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. We have been using it for many years, and it’s still a tool that we love.
We use Pivotal Tracker for smaller, single-platform projects. We have a full blog article comparing Pivotal Tracker to Shortcut and explaining when we use one or the other.
We also have a guide on how we use Pivotal Tracker at Nimble.
JIRA
We use 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 makes us much more efficient.
Shortcut
Shortcut is the newest addition to our 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. We have a full blog article comparing Pivotal Tracker to Shortcut and explaining when we use 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’s still lacking several essential and advanced features (e.g., linking stories to other stories, reporting, etc.), and therefore not a good fit for client projects, it is perfect for many of our small, internal projects.
Documentation
Lucidchart
Lucidchart is a must for all diagram needs. Because a picture is worth a thousand words, we use diagrams and visual representations of complex flows and systems on every occasion. Lucidchart is our tool of choice for that.
Notion
Notion is our 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. We structure our content around a customized version of the Bulletproof Workspace.
Postman
Postman is a central piece of our product stack. Even though it’s a technical tool, Product Managers use it daily to test back-end features, and document API flows. We have a complete documentation on how we use Postman in our workflow.