10 product roadmap instruments and their finest options (free and paid)

One of the vital highly effective instruments in a product supervisor’s bag is the product roadmap. It’s an vital a part of speaking product technique to stakeholders and your staff.

On this information, we’ll introduce you to 10 product roadmap instruments — seven paid options and three free alternate options — that may assist your staff be extra productive and environment friendly.

Desk of contents

What’s a product roadmap?

A product roadmap outlines the longer term product improvement and advertising and marketing plan. It’s a visible illustration of the product imaginative and prescient and the way to get there. It usually comprises detailed notes and duties assigned to specific product staff members.

The product roadmap is actually a manner for a product staff to remain organized and targeted on what’s vital to optimize the event and supply of the product. It exhibits progress on a mission, estimated timelines, and what ought to be executed subsequent.

Why use product roadmapping software program?

Product roadmapping software program makes it easier to maintain monitor of enormous to-do lists, backlogs, and concepts. A roadmap helps to maintain the assorted groups and stakeholders concerned in constructing a product on monitor to fulfill improvement objectives. It can be a spot for on-line collaboration and communication between workers.

Roadmapping permits product managers to extra successfully:

• Talk priorities — A roadmap visibly demonstrates why it’s vital for a specific job to be accomplished within the grand scheme of a mission
• Interact stakeholders — Stakeholders require updates on progress and what’s occurring, and roadmaps are a superb visible assist to make sure environment friendly communication and construct consensus in your product imaginative and prescient
• Present visibility into work — Transparency is essential to constructing belief with stakeholders. A roadmap might help present visibility into what your staff is engaged on and why
• Drive effectivity — A roadmap comprises all important info in a single place, which makes it simpler for cross-functional groups to grasp priorities and what they need to be engaged on
• Foster collaboration — Product roadmapping software program gives real-time communication instruments, enabling groups to rapidly huddle (just about) to reply questions and focus on new concepts

Selecting the best product roadmap software program will utterly rely in your staff, its work type, and your price range and enterprise objectives.

Beneath are some things to guage when adopting a brand new product roadmap software program.

Performance

Think about what instruments you want in your staff to efficiently use a roadmap.

Is your staff used to GANTT charts, PERT charts, Kanban boards, one thing else? Do you want export/import capabilities? Do you want completely different viewing permissions for stakeholders versus your staff?

Answering a majority of these questions can assist in your seek for a roadmapping software program answer.

Visualization

A visually interesting roadmap might help help your selections when prioritizing the backlog. Whether or not you’re speaking together with your staff, your clients, enterprise leaders, or different stakeholders within the product improvement course of, information visualization makes it simpler to talk your product technique.

Price range

For some corporations, price range isn’t a problem. Others are extra cautious with their bills.

Think about your organization’s price range whereas additionally contemplating your wants as a product supervisor when selecting a roadmapping device.

Collaboration

A great product roadmap device permits for real-time modifications and communication. The power to take suggestions and rapidly incorporate it into your roadmap in a single place is a serious good thing about roadmapping software program.

Let’s evaluation some widespread roadmapping instruments and discover why they is likely to be an excellent match in your staff.

Trello: Easy product roadmapping device for small groups

Trello is a visible and easy-to-use mission administration device. It’s a Kanban-style list-making software that gives a easy approach to set up your staff’s duties.

Trello’s boards, lists, and playing cards might help a staff transfer from concepts to functioning options with real-time updates.

Trello makes it easy to get began as a result of it gives quite a few templates to create workflows. These templates might help you monitor product improvement, handle agile sprints, and acquire information on suggestions.

For those who want a number of integrations, Trello has “Energy-Ups” that may join with instruments reminiscent of Dropbox and Google Drive. It could actually make your product roadmap simpler to grasp and swiftly transfer the workflow alongside.

Most of Trello’s options are free to make use of. Paid plans vary from $6.00 to $17.50 per person monthly. Options in paid plans can embody limitless boards, timeline view, and easy information export.

The free plan permits customers to have as much as 10 boards. For those who’re a small staff with a restricted price range, Trello is likely to be a straightforward choice to get began on product roadmapping.

airfocus: Simply customizable roadmapping software program

airfocus is particularly designed for product roadmapping. It has an easy-to-use roadmap builder and may be custom-made to fulfill the wants of the product staff.

Irrespective of how unorthodox your course of, airfocus is versatile sufficient to match your staff’s collaboration type. It presents a number of views together with Kanban boards, tables, timelines, and extra.

It additionally has distinctive options, reminiscent of customized scoring frameworks to automate prioritization. airfocus additionally has Precedence Poker, an interactive negotiation assembly with stakeholders to debate product priorities.

airfocus has a 14-day free trial. As soon as it’s over, plans vary from $19–109 per person monthly. For those who pay yearly, you’ll get two months free. There isn’t any free model of airfocus accessible.

ProductPlan: Stunning, ready-to-go roadmap templates

ProductPlan prides itself on its potential to assist product managers simply construct and share roadmaps. PMs seeking to impress stakeholders with a visible roadmap will take pleasure in ProductPlan. It has many templates, which may be custom-made utilizing a drag-and-drop builder.

One of many key advantages of ProductPlan is the power to create completely different ranges of viewing entry for stakeholders. For instance, the event staff would possibly obtain a extra granular model of the roadmap whereas buyers would possibly see a roadmap dictating the imaginative and prescient and course. This protects product managers time as a result of they don’t should create a number of roadmaps for every stakeholder.

The essential plan begins at $49 per person monthly. Premium plans are solely accessible on an annual foundation beginning at $828 per person for one 12 months. It’s a dearer choice, so that you’ll wish to make the most of the 14-day free trial to find out whether or not that is the best choice in your staff.

Productboard: Finest for prioritization

Productboard helps groups set up suggestions, prioritize duties, and create a visible roadmap. By placing a give attention to buyer suggestions, product groups usually tend to give attention to significant backlog gadgets, which can enhance dash planning, the shopper expertise, and, subsequently, income.

One of many distinctive options of Productboard is the power to gather and set up buyer suggestions. Listening to your buyer’s wants and wishes is an important a part of efficiently prioritizing your product duties.

Productboard has a 15-day free trial with no free plan accessible. Paid plans begin at $25–90 per person monthly. Scale and Enterprise plans require customized quotes.

Wrike: An actual-time collaboration and productiveness device

Wrike is a product administration device with a give attention to enhancing inner collaboration and communication. This might help increase worker productiveness by guaranteeing everyone seems to be aligned with the product roadmap.

This device might help centralize product dialogue by uniting messages throughout cross-functional groups. Wrike claims this might help break down silos and set up key selections. The workflows make it simpler to see what progress is being made and eliminates the necessity for check-in emails.

Wrike presents a free plan, which incorporates options reminiscent of job administration, dwell exercise stream, interactive boards, and spreadsheet views. Paid plans have extra superior options, together with interactive GANTT charts, shareable dashboards, and customized workflows.

Plans vary from $9.80–24.80 per person monthly. Giant groups could ask for a customized quote. Wrike additionally presents a 14–day free trial of its paid plans.

Aha!: A complete device for incorporating product technique

Aha! is likely one of the hottest product administration instruments, boasting greater than 500,000 customers. This product administration device can simply create a timeline with particulars tailor-made to particular stakeholders. The drag-and-drop builder makes it straightforward to collaborate with different staff members and convey vital info on the timeline.

Product managers like utilizing Aha! as a result of it does greater than create a compelling visible roadmap; it additionally contains different options not present in different roadmap instruments, reminiscent of setting a product technique, crowdsourcing concepts, and reporting on progress. Having one software program device that may accomplish all of those duties makes product improvement simpler in myriad methods.

Aha! plans begin at $59 per person monthly if paid yearly. There’s a 30-day free trial that lets you take a look at all options within the Enterprise plan.

Aha! is likely one of the costliest instruments on this listing, but it surely does embody the whole lot you want for profitable product improvement.

Roadmunk: Finish-to-end product roadmapping

Roadmunk has a number of product roadmapping options, reminiscent of milestones, varied roadmap kinds, and monitoring possession of duties. It’s straightforward to import your information and use the drag-and-drop characteristic to rapidly create a product roadmap.

Roadmunk additionally contains options for amassing suggestions from shoppers to make knowledgeable, customer-driven product selections. This might help groups confidently determine what to prioritize subsequent when mixed with the built-in prioritization scoring technique.

All plans begin with a 14-day free trial; there is no such thing as a free plan. Paid plans vary from $19–99 per person monthly when paid yearly. You might have to pay further charges for superior options reminiscent of further viewers and two-way Jira+Azure DevOps.

Some instruments we’ve talked about, reminiscent of Trello, have free plans, however they usually limit sure options to paid customers. Nevertheless, there are different free alternate options that don’t impose strict limitations.

Bitrix24

Bitrix24 presents easy product administration instruments and a wide range of views, together with a GANTT chart, Kanban board, calendar, or planner. It additionally gives instruments that will help you effectively handle scrum groups and initiatives.

The free plan is pretty complete and should embody sufficient options to serve your product staff’s wants. It’s also possible to improve to get extra superior options, reminiscent of permitting observers and individuals to your roadmap.

TeamGantt

TeamGantt has a easy drag-and-drop interface that makes it straightforward to customise prebuilt templates. Because it’s all on-line, TeamGantt permits for straightforward collaboration between staff members.

The free plan is a good choice for college students and small initiatives. It contains one supervisor, two collaborators, one mission, and 60 duties. For extra superior options, you possibly can strive the 30-day trial for a premium plan.

OpenProject

For those who’re searching for an on-premise answer, OpenProject could also be a viable product administration device. It’s additionally accessible on the cloud.

The essential free plan contains options reminiscent of customized fields and workflows, person permissions, and time monitoring. Nevertheless, because it’s open-source software program, it’s probably not the very best match if safety is a prime concern.

Which product roadmap answer is best for you?

It’s possible you’ll want to join a handful of free trials to seek out the product roadmapping software program that matches your product staff’s wants. Above all else, search for a device that lets you successfully talk your product technique, monitor and report in your progress, and facilitate collaboration with workers and stakeholders.