5 Best Recommended Tools for Roadmap

In today’s dynamic business landscape, roadmaps have become indispensable tools for guiding projects, aligning teams, and achieving strategic goals. In this article, we will look into a range of powerful tools for roadmap to enhance your roadmap creation and management. Whether you’re a project manager, product owner, or team leader, these tools can help you visualize, communicate, and execute your roadmap with precision and effectiveness.

Definition of Product Roadmap Software

Product managers and project management teams can use tools for roadmap as a digital tool to help them plan, prioritize, and map out a product strategy that aligns with their company’s objectives.

Typically, SaaS (software as a service) web-based product roadmap software is offered. In the SaaS model, clients use apps hosted by a third party to access and utilize software using an internet browser.

Additionally, the software has project management tools that help product development teams create schedules and recognize backlogs.

The Top SaaS Product Roadmap Tools

Below are some significant software roadmap examples:

Dragonboat – for Outcome-focused Roadmapping

Dragonboat is listed as one of the best tools to create roadmap. Dragonboat connects OKRs and product initiatives to help product roadmaps match company, business, and customer goals.

Dragonboat knows that having the assurance and capability to follow through on a beautiful roadmap is crucial. Since it ties together OKRs, roadmapping, customer insights, portfolio planning, tracking, and delivery, it is more than just a roadmapping tool. 

Engineering teams can keep their operations the same because of their sophisticated, two-way connections with engineering tools like Jira, Azure DevOps, and Shortcut. Progress is rolled up into Dragonboat, giving visibility on product efforts’ status, health, and delays. 

Licenses for Dragonboat start at $49 per month per editor and include an unlimited number of free view-only users. 

Airfocus - for an Efficient Tool for Creating Product Roadmaps

A roadmapping app called airfocus, among various tools for roadmap on the market, promises to get you started with your plan as soon as feasible.

You can start building your plan right away thanks to its integration with JIRA, Trello, Github, and other platforms. The drag-and-drop interface used by Airfocus makes building your roadmap simple.

The traditional Kanban Boards, Tables, Timeline, Inbox, Priority chart, and a multidimensional chart that shows your priorities are just a few of the options you can select from.

While airfocus primarily focuses on building and sharing roadmaps, you can also establish specific scores and weighting for ideas and feature requests. It aids in deciding which items go on your roadmap.

At $15 per user each month, airfocus is on the lower end of the price range. Given that airfocus is functionally comparable to market-leading solutions and has excellent reviews on G2, it seems like a reasonable price. Businesses in their early stages need to have this in mind.

More to read: 30 Must-have Customer Feedback Survey Questions

Wrike - Product Roadmap Software for Task and Project Management

Wrike is a tool made for application in many industries, including SaaS. It’s a product that initially feels slightly overwhelming because of this fact.

Your roadmap is shown as a Gantt chart in Wrike. However, a list view or Kanban view is also available for choosing. In this aspect, Wrike is comparable to other project management software like Monday or Asana.

The ability of Wrike’s projects and tasks to appear simultaneously in multiple locations may be its largest competitive advantage. This implies that the appropriate team members can access it. This function is quite helpful. For instance, as your marketing team begins creating the landing page, your product team could work on a new feature.

Wrike is an excellent solution for internal team alignment and cooperation across teams.

Wrike is listed among roadmap tools free as it does provide a free account for up to 5 people, although it has fewer features. The cheapest plan is $9.80 per user per month. This indicates that it is a little less expensive than its two main rivals, Monday and Asana. It is, therefore, a fantastic choice for businesses in their early stages.

Aha! - for Software that Goes Beyond Product Roadmaps

With over 250,000 Product teams utilizing it, Aha! claims to be one of the best tools for roadmap on the market.

Aha! allows you to construct your roadmap using one of six distinct templates. Following that, you may drag and drop your objectives, projects, and features onto your roadmaps.

Your roadmaps are yours to share with whomever you choose. You can host it on a secure web page or send it as a pdf or picture. Sharing it with clients and other stakeholders is incredibly simple as a result.

But Aha! goes a little bit beyond creating a blueprint. Additionally, it motivates you to create projects and goals that are later integrated into your final roadmap.

Aha! can also be used to reveal customer insights and comments. The input can then be used to develop user stories, which you can add to your roadmap’s projects and features.

Aha! allows you to connect everything. For product teams who prefer having everything in one location, it’s fantastic.

Getting the product up and going can be challenging due to the size of the product. Simply put, there is so much to do that you’ll need to take the time to understand how it all functions before developing your roadmap. If time is not on your side, you might need to use other, more basic tools.

For pricing, it starts at $59 per user per month (when paid annually). You can use all the functions you need with this. If you intend to utilize Aha! for everything, that price is acceptable when compared to other product planning tools.

Find out more: The Importance of customer feedback to SaaS Founders

Productboard - to Organize Your SaaS Plan By Priority

Similar to Aha!, Productboard provides a thorough picture of the product management cycle as one of the best tools for roadmap.

Feedback may be collected from all of your different sources (including email, CRMs, and social media). Once everything is in one location, you can prioritize your backlog and choose what you want to concentrate on next.

You can begin creating your roadmap whenever you have certain features or concepts in mind. Your Productboard roadmap will eventually look like a Kanban board, focusing on high-level views.

You can click on each item on your roadmap for more information. You may view the roadmap’s approach and even the user feedback that gave rise to the ideas if you have been using Productboard’s additional features. Your team is completely transparent and visible, thanks to this.

The roadmap can only be shared as a pdf file with clients and stakeholders. As you would need to update the pdf each time the roadmap changed, this might be problematic.

Additionally, the roadmap is restricted to the Kanban view type. This is a significant restriction for teams like a list view or a Gantt chart.

Productboard can be challenging to use at first, similar to other programs that provide an all-in-one solution. So, it may take some time to appreciate its benefits.

Pricing for Productboard begins at $49 per user each month. However, you must pay $99 per person monthly if you want access to more sophisticated features like priority drivers, custom fields, and JIRA connections.

Effective roadmap planning and management are crucial for navigating today’s complex business environment. By harnessing the power of specialized tools for roadmap, you can optimize your roadmap creation process, enhance team collaboration, and drive successful project outcomes.