Roadmap Mastery: the Top 5 Best Roadmap Tools for Effective Project Planning

In today’s fast-paced business landscape, effective project planning and execution are essential for success. Roadmap tools have emerged as invaluable assets, helping teams map out strategies, allocate resources, and track progress. In this article, we’ll dive into a selection of the best roadmap tools on the market. These tools have a range of features, from visualizing timelines to fostering team collaboration, making them essential companions for project managers, product teams, and entrepreneurs alike.

Why should We Use Tools for Product Roadmapping?

Before jumping into some of the best roadmap tools, let’s find out why we should use the tools for roadmapping.

Software for product roadmapping makes it easier to manage long to-do lists, backlogs, and ideas. A product’s development teams and stakeholders can stay on track to fulfill their objectives with the help of a roadmap. It may also serve as a place for online staff collaboration and communication.

With the support of road maps, product managers can:

• Communicate priorities - A roadmap makes it clear why a certain task must be done in the overall scheme of a project.

• Engage stakeholders – to maintain effective communication and promote agreement on your product vision; stakeholders need regular updates on the status of projects. Roadmaps are a great visual tool for this.

• Make work visible - Transparency is essential for establishing confidence with stakeholders. A roadmap may put light on the projects your team is working on and their motivations.

• Drive efficiency - Cross-functional teams may more easily understand priorities and what they should be working on thanks to a roadmap’s central location of every relevant detail.

• Encourage collaboration - Real-time communication tools provided by roadmapping software allow teams to meet remotely to address issues and explore fresh concepts immediately.

Who Will be the One in Charge of Maintaining Your Product Roadmap?

The Product team often owns the roadmaps. The Product Owner will specifically be in charge of the roadmap’s creation.

However, in larger teams, there could be more than one person in charge of updating the roadmap. Other product managers and members of various teams, such as customer success managers, might join this group.

You won’t need to worry as much about collaboration tools if just one person is managing the roadmap.

However, if several users require editing access, you must pick a more collaborative roadmapping tool that supports it.

Find out more: A Complete Guide to SaaS Pricing Strategy

What Will be Shown on the Product Roadmap?

Roadmaps can be used in many ways by various SaaS companies and several teams within a single company.

Some product roadmaps offer a smooth perspective of what is planned for the product and are incredibly thorough. Others are straightforward, high-level insights into what the future might include.

A crucial decision to make is which kind of roadmap is best for your business. 

It all comes down to this: What is the purpose of your roadmap? How does it benefit your business? Is it merely a means for your product team to keep all of their ideas in one location, or is it a way to communicate expectations to stakeholders? Maybe it’s both.

Once you are clear on the purpose of this roadmap and the format it will take, selecting the right tool becomes necessary. If you want the added detail, utilizing a high-level roadmapping tool is useless.

Five Popular Tools for Product Roadmaps

Below are some of our recommendations on the best roadmap tools from our team of experts.

Trello: Simple Tool for Small Teams to Plan Their Product Roadmaps

Trello is the first name to be called in the list of best roadmap tools. A visual and user-friendly project management tool is Trello. It’s a list-making tool in the Kanban approach that gives you an easy way to arrange the tasks for your team.

With real-time changes, Trello’s boards, lists, and cards can assist a team in changing from concepts to usable functionality.

Trello’s features are generally free to use. The monthly cost for paid programs varies from $6 to $17.50 per user. Unlimited boards, a timeline view, and easy data export are features available with subscription plans.

ProductPlan: Beautiful, Ready-to-use Roadmap Templates 

Don’t miss out ProductPlan on your considerations for the best roadmap tools. ProductPlan takes pride in making it simple for product managers to create and share roadmaps. ProductPlan will appeal to PMs interested in impressing stakeholders with a visual roadmap. A drag-and-drop builder is used to alter the many available templates.

Roadmunk: Comprehensive Product Roadmapping

Roadmunk offers a number of features for product roadmapping, including milestones, several types of roadmaps, and task ownership tracking. You may easily develop a product roadmap by using the drag-and-drop feature and simple data import.

Roadmunk also has tools for gathering consumer input so that business decisions about products are based on what customers want. When combined with the built-in prioritization rating technique, this can assist teams in making solid decisions about what to prioritize next.

There is no free plan; instead, each plan has a 14-day free trial period. When paid annually, paid options range from $19 to $99 per user each month. You might have to pay extra fees for sophisticated services like extra viewers and two-way Jira+Azure DevOps.

Monday.com: High-level Summary and an Intuitive Product Roadmap

The product roadmap tool from Monday.com is more complicated than other alternatives. Therefore, it works well for bigger teams that can fully utilize its features and tools. 

The cost varies according to the number of seats and level of functionality. Up to two seats on Monday.com are available for free use by individuals, and the “Basic,” “Standard,” and “Pro” subscription plans. There is also an enterprise solution that their sales team can manage and price.

Read more: What Is SaaS integration - Its benefits and challenges

Asana: a Powerful Project Management Tool with Simple Roadmapping

Last but not least, Asana is one of the best roadmap tools on the market. Asana is a well-known, all-inclusive project and job management solution. It’s simple to use and doesn’t take a lot of effort to build.

Asana’s thorough documentation is another highly useful benefit. They often publish articles on a range of project management-related subjects that can be helpful for users as they use the software.

For those who only require the basics, Asana offers a basic “free forever” option. Their “Business” plan costs $24.99 per user per month, while their “Premium” plan, intended for teams, costs $10.99 per user per month.

Selecting the right roadmap tool can significantly impact the success of your projects. The best roadmap tools presented in this article offer a range of capabilities, from visualizing strategies to enhancing collaboration and monitoring progress. As you explore these options, consider your team’s specific needs, preferred workflow, and project requirements to opt for the most suitable tools for your team.