(Originally posted on veamly)

In our blog Why is my Data all over my too many PM Tools we concluded that the main reason PMs fail in Product Management is due to having data all over the place. We think we can help you even further!

That’s why we decided to dig deeper. Amongst tools commonly used by Product Managers, we have JIRA, Slack, Trello, Bitbucket, Asana, GitHub…

Check out Your ultimate list to the most effective PM tools out there.

So what makes these tools popular? Why are they trendy? How efficient are they exactly?

When it comes to choosing which PM tool to use, you might get overwhelmed and not be able to decide on which one to go for. This is known as the Buridan’s donkey paradox or the free will paradox. (you can read more about it Here)

Following this concept, let’s substitute a human for the donkey in the story. “Given possible alternatives, a man should always choose the greater good.” So what happens when two alternatives are judged as equally good?

Buridan himself concluded that no rational choice could be made and that we should suspend action or judgment until circumstances change.

So in order to make the decision, you need to investigate and find what works best for you. That’s why when choosing a collaboration/management tool, it’s important to find out what companies and experts think about it. You need to know how satisfied they are with it compared to what they had to deal with before.

Well, let’s start with one of the most famous PM tools, released in 2013, exceeded 4 million daily users, and now has 1.25 million paying users ( Source ).

How does this tool help teams?

In order to better understand the benefits of this collaboration software, thousands of survey responses were collected from team owners and administrators of paid Slack teams. (Source)

Here are some of the numbers they came out with:

32.0 % say that their team is 20–40% more productive.

say that their team is 20–40% more productive. 80.4 % think that Slack has improved the transparency within their team.

think that Slack has improved the transparency within their team. 88.6 % feel more connected to their team members after adopting Slack.

feel more connected to their team members after adopting Slack. 62.4 % think that Slack made information access easier for them.

The numbers speak for themselves. Slack users are mostly satisfied with the product and it has become a must-have for them. We too at Veamly quite like it. We even have a saying that goes: “Some people need their Breakfast to start the day properly, we just need to check our Slack.”

So what do people think of it?

Whether you use it for your personal or your professional life, you would want Trello to be there for you. It keeps your thoughts organized and helps you store the To-Dos in one place with labels and deadlines.

Some PMs even said that they forgot how they used to organize their projects before using Trello!

Adam A., a director at Tradelink at New Business Ltd said on g2crowd:

‘’I like the ease of use and the ability to create as many work streams as needed. I find the layout simple and very easy for anyone to set up within a day to get it up and running. You have options to create various boards that show your workflow from start to finish that gives your team access to see an overall picture of what is in progress, what has been completed and what has to be checked. From researching many other project management software I found this to be the least expensive and the easiest to get to grips with. If you are looking for an easy to use platform that will help your team to complete tasks in a more stable environment then I would highly recommend Trello.’’ ( Source )

Bonus: Trello even gathered a collection of boards to inspire new uses and help them with the platform: InspiringBoards

So what is Jira?

JIRA is used by more than 51,000 customers worldwide including top brands like eBay, Spotify, Cisco, and LinkedIn. It is a leading software development application usually used by agile teams.

Reviews.financesonline.com created a behavior-based Customer Satisfaction Algorithm™ that gathers customer reviews, comments and JIRA reviews across a wide range of social media sites. The data shows how many people had a positive vs. a negative experience with the tool. ( Source )

What do PMs think of Asana?

Ekatrina, when asked about what she likes in Asana, she mentioned:

‘’ It has a great and clear interface. Everything is on the page but it’s not messy. The calendar can be synced with your Google Calendar (take time sometimes) and has a very convenient view. All functions are at hand and it`s very simple to use it and understand. Creating teams and projects is much easier than in other task management apps. I like the Android mobile version though some functions are not available.’’ (Source)

What about GitHub?

GitHub is an IT Development Software that is strictly applied as a command-line application.

So let’s check what people think of it!

According to Brian D., Founder at finbox.io:

‘’GitHub is a fantastic wrapper around git. They also have by far the largest and most active open source community on the internet. I’ve saved so much time using libraries found on GitHub.’’ ( Source )

BitBucket provides tons of benefits for professional developers and code workers. It comes with a distributed control system that allows easy collaboration and massive scaling. (Source )

According to Reviews.financesonline.com , Bitbucket has 140 positive social mentions: (Source )

Now, you might be using one PM tool or using all of them altogether. You might be a part of the team or the Product Manager manager in question! Or you could be a product management enthusiast. Either way, it is important to know that a PM does not only distinguish himself by his tool choices. What makes him unique as a PM are his leadership skills and his management style.

Curious to find out more?

Stay tuned for our next blog to figure out what makes good Product Managers “good”!

To be continued …