10 Best Product Planning Software Shortlist
Product planning is the backbone of any successful product launch. Product planning software can help you prepare for the development of a new product by allowing you to build roadmaps, launch checklists, objectively score new opportunities, and prioritize what needs to happen next.
I've compiled and evaluated a list of the 10 best product planning software in this article. Whether you're a seasoned product manager or just starting out, these tools will help streamline your process and bring your product from concept to launch.
What is product planning software?
Product planning software is a type of software tool or application designed to help businesses and product teams with the various aspects of planning and managing a product throughout its lifecycle.
Product planning software has features that support product development activities such as ideation, prioritization, roadmap creation, collaboration, and tracking. It also helps product managers and their teams develop and organize product plans.
Overview Of The 10 Best Product Planning Software
Here’s a brief description of each product planning software that showcases its best use case and standout features.
Craft.io
Best product planning software to connect strategy with features
Craft.io is a product management software that lets you define product specifications, craft product strategy, build roadmaps, plan capacity, and prioritize work across multiple teams and product lines.
Why I Picked Craft.io: The tool lets you improve the efficiency of product planning and development work through multiple features. The capacity planning feature allows you to move away from Excel and incorporate a live system of record where you can track everyone's availability and simulate capacity adjustments across different resources without affecting the roadmap.
With this tool, you can connect your product vision, OKRs, and user personas with product features while leveraging customer feedback. This customer feedback can be collected from both internal and external stakeholders through a dedicated feedback portal that you can connect directly with your work items. All-in-all, Craft.io makes sure you create products that align with client needs as well as company objectives.
Craft.io Standout Features and Integrations
Features that stand out include the Guru views that pack industry-leading best practices into templates that you and your team can use to make better products and improve development velocity. Other features include a visual roadmap, customizable workflows, flexible data visualization, a 4-level data model, product metrics, portfolio management, prioritization & scoring systems, and feedback management.
Integrations include Jira, Azure DevOps, GitLab, GitHub, Targetprocess, Figma, Adobe XD, Okta, Google Workspace, Active Directory, SAML, Lucidchart, Confluence, Miro, and PingIdentity. Additionally, you can connect to over 1,000 additional applications via Zapier. There is also a Beta version of its API available so you can start building custom integrations.
Pros
- User-friendly interface
- Great for teams collaborating on product planning
- Excellent customer support
Cons
- Limited customization options in the lower-priced plans
- No mobile app at the moment
airfocus
Best product planning software with an advanced prioritization and scoring system
Airfocus helps product teams worldwide prioritize and manage their product roadmaps. Airfocus’ unique scoring system enables teams to quickly rank features based on critical parameters like value, effort, and risk, and develop a well-defined roadmap.
Why I picked Airfocus: Airfocus' scoring system is a standout feature that sets it apart from other product planning tools. This feature allows teams to make data-driven decisions when prioritizing their backlog. Consequently, product teams can better focus on building features that are most valuable to their customers.
Airfocus is ideal for teams looking to prioritize large feature backlogs. In addition, Airfocus helps you leverage several popular prioritization frameworks, including Priority Poker, MosCoW, RICE, Kano Model, and others.
Airfocus Standout Features and Integrations
Features include a prioritization-based scoring system, customizable roadmap views, collaboration and team communication tools, risk management features, and others.
Integrations include 10+ tools like Asana, Github, Intercom, Jira, Salesforce, Shortcut, Slack, Trello, Webhooks, Zapier, and others.
Pros
- Robust prioritization scoring system
- Very responsive customer support
- Effective collaboration and communication tools
Cons
- Occasional bugs with Jira synchronization
- Limited customization features
ProductPlan
Best product planning software for capturing critical product attributes
ProductPlan is a product management software vendor specializing in intuitive and visually-appealing product roadmaps. The tool is ideal for product managers, product owners, and product teams seeking to collaborate on product planning and prioritize features. What drew me towards ProductPlan is their all-in-one product management platform that gives an aggregate view of the various aspects of product planning and strategy.
Why I picked ProductPlan: ProductPlan helps you to create, share, and communicate your product roadmap effectively. The tool focuses on collaboration, visualization, and ease of use. ProductPlan can help you stay on top of your product strategy and ensure that everyone on your team is aligned and working towards the same goals.
ProductPlan offers a user-friendly interface that is easy to navigate. The drag-and-drop functionality makes it simple for teams to create and modify product roadmaps quickly and easily. With ProductPlan, users can create custom fields to capture important product data, such as market research, user feedback, and customer data. This feature enables teams to tailor product plans to their specific needs.
ProductPlan Standout Features and Integrations
Features include customizable templates, flexible layouts, custom filters, a prioritization board, roadmap highlights, a drag-and-drop interface, team collaboration features, analytics, and reporting tools.
Integrations include 10+ tools like Asana, Atlassian, Jira, Microsoft Teams, Slack, Trello, Zapier, and others.
Pros
- Intuitive and easy drag-and-drop interface
- Great collaboration and team communication features
- Roadmap highlights depict how original plans changed overtime
Cons
- Limited customization options for templates
- Occasional date glitches on the roadmapping tool
Asana
Best product planning software for infusing a project management flavor
Asana is a well-established project management vendor, helping companies streamline workflows and improve productivity. Asana offers flexibility and customization options that allow teams to adapt the tool to their specific needs.
Why I picked Asana: Asana's ability to automate and streamline project workflows stands out. With custom templates, dependencies, and automation, Asana allows teams to simplify their processes and focus on delivering high-quality results.
Asana helps manage projects and tasks collaboratively across teams. For product managers looking for a tool packed with project management firepower, Asana doesn’t disappoint. Asana’s product roadmapping comes with backlog management and a unique project conversation feature that allows you to convey important project updates.
Asana Standout Features and Integrations
Features include custom templates and workflows for project planning, multiple views (list, board, calendar) for flexibility, dependencies, automation rules to streamline workflows, and others.
Integrations include 10+ tools like Adobe Creative Cloud, Aureum, Figma, Looker, Okta, Salesforce, Splunk, Tableau, Vimeo, and others.
Pros
- Collaboration focused
- Efficient task management
- Generous free plan
Cons
- Slightly steep learning curve
- Limited assignment features
Productboard
Best product planning software to centralize customer feedback
Productboard’s expertise lies in creating software for customer-driven product development. It is a great tool for businesses seeking to align their product roadmap with customer feedback. Their unique interface brings customer feedback and product development together, allowing teams to prioritize features and build customer-driven products.
Why I picked Productboard: Productboard helps collect and organize customer feedback from multiple channels and collate these data points into one common place. This feature ensures that teams build products that address customer needs.
Productboard is ideal for product managers, product owners, and development teams seeking to prioritize and align their product development efforts with customer feedback.
Productboard Standout Features and Integrations
Features include a centralized customer feedback portal, feature prioritization, roadmap creation, feature idea validation, and others.
Integrations include 10+ tools, like Amplitude, Fable, Grain, InSided, Intercom, Microsoft Teams, Slack, Zapier, and others.
Pros
- Easy-to-use interface
- Great for customer-driven product development
- Nifty progress tracking feature
Cons
- Purely web-based tool with no desktop application
- No native integrations with project management software
Aha
Best product planning software to create visually stunning roadmaps
Aha! is an absolute delight for product managers seeking a comprehensive platform that covers product strategy, road mapping, and analytics. One distinct feature of Aha! is its intuitive interface that allows users to map out product strategy and features with ease, and track progress through roadmaps, timelines, and Gantt charts.
Why I Picked Aha!: Aha! lets you create and manage your product strategy and vision, which helps product managers to align product development with company goals. The tool also allows you to define initiatives, features, and releases while keeping stakeholders in the loop with automated notifications and progress updates.
Another noteworthy feature is the tool's powerful product analytics that gives product managers deep insights into their products and performance. With 50+ product management templates at your disposal, Aha! will definitely help you rock your upcoming product ideation meeting. Aha! also provides a robust idea management system that enables teams to collect, evaluate, and prioritize product ideas. As a result, the most promising ideas receive the attention they deserve.
Aha! Standout Features and Integrations
Features include product strategy, vision mapping, customizable roadmaps, timelines, Gantt charts, automated notifications, progress updates, customizable reports & analytics, idea & feedback management, and others.
Integrations include 10+ tools, like FlowDock, GitLab, Jira, Salesforce, Slack, Teams, Trello, ZenDesk, and others.
Pros
- Intuitive and visually-rich interface
- Offers prototyping, product strategy, road mapping, and analytics
- Excellent customer support
Cons
- No OKR (Objectives & Key Results) support
- Some bugs with the Jira integration
Confluence
Best product planning software for team collaboration
Confluence emerges from Atlassian, a leading provider of collaboration and productivity software. It is one of the best product management tools, particularly well-suited for agile development processes. Confluence streamlines collaboration and knowledge sharing across teams by improving communication and reducing errors.
Why I picked Confluence: Confluence is a powerful tool for managing product development processes. The main use case for Confluence is for product managers to create, organize, and share product requirements documents.
With Confluence, you can truly stay on top of things by constantly tracking key statuses and action items. Confluence oozes collaboration with messaging, comments, likes, and real-time activity feeds. Additionally, I’m particularly impressed with the remote brainstorming session feature that Confluence offers.
Confluence Standout Features and Integrations
Features include customizable templates for product requirements documents and user stories, real-time collaboration and commenting, tracking a documented history, and others.
Integrations include 10+ tools like Dropbox, Google Drive, Jira, Microsoft Teams, Slack, Trello, and others.
Pros
- Easy to create and search product documentation
- Real-time collaboration and commenting
- Integrations with other Atlassian tools
Cons
- Some glitches with the Slack integration
- Occasional bugs with ticket status synchronization
Portfoleon
Best product planning software for portfolio management
Portfoleon is a real blessing for agile teams and project managers looking to manage and prioritize a portfolio of projects. Portfoleon’s customizable project hierarchy allows users to manage portfolios and sub-portfolios of various sizes. The software also offers drag-and-drop prioritization, customizable workflows, and team collaboration tools.
Why I picked Portfoleon: Portfoleon's flexible project hierarchy and intuitive interface are amazing. Its customizable project management approach and integrated agile tools make it an all-in-one solution for managing complex portfolios.
The primary target audience for Portfoleon is organizations managing multiple projects or portfolios, particularly those using agile methodologies. Additionally, Portfoleon offers a range of customizable reports and visualizations to help users track progress and make data-driven decisions.
Portfoleon Standout Features and Integrations
Features include a customizable project hierarchy, drag-and-drop prioritization, agile project management tools, customizable workflows, resource management, team collaboration tools, customizable reports, visualizations, and others.
Integrations are available with Jira and Zapier.
Pros
- Customizable project hierarchy
- Intuitive UI and drag-and-drop features
- Offers a range of reports and visualizations
Cons
- Slightly steep learning curve
- Limited integrations
Roadmunk
Best product planning software with boardroom-ready roadmaps
Roadmunk is a cloud-based product management tool that helps companies create and manage their roadmaps and portfolios. Roadmunk has made several inroads in powerful visualization and collaboration features with their boardroom-ready roadmap, removing the hassle of research for business presentations. The tool also boasts 35+ roadmap templates exportable in various formats, including PNG and HTML.
Why I picked Roadmunk: Roadmunk offers easy-to-use roadmap customization options, an interactive drag-and-drop interface, and collaboration features. With this tool, product managers can easily create, visualize, and share product roadmaps with teams and stakeholders, making it a great choice for agile teams and organizations.
The tool allows users to add multiple timelines, milestones, and custom data points. With Roadmunk, product managers can customize and share roadmaps, and generate invaluable reports & analytics to support product development and performance.
Roadmunk Standout Features and Integrations
Features include customizable roadmaps, visualization of linked items between roadmap initiatives, collaboration with teams and stakeholders, customer feedback management, and others.
Integrations include 5+ tools, such as Asana, Azure DevOps, GitHub, Jira, Trello, and others.
Pros
- Easy drag-and-drop interface
- Collaborative workspace for team members and stakeholders
- Customizable roadmaps with multiple timelines and data points
Cons
- Copy-pasting workflow is a little complicated
- Dull color choices
monday.com Dev
Best product planning software for sprint management
monday.com Dev is a project management tool designed specifically for product managers in the tech space. The tool offers a wide range of features and integrations that make it easy for tech PMs (Product Managers) to manage their projects and collaborate with team members.
Why I picked monday.com Dev: monday.com Dev stands out for its customizable platform allowing PMs and developers to build and manage projects using a visual interface. Moreover, the backlog and bug tracking features of monday.com Dev bridge the gap between PMs and technical folks, like developers and engineers.
monday.com Dev Standout Features and Integrations
Features include customizable templates such as Scrum and Kanban, time tracking and reporting features, sprint management tools, a sprint burndown chart, docs for knowledge management, and more.
Integrations include 10+ tools like Google Drive, Dropbox, LinkedIn, Microsoft Teams, OneDrive, Outlook, Slack, Zapier, Zoom, and others.
Pros
- Customizable templates for agile development methodologies
- User-friendly interface
- Great scope for workflow automation
Cons
- Limited features on the mobile app
- No Gantt chart feature
The Best Product Planning Software Comparison Chart
This comparison chart summarizes basic details about each of the top product planning software we just covered in the overviews.
Tool | Trial Info | Price | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Craft.io Best product planning software to connect strategy with features | 14-day free trial available | From $24/editor/month | Website |
2 | airfocus Best product planning software with an advanced prioritization and scoring system | 14-day free trial | From $83 /editor/month | Website |
3 | ProductPlan Best product planning software for capturing critical product attributes | 14-day free trial | From $49/user/month | Website |
4 | Asana Best product planning software for infusing a project management flavor | 30-day free trial + free plan available | From $13.49/user/month | Website |
5 | Productboard Best product planning software to centralize customer feedback | 15-day free trial | From $25/user/month | Website |
6 | Aha Best product planning software to create visually stunning roadmaps | 30-day free trial | From $59/user/month | Website |
7 | Confluence Best product planning software for team collaboration | Free plan available | From $5.75/user/month | Website |
8 | Portfoleon Best product planning software for portfolio management | 14-day free trial + free plan available | From $24/user/month | Website |
9 | Roadmunk Best product planning software with boardroom-ready roadmaps | 14-day free trial | From $19/month, paid annually | Website |
10 | monday.com Dev Best product planning software for sprint management | Free plan available | From $8/user/month | Website |
Other Options
Here are a few more worthwhile options that didn’t make the best product planning software list:
- Wrike
Best product planning software with pre-built product management templates
- ClickUp
Best product planning software for charting dependencies and forecasting risks
- Trello
Best for Kanban-style project planning and scheduling
- Toggl Plan
Best product planning software for tracking product feature delivery timelines
- ProdPad
Best product planning software for building product strategy
- Roadmap Planner
Best for showing future stages of a project
- dragonboat
Best product planning software for connecting initiatives and OKRs
- Productific
Best product planning software for gathering roadmap feedback from real users
- Microsoft Planner
Best project planning software for leveraging Microsoft 365 features
- YouTrack
Best product planning software for agile release planning
How I Picked The Best Product Planning Software
Perhaps you're wondering how I selected the best product planning software for this list. To build this top 10 list, I evaluated and compared a wide range of types of product planning software systems with positive user ratings.
After determining my long list of top choices, I further refined my list by using the selection criteria below to evaluate how each tool weighed up against the other. I also drew on my years of product management experience to highlight unique features that help add value to your product management journey. Ultimately, you want to reap the benefits of a product planning software.
When selecting the best product planning software for this list, I used the selection criteria below to further evaluate each tool.
Selection Criteria
Here’s a short summary of the main selection and evaluation criteria I used to develop my list of the best product planning software for this article:
Product planning features
Product planning requires concrete frameworks for attaining success. I evaluated each platform’s ability to support product planning tasks, such as idea management, road mapping, backlog management, and team collaboration.
Usability
Product planning software must help you save time by strategizing and forecasting - not by eating away your free time by demanding several hours to learn a tool. The best product planning software tools are user-friendly and allow PMs to get off the blocks quickly. As a result, onboarding becomes easy and you can swiftly begin defining product roadmaps.
Customization
There is no one size that fits all. As a result, I prioritized tools with advanced customization features and capabilities, such as custom fields, workflows, and reporting.
Software integrations
Product planning software that offers integrations can help elevate your company’s overall efficiency. For instance, if a product planning software integrates with a project management tool like Jira, you can save lots of time that would otherwise be wasted by copy-pasting the same information onto a different platform.
Pricing
Finally, pricing is a significant factor before you decide on product planning software. It’s crucial to pick the right tool with the best return on investment. I’ve also indicated if the tools offer a free trial for you to go out there and test the waters.
Product Planning Software FAQs
If you’re new to product planning software, you might have some questions about what it is, what it does, and how it differs from other types of software used in product development. Here are some frequently asked questions and brief answers to help you get started:
What key features are included in product planning software?
What are the main phases of product development?
What’s the difference between product planning, product management, and product road mapping software?
How do you create a simple product roadmap?
What Next?
Now that you have read about product planning, you can deepen your understanding of a product strategy to build better products and what makes it different from a product vision. You can further read about the components of a product development strategy and discover the four biggest myths around it.
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