Hola everyone, dajiahao. I’m Robyifan, and I’m a remote Product Manager living in Singapore. Today I’ll give you a quick list of my favorite Product Manager Tools. But first… let me show you some of my work…..
Product Manager Tools:
Communication | Slack
The first thing I do every morning is to check my Slack, top Product Manager Tool. Slack is a communication tool that I have installed on all my computers, iPads, and phones. I also receive notifications on my Apple Watch. This way I always receive some sort of notification depending on my status. If I’m on the computer, working, then no problem. If I’m walking down the street I’ll be able to see it on my phone. While I’m at the gym I’ll see if there’s any emergency messages on my watch. The more often I can be aware and respond to people, the less meeting are usually required. Everyone will know what I’m up to even if I’m not there with them. Communication is, for me, one of the most important things when working remotely.
Task Management Software | Jira
How do I manage the tasks of many team members at the same time? Well using a task management tool. There are many and it’s complex to find the right one for your team, Jira is great mostly for developers. It requires a learning curve. If you’re working on Sprint Cycles, it allows you to easily manage long-term projects in chunks.
A project that can take months can be tracked in the roadmap section. If you need to see what everyone is working on right now, you can see the current sprint items and what items are in which status. If you want to know what’s coming up in the next sprints, you got the backlog section where you can see future work separated into chunks easy to digest. Or re-accommodate before they start, definitely another awesome Product Manager Tool.
Now there are other tools. I’ve used Monday.com, this one helps out with roadmap planning for executives. Or Notion, I love Notion.com and I use it to plan everything related to my channel. I’ve used it in the past with an international company of more than 50 team members for project definitions as well, because it was easy to use for people in Mainland China as well. You may hear other platforms like Clickup or trello. I suggest you try them and see what fits your needs, my personal favorite is Jira because it scales with your team.
Speaking of project definition…
Documentation | Confluence
Confluence. When I see a project that’s gonna take more than a month to deliver, or if I see a project being requested that it’s still an idea but not entirely clear yet, then I feel I need to set up a document with 3 major details. Requirements, Time and Resources needed. For this I use Confluence, one of my top Product Manager Tools. It connects to your Jira as well and you can link a requirement, with the corresponding Ticket where you define it even further, at the same time you’re keeping a high-level view of what multiple teams are doing.
Now, when documenting a project, you may need to do some prototypes to showcase how a project will look if implemented, for that… we have…Figma
Prototyping and Showcasing Software | Figma and Loom
Figma is my current go-to tool when developing prototypes. One thing is to explain with words what you got in mind, another one is for other people to see it. That’s why I prefer prototypes always, clickable, touchable, interactive versions of what you have in mind. Easy to share with users and other team members. That way you know everyone’s clear on what the deliverable is supposed to deliver. Definitely on my list of highly recommended Product Manager Tools.
Also, I use video a LOT. I record videos using LOOM, for example, when making a new release of code into production. I’ll do a recording going over the features that got deployed, or if we need to confirm that we’re heading on the right track on a feature. I’ll send a link to a prototype accompanied by the loom video just in case. it’s so easy to watch a video nowadays on your phone, this way if someone can’t try the prototype right now because you’re working on a remote, asynchronous team. The next best thing is a video where they can comment on.
Loom allows you to comment on a specific second, so the person who uploaded it, will get notified of where did some left feedback, pointing out the exact spot where they want to give you their thoughts. One of the most useful Product Manager Tools for me.
Measuring Results
Alright, let’s move to, how do we measure the results after a feature is implemented. Well, I use Product Manager Tools such as Amplitude, Google Analytics, or just querying SQL Databases. This allows you to see the impact of previously deployed features with data and if any correction needs to be done. With this you gather insights and new items to work on for the dev team, because now you have some data to support it. It’s not bad to run experiments as long as you learn from them quickly and refine them with data.
Following, I got some Product Manager Tools that I don’t use everyday, but I still recommend because I used them in previous projects. Depending on the project, some tools will work better for your team’s structure, for example ProductBoard. This one allows you to gather feedback , come up with roadmaps, set up prioritization, and different levels of measuring which variables are priority. Also allows you to connect Stories into Jira and keep an eye on them, so if you’re looking for a high-end tool, I suggest this one as well.
Product Manager Tools: Learning What to use
Finally, there‘s an item here which is not necesarilly software, although certain software will allow you to apply it. That’s Agile Development and SCRUM, these methodologies you can learn, and I stick to them as a discipline. I got Certified as a SCRUM product owner thanks to the scrum alliance . org. Part of getting really good at this is to keep learning, all the time. I usually don’t take more than a week or two without taking some onsite or online course. Here in Singapore there’s also General Assembly, if you like live sessions , I highly recommend them. They have a variety of topics that most of them will make you a more knowledgeaable PM. If you like online sessions they also have those, I actually took one of their Marketing courses from Singapore while being in Central America.
And related to learning, I have the linkedin learning subscription, which comes with LinkedIn premium. They have a huge variety of online courses that after you take them, they will show up as part of your skills on Linkedin. At the same time, it’ll provide you with a higher tier within the platform, which then let’s you expand on your network easier.
And that’s it for Jintian, on my Everyday Product Manager Tools. Let me know if you have any further questions on everyday tools as a PM, sofware developer or designer.
PURA VIDA, ZAIJIAN PEOPLE
