Product Collaboration: Roadmapping For Enterprise

Three Roadmapping Tools For Large-Scale Businesses

Just like we learned as little kids, we need to learn to walk before we can run. The product lifecycle is no different – and effective roadmapping is the first step in building great products.

Every product lifecycle kicks off with a big idea. From there, product teams need to develop a plan with clear milestones and collaboration throughout the organization. This becomes especially challenging at large enterprise companies. How do you capture every detail when building a complex plan with many stakeholders?

We will highlight three tools used by large product teams for successful roadmapping.

ASANA: The Big Picture

Asana is an organization tool that gives you a view of your entire product operation at once. With easy visualization of workflow, projects, and teams – Asana keeps everyone on the same page in order to hit deadlines more consistently. Also, with a wide range of integrations, other data sources provide better story tracking and roadmapping. Asana provides solutions for any company scenario, from product engineering and design to marketing and sales.

Asana provides the ability to organize your company in nearly any aspect. For product managers, this tool keeps complex processes organized along a visual timeline that drives projects to completion. For example, you can manage engineering teams from a macro perspective while they stay aligned with filing, bug tracking, scrums, sprints, and more. Plus, you can centralize feedback from multiple areas and make changes faster.

JIRA: Capable To Meet Every Demand

Product managers choose JIRA to plan, track, release, and report on any kind of software product with a focus on agile methodology. With features such as scrum boards, kanban boards, and agile reporting – this tool clearly establishes priorities and keeps teams goal oriented. Custom filters, integrations, and over 3,000 apps make JIRA the go-to roadmapping and story-tracking tool for top brands around the globe.

JIRA is clearly designed for companies with a high demand for organization due to complex development cycles and diverse team distribution. While this tool is not an out-of-the-box solution, it’s powerful and specific enough to organize virtually any type of project. Advanced details such as issue tracking, analytics, scrum boards, project structure, workload calculations, velocity measurement and detailed reporting make JIRA the do-it-all organization tool.

TRELLO: All Hands On Deck

Trello is a collaboration tool that makes it easy to organize projects with cards and boards. At a glance, Trello shows managers and teams current work status, resource allocation and overall progress. The interface is highly intuitive and processes – such as onboarding – are easy to centralize and update. The simple design makes it great for first time users, but this tool is by no means limited in scope.

Trello starts out with a powerful task management platform. From there, product managers can add categories such as Analytics, Automation, Design, Development, File Management, IT, HR, and Marketing. You can also add on full Product Management suites that match your specific needs. Everything gets integrated into an easy-to-manage platform. Be careful not to build out too extensively though, as the platform won’t put limits on complexity. The upside is that you can tweak this tool to fit the exact needs of your organization.

Once you’ve started to ingrain these tools into your culture, you can do more than just break down a big idea into smaller chunks. These tools can also help you look backward and see where your team is wasting time. For example, many product managers working with mParticle use project management tools to determine how many hours are spent annually on SDK maintenance as opposed to their core roadmap. If that number is substantial, the case is easily made to invest in a data layer to bring these integrations server-side. It’s not a matter of opinion, it’s a matter of fact.

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