Jira Product Discovery is just one part of Atlassian’s offerings as a company, and a new one at that following general availability on May 8, 2023, it joins similar Jira apps like Jira Software for software development, Jira Align for strategizing, Jira Work Management for project management, and other tools like Trello(opens in new tab). It’s a firm favorite among IT decision-makers, and is a company whose reach is broadening rapidly.
Its roadmapping tools are great and borrow from existing software that Atlassian has already developed, so they’re tried and tested. Jira Product Discovery also enables custom roadmaps and views to make sure that they align with each team’s preferences and needs.
As part of the software, you also get access to a board that illustrates effort versus impact to help denote a priority to something on your roadmap, as well as a home for subjective data like feedback.
Atlassian also has its own marketplace where you can browse from an extensive list of integrations. Pricing is $10 per month per creator for the Standard tier, or small teams can choose the free plan which allows a maximum of three creators.
Beyond the app’s dedicated roadmap functionalities, you can integrate your entire workflows and tie in all aspects of the product development. It, too, has a prioritization process which is built to be standardized across the ecosystem to make comparing with dashboards clearer.
Because there are more than just roadmapping features available, there are other integrations to accommodate to things like feedback and ideas, including third parties like Salesforce(opens in new tab), Intercom, and Zapier.
Above the free Starter plan which is very limited in its features, there’s a reasonably affordable Essentials plan. A pricier Pro tier sits below a pair of customizable, quote-only models, so there should really be an option for most companies and products.
Most importantly here is the roadmap view, which is easy to adjust with different views and customizable in terms of fields. Collaboration isn’t so much of an in-app experience as it focuses on sharing, so you can show others your roadmap as an image, PDF, or secure web portal.
More broadly, Aha! Roadmaps joins Aha! Ideas designed to get the ball rolling, Aha! Create for turning concepts into roadmaps, and Aha! Develop for the technical side of operations. Aha! Roadmaps, available at three fairly costly price points, comes as standard with access to the cheaper version of Aha! Ideas and Aha! Create. They are both available separately, too, where you can pick between more tiers including a free version of Aha! Create. Aha! Develop requires its own subscription, but is a lot more affordable.
Pendo offers a powerful app designed around roadmapping, and while it can be a perfect fit for developing new products it also lends itself well to other developmental work, like software.
It links to other business data, helping teams to understand the reason behind products and validate the impact with feedback. In certain cases, you can tie in retroactive analytics so that anything you’ve collected in previous rounds of feedback and analysis can feed right into your current roadmap.
User experience is clearly an important part of the process and the software is neatly designed and easy to use. There’s also a mobile version to help companies extend their reach, but regardless of your chosen device Pendo promises to be easy to set up with very little technical know-how needed.
There’s a free, customer-facing plan under the Engage category, along with a handful of others, and employee-facing Adopt plans. The catch is that pricing, which is available on request, is based on a group of users rather than a per-seat basis, so it can be especially costly for SMBs.
Following some acquisitions and transfers, Roadmunk now forms part of a family of apps that includes project management platform Structure for Jira, and resource management app Tempo, though they are only available separately and not as part of a package.
Roadmunk’s aim is to help its customers, including Microsoft, Dell, and Salesforce, to make boardroom-ready roadmaps that are clear and easy to follow, but packed full of insightful details.
It also serves as a platform to capture customer feedback and there’s a handy tool for monitoring how valuable something may be in relation to how much work is required. An integration with Jira Roadmap – either one-way or two-way depending on your plan – is designed to link higher-level operations with your Roadmunk to support more effective collaboration. There’s also integration for Azure DevOps.
The entry-level Starter plan is affordable, but the Business plan adds even more features. Even so, both are limited to one-way syncs unless you pay a supplementary charge on the Business plan. Professional, which is substantially more expensive, comes with two-way sync as standard, and there’s an Enterprise tier which adds a private cloud and more. Because there’s a limit on the number of reviewers, expect to have to pay more for any additional users.
Arguably more of a broader project management tool, Trello does market itself towards those working on specific products and promises to link marketing together with management and development as an effective platform.
The roadmap itself is nothing unique, but given Trello’s extensive scale and reach, it benefits from more advanced features like no-code automation to help speed up repetitive administrative tasks. You can also pick from a variety of views to see different information simultaneously.
On top of the roadmapping features that are of greatest importance in this list, Trello also supports feature requests which is a great way of interacting with customers and delivering products that ultimately serve their audiences better.
There’s a handful of templates to choose from that were designed specifically with product management in mind, but there are even more if your work revolves around other categories like sales, marketing, HR, education, and more.
While it’s not a dedicated product management platform, it serves its purposes very well to most cases and is significantly more affordable than some other options, so it’s well worth considering if it works for you. On top of a free plan are three paid tiers based on a per-user model, with annual discounts.
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