Product Stack
Just like developers, Product Managers have a “stack.” The product stack is a set of tools that Product Managers rely on to develop, maintain, and improve their product.
Roadmapping & Backlog Management
The exact product stack for a given project will partly depend on the stakeholders’ preferences. For example, some clients want to use a specific backlog management tool while others leave it flexible or need help setting up the product stack entirely.
Pivotal Tracker
Pivotal Tracker is a fantastic, opinionated, Scrum-based product management tool. The team has been using it for many years, and it is still one of its loved tools.
The team uses Pivotal Tracker for smaller, single-platform projects. There is a full blog article comparing Pivotal Tracker to Shortcut and explaining when the team uses one or the other.
There is also a guide on how the team uses Pivotal Tracker at Nimble.
JIRA
The team uses JIRA often for product management but only when it’s a client requirement. It’s an extremely powerful tool, but the UX and performance are a bottleneck. Pivotal Tracker or Shortcut is much more efficient.
Shortcut
Shortcut is the newest addition to the product stack. It’s a product management tool that works great for multi-platform projects. The UX is good, it’s fast, and the reports are very well thought out. There is a full blog article comparing Pivotal Tracker to Shortcut and explaining when the team uses one or the other.
GitHub Projects
GitHub Projects is a flexible and efficient tool that integrates with issues and pull requests to plan and track work on GitHub. While it still lacks several essential and advanced features (e.g., linking stories to other stories, reporting, etc.) and is not a good fit for client projects, it remains a suitable choice for several small-scale and internal projects.
Documentation
Lucidchart
Lucidchart is a must for all diagram needs. Because a picture is worth a thousand words, the team uses diagrams and visual representations of complex flows and systems for every occasion. Lucidchart is the tool of choice for that.
Notion
Notion is a go-to for all internal documentation and note-taking needs. It’s an incredible product that can fulfill a staggering amount of needs (this documentation was first written on Notion).
While Notion’s flexibility is its strength, it can lead to chaos if not managed correctly. The content is structured around a customized version of the Bulletproof Workspace.
Postman
Postman is a central piece of the team’s product stack. Even though it’s a technical tool, Product Managers use it daily to test back-end features and document API flows. There is complete documentation on how the team uses Postman in its workflows.