining documentation as code.

Obsidian

  • Free for personal use (https://obsidian.md/)
  • Knowledge Base that uses markdown files.
  • Allows for back-linking documents together to create an extremely powerful graph view.
  • Extendable using extensions.

Github

  • Commercial (https://github.com/)
  • I'm including Github in Documentation Tools because it can be an incredible document repository if the team takes the time to learn git source control. Used in conjunction with markdown languages and publishing tools/integrations, git can be incredibly useful for versioning control.