Manage Your Project like a Pro: Roadmap Software

A board or interactive whiteboard is a standard method used for planning, drawing, explaining material and teaching. Indeed, this is one of the most effective ways to share plans and ideas and to visualise the project development flow. Boards are useful when a team needs to gather in one space to discuss something. The era of information technology means that negotiators can now be located anywhere, with online resources coming to the rescue.

In this post we compare two roadmapping tools - ProductPlan and RealtimeBoard - to let you see the pros and cons of each, both of which we widely use in our daily routine in order to structure workflow.

ProductPlan

ProductPlan is a cloud-based software solution that provides a platform for small and medium-sized businesses and large enterprises to create and share product roadmaps. ProductPlan uses planning boards, an intuitive drag-and-drop interface and custom labels to provide a smart-route planning solution.

To increase productivity, ProductPlan allows users to organise scripts using custom labels, captions and containers. Although custom captions make it easy to colour-code your roadmap policies, the ProductPlan container allows users to effectively combine bar charts by theme. In addition, users can easily highlight key dates by defining colorful landmarks.

To facilitate smarter planning and prioritisation, ProductPlan provides users with planning boards, parking lots and multiple versions. Users can plan directly, capture future opportunities and create an unlimited version of the roadmap. Following roadmap planning, ProductPlan leverages features such as flexible sharing and presenter views to facilitate script communication and collaboration, allowing users to invite viewers and publishers to collaborate, present and update scripts during live team meetings.

Available features:

• Use of filters
• Drag & Drop Mode
• Large selection of templates
• Version planning and milestones

Map display in section:

• Year
• Month
• Quarter
• Weeks
• Sprints

Import is provided for:

• Jira
• Pivotal
• XlS, CSV
• Master Plan

Prioritisation

Prioritisation is based on an integral measure, taking into account costs and benefits.

Separately, you can specify the criteria from which the benefits and costs are formed, as well as their weights.

Collaboration

Standard sharing methods

A great feature is the option of giving an unlimited number of employees the ability to view the roadmap, as well as the option to display the current status of execution of the main stages and trigger email notifications.

Export:

• PDF
• XLS

Platform:

• Web-only

Integration:

Good integration with basic project management tools

• Jira
• Slack
• Pivotal Tracker
• API Integration

Cost:

• $34 per month for the editor with an annual subscription
• $39 per month for the editor with a monthly subscription

Remark:

Some weaknesses of the visualisation include the implementation of dependencies. It’s not always clear which two tasks are dependable on one another or when some of the features from different maps are connected. This feature is currently in the development stage and will be improved based on user feedback.

Despite the wide range of features offered and a simple and convenient interface, correcting the roadmap within a five-member team requires each member to buy a subscription. Therefore, it can be costly for a startup. You could use a free trial for the 30 days to estimate the value of the tool, and following this period any created Roadmaps will be preserved in view-only mode.

RealtimeBoard

This board goes beyond the traditional whiteboard and adds flexibility to cloud technologies. RealtimeBoard is not a white box, but a set of templates that help to structure and organise planning or brainstorming.

This board is suitable for conducting online training, creating a product roadmap, Kanban or project planning. You can even use the drawing function, though this is not the biggest advantage of this board.

Stickers can be added. Important ideas will remain in the field, with users able to write down ideas or comments, and a project manager on-hand to stimulate teamwork and feedback.

• The board is easy to manage, allowing you to create many fields and move them with the mouse. Fields are clearly visible both in standard resolution and on a tablet or phone screen (16:9 or 4:3).

The size of the field can be changed and be aligned to the A4 paper standard. You can also save created boards as posters in image format and as pdf files, download them as backups, save them to Google Drive, etc. You can specify a certain file size, for example for iPhone, iPad, 16:9, 4:3 or even A4 size.

Services with which RealtimeBoard has integration

• Slack
• JIRA

Pricing:

A free version is available for small projects, with two paid options for team and personal projects.

• At least $0 for a simple plan
• $40 per month billed yearly - 5+ members
• Custom pricing for 50+ members
• There is a trial period

Remarks: A fairly convenient tool with a very impressive set of features, it helps our team to organise ideas, optimise decision-making for business owners and provide our customers with opportunities to see the key points whilst we can go deep into the details if necessary in just a couple of clicks. The free version is a valuable asset for startups and reasonably priced for corporate buyers with its broad functionality - a-value-for-money SaaS solution.

Points to Prioritise when Choosing Roadmapping Software

Here is the list of features you should think over when deciding which tool is better for your project:

• Users and collaboration. Your script software should allow multiple users so that you can work with other members of your team.
• Role-based assignment and permissions. While it's important to be able to get people on your roadmap quickly, it's also important to have the proper permissions so that those who just want to view the roadmap have no editing capabilities.
• Dependent. This feature can help you show the impact of one plan on another.
• Import / Export. Make sure you can import / export files in the appropriate format.

Read other articles related to project planning and management:

Why you need a project manager

Magora’s case of custom project management software development

Above we’ve described helpful ready-to-use tools for project planning, but sometimes business tasks demand a tailor-made solution to integrate the existing software or to implement non-standard tasks. In this case, the Magora software development team is ready to build a system from scratch. Get in touch with our business consultant to discuss the pros and cons and choose the best approach for your company.

Alexander Bessudnov

Chief Product Officer

With a passion for innovation and a keen understanding of market trends, Alexander plays a pivotal role in shaping Magora's product development strategy and ensuring the delivery of cutting-edge solutions to clients.