How To Compare Product Roadmap Tools

Stop agonizing over product road map tools and user our product roadmap tool selection criteria
Stop agonizing over product road map tools and user our product roadmap tool selection criteria

Agonizing over which product roadmap tool to purchase?  With all of the tools on the market, it’s essential to set up a criteria for how to compare product roadmap tools, but given the time involved in the process, we figured would would save you the effort and spoon feed you some easy to use criteria.

Just don’t get used to us being nice……

 

Product Roadmap Tool Comparison Criteria

Based on a combination of professional experience and building out the case studies for this website, we’ve seen a lot of product roadmap tools, so we are pretty confident in our ability to lay out some points by which you can evaluate and compare product roadmap tools. 

 

There are really two groups of criteria for you to include in the evaluation process

  • Does the platform provide you with the functionality to accomplish your objectives as a product manager
  • Does the tool provide you with a good user experience.

 

 

How To Compare Product Roadmap Tools: Features and Functionality

When comparing product roadmap tools, what you will notice is that there are a range of products, from dedicated product roadmap tools to product management platforms that integrate roadmapping. With that in mind, our feeling is that any product roadmap tool needs to have the following core functionality:

  • Planning tools
  • Product roadmap template options
  • Different roadmap layout
  • Drawing/building tools to create roadmap layouts from scratch
  • Project overviews
  • Collaboration tools
  • Document sharing/Access control
  • Roadmap versioning
  • Integration

How To Compare Product Roadmap Tools: Overall User Experience

Just because a platform has all the features you want doesn’t mean it will be the best choice for you because its user experience could suck. Keep these these user experience points in mind when you compare product roadmap tools

Usability: What is the learning curve like? Are the tools easy to pick up? Is there good tech, user support, tutorials and training?
User Interface: Does the user interface (and the over all product) feel like it was delivered by professional product managers? Is it clean and attractive? Do the templates and building tools look great and are they easy to pick up on?

Integrations: While lots of tools connect with one another, the real questions are:

  • Are the integrations easy to set up
  • Does it connect with tools you use or will you need to re-platform other workflow

Overall administration:   Is the platform easy to administrate?   Backups?  User access controls?  Data export and import?  Costs?

Next Steps

Dive deeper into the process of comparing product roadmap tools as The Product Manager’s Toolbox walks you through the best product roadmap tools on the market today (OK, we lied, we did more of you homework for ya!).

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