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What is the best Agile Product Management tool?
Here’s a question that’s been bugging me, that I’d like to put out there: what tool(s) would you recommend for Agile Product Management — as opposed to Agile Project Management. Here’s the challenges that I’d like to address:
- There are many project management tools out there, but as far as I can tell, they are “market ignorant” — they don’t help a product manager (as opposed to project manager) define the scope of a release/iteration, or prioritization of a backlog, based on various market factors. They take scope and prioritization as a given and don’t help the inbound product manager. They don’t help a product manager synthesize all the market inputs to make informed decisions about feature prioritization. In this group I’d include Jira, Bugzilla, TargetProcess, Rally, and VersionOne.
- As far as I can tell, agile project management tools are “sales ignorant”: they don’t enable a sales engineer to understand which features have been built, and what sales tools are available to enable a SE to sell that feature, and don’t automate outbound product management activities. There is no simple “Roadmap View” that an SE can look at, which cuts out all the developer-oriented functionality but still shows dates and descriptions and related sales collateral. Nor is there a notion of an Internal Roadmap versus External Roadmap that has less detail, and leaves out the more embarrassing bug fixes.
- There are Agile Product Management tools out there, like those from Accept Software and Ryma, but (as far as I can tell) they don’t sync with some of the popular project management / bug tracking tools, such as Bugzilla, TargetProcess, and Jira. By “sync” I mean bi-directional data sync.
Given these challenges, what Agile Product Management tool would you recommend?
Mike, 
Rich 8:11 pm on March 20, 2009 Permalink |
The tool we use is Accompa. Like the tools you mentioned, it doesn’t sync with project mgmt or bug tracking tools either. All these companies should all get together and sync their tools, and make our lives easier!
Al Sargent 5:04 pm on March 22, 2009 Permalink |
Thanks for the reply, Rich. I’ll check out Accompa. Jama Software (http://jamasoftware.com/) is another product management tool that works well on its own but doesn’t sync with project management tools.
I have a couple of friends/former coworkers who are working on a stealth mode startup to build a good product management tool that syncs with *project* management tools. I think it’s a great idea that could do wonders for bridging the chasm between product managers and developers. Of course, I’ll write more about the tool and team on this blog when appropriate. If you’d like me to connect you to these guys, let me know.
Stewart Rogers 12:39 pm on March 24, 2009 Permalink |
Admittedly biased… If I had my choice and if I was in an Agile environment I would go with FeaturePlan and either Rally or VersionOne. Ryma has bi-directional connectors for FeaturePlan to Rally and VersionOne allowing the Product Management teams to use a tool designed for their needs and the Agile teams to use tools designed for their needs.
Some of our customers are using our API to connect to other systems and you can always connect two systems manually (import/export). Your choice.
Tye Jones 11:23 pm on March 24, 2009 Permalink |
Have you heard of Rally Product Manager module?
http://www.rallydev.com/agile_products/lifecycle_management/product_management/
I ask because it was specifically designed to enable the Product Manager (or Product Owner) to prioritize their backlog based on various market factors.
RPM is designed to enable Product Managers to capitalize on knowledge from sales through the primary sales tool (outside of the phone): their CRM.
RPM provides two-way communications so developers are no longer “sales ignorant” and sales is no longer ignorant of when their customers “pet-feature” is scheduled to be release.
I would be happy to walk you through a demonstration if you wish. Please let me know by email what you think.
Mike 3:08 am on June 23, 2009 Permalink |
I think one big thing to understand is that most shops with a form of “scrum” agile methodolgy dont adhere 100 percent to the agile methodology. (it doesnt work for their business). There is always a slight conformity. So my opinion is forget the “specific agile methodolgy” “perfect” tools. because if you are using a tool that your process doesn’t really follow its going to confuse more than help.
I like your insight to product management AL.
I am in the latter stages of development with a Test Management tool I’ve been working on for about a year now.. I of course have ‘project management’ incorporated into my solution.. but i didnt really think about it from a sales side.. in fact the more i think about it the more i feel like writing up specs on an added module..
thanks AL