Components of the Microsoft Office suite have been used predominantly for product planning for decades. And this despite the existence of specialized tools. For example, requirements management and agile planning tools have extended their scope to higher level planning levels in the last ten years. Some of them enable the creation and management of roadmaps for products with detailed planning information included.

In recent years, however, a new category of tools has emerged. They are aimed directly at the needs of product managers. In particular, these tools support business planning, user research, road mapping, agile planning and execution.

Product managers need to understand the benefits of these different tools and how to leverage them in their multi-faceted jobs. 

In this session, you will gain insights into various tool offerings. Examples come from Strategyzer, Aha!, UserVoice, Version One, Jama, Jira, Trello and others.

Gerald Heller works as consultant and trainer on the topics of software product management, requirements management, and agile development.
He has more than 30 years of experience in large-scale, global distributed software development. During his professional career he covered almost every aspect of the product development lifecycle.

Gerald helps clients to improve their business success with optimized requirements management and software product management (SPM) practices and processes. Using a holistic approach he also includes application life cycle tools in his offerings, so that processes and tools are optimally aligned.