The product lifecycle is central to product marketing. It outlines the stages a product undergoes – from its birth to its eventual decline. Each phase presents unique challenges and opportunities. It’s the product marketer’s job to tailor marketing strategies accordingly. 

Sometimes, it’s about introducing a new product to the market. Other times, it’s reviving interest in a mature product. In any case, product marketing is indispensable in ensuring products’ success.

Why does it matter? In today’s crowded market, even great products can go unnoticed. Product marketing helps them stand out and connect with their audience.

In this guide, we’ll dive into product marketing essentials and answer the question: “What is product marketing?” If you’re an aspiring product marketing manager or even a product owner, you’ll find something helpful in this article. We’ll explore the product lifecycle, messaging, and more. Let’s get started.

The essence of product marketing

Product marketing is about making a product shine in the market. But not only that. Product marketing involves more than you think. Let’s break it down.

Connecting teams

Product marketing links development, marketing, and sales. Product marketers:

• Take what the development team creates
• Turn that into a story that the marketing team can share
• Give the sales team the right tools to sell it

How it’s different from other forms of marketing

General marketing creates strategies based on overall brand awareness or company goals. Product marketing hones in on the distinct attributes of a particular product. It tailors messages to highlight the product’s unique value. Product marketers ensure those messages resonate with the specific audience they are intended for.

Product marketing vs. product management

These roles sound similar but serve different purposes.

Product management shapes the product’s development, deciding what to do and how. Product managers explore market needs and demands, user pain points, and customer sentiment. Then they oversee new feature and update development.

Product marketing, on the other hand, showcases the product to the world. It decides how to tell people about the product and explains why they should care. They capitalize on how new products and features solve users’ pain points.

In short, product marketing is the bridge between a product’s creation and its journey to the customer. Its job is to make the product visible, understandable, and desirable to its audience. Let’s explore how to do that next.

Successful product marketing

Understanding product marketing is just the beginning. But how do you make it effective? You need to start with the basics – research.

Market research

You need a deep-rooted understanding of the market to build a successful product marketing campaign. This includes market trends and how your product fits in compared to the competition.

Understanding your audience

Before marketing a product effectively, you must know who you’re speaking to. This means digging deep to comprehend the customer needs, desires, pain points, and habits of your target demographic. By gaining a clear picture of your audience, you can tailor your messaging to resonate more powerfully.

Analyzing competition

You have to keep tabs on your competition.

• How are they different?
• In what ways are they better and worse than you?
• What can you learn from them?

When you understand your competitive landscape, you can find an underserved niche much easier.

Feedback management

Feedback is a goldmine of insights. Actively seeking, collecting, and analyzing feedback helps refine the product and the marketing approach.

It’s about more than just hearing what your audience says. It’s about acting on that feedback. This will help you uncover common pain points. And then you can create a product and a message that aligns closely with the customer’s needs.

Tools and methods for effective research

Using the right tools can help you gather actionable insights. This can range from surveys, focus groups, and interviews to analytics platforms and social listening tools. You shouldn’t rely on just one of these methods. Instead, try a mix of qualitative and quantitative research approaches. Only then can you get a holistic understanding of the market and its dynamics.

With solid research, marketers can craft strategies that hit the mark every time.

Customer analysis

Understanding your customers goes beyond knowing who they are. It’s about delving into their habits, preferences, challenges, and motivations. Proper customer analysis offers invaluable insights that shape product development and marketing strategies.

Behavioral analysis

By studying how customers interact with your product or similar products, you can discern patterns.

• Which features do they use the most?
• What paths do they commonly take within the product?

Such insights can guide feature enhancements and marketing emphasis.

Segmentation

Not all customers are created equal. Segmenting them helps to tailor marketing strategies to different groups. You can segment based on:

• Demographics
• Geographics 
• Psychographics
• Behaviors

Each segment might have distinct needs. Addressing these directly can lead to better engagement.

Example 1: heavy vs. light user

Imagine you have photo editing software. Here’s how you can separate your users and market to them differently.

Example 2: different industries

Suppose your product is a project management tool used by various industries. A marketing agency would have different needs than a construction company. Let’s explore that.

Pain points and needs

Identifying your customers’ needs and challenges is fundamental. For example:

• What problems does your product solve for them?
• Are there any gaps or unmet needs?

Understanding this can shape both product development and the messaging around it.

Developing buyer personas

This is a great exercise that puts together all the previous research we mentioned. Product marketers can create these user profiles to understand each buyer persona better.

They visualize their lifestyle, challenges, and preferences. Then they curate tailored messaging and strategies. In essence, these personas serve as a compass. They guide every marketing decision to ensure alignment with the target audience’s core.

Let’s go over some sample buyer personas.

Journey mapping

This involves tracing the customer’s path – from the moment they become aware of your product to the point of purchase and beyond. It highlights touchpoints, moments of decision, and potential drop-offs. This provides a blueprint for optimizing the buying journey.

A robust customer analysis sets the foundation for personalized and impactful marketing. It ensures that every strategy, message, and product tweak resonates with your audience.

Product positioning and messaging

Now, it’s time to position your product in the best possible light for your target consumers. You need to determine how your product stands out and solves your audience’s problems. Here are a few ways to do so.

Craft compelling narratives & value propositions

Every product should tell a story. It’s tough to sell product features. It’s much easier to sell the benefits. In other words, how does the product help? What problems does it solve? A compelling narrative speaks to the heart. 

These narratives form the value proposition. This clear and concise statement articulates the unique benefits and advantages of the product.

Differentiating your product

Differentiation can come from different areas:

• Innovative features
• Exceptional quality
• Unparalleled user experience
• Brand ethos

Capitalizing on your strengths is a sure way to stand out. You can also carve a distinct niche and foster customer loyalty.

Pricing

Price is more than just a number. It communicates your products’ value.

When setting a price, it’s essential to consider factors like:

• Perceived value
• Competitive landscape
• Your audience’s willingness to pay

A well-thought-out pricing strategy is instrumental. Here’s our pricing journey if you’re interested!

Collaborating with product management

Working with the product team is vital. They know the product’s ins and outs. Marketers should team up with them. This ensures the marketing message matches the product’s features. 

Sometimes, the marketing team can make some claims in their messages that don’t correspond to the product’s current capabilities. To avoid that misalignment, communicate.

When both teams align, it’s easier to keep the promises you made in your marketing. This builds trust and customer loyalty.

Go-to-market strategies

Successful product launch requires a robust go-to-market (GTM) strategy. This is your plan to put your product in customers’ hands. Here’s how you can master it.

Planning and execution

Start with a solid plan. Define your target audience, sales strategy, and marketing channels. Set clear goals and key performance indicators (KPIs). Once the plan is set, execute it with precision. Make sure every team member knows their role and responsibilities.

Here are some ideas to get you going. Let’s imagine that your product is a graphic design tool. You would likely target:

• Freelance designers
• Marketing agencies
• In-house creative teams

Here are some go-to-market tactics you might employ.

There are many different channels and tactics available. Focus on understanding:

1. Where can you reach your target audience?
2. What is the most impactful content for them?
3. What can you accomplish within your budget and resources?

Based on those questions, you can devise a plan that works for you. 

Adapting strategies

The market is constantly changing. Be ready to adapt your product marketing strategy based on what’s working and what’s not. Use data to guide your decisions. Be flexible and stay alert to industry trends and customer feedback.

Release announcements

When your product hits the market, shout it from the rooftops. Use blog posts, emails, social media, and other channels to announce your launch. Make your message clear and exciting. Highlight what makes your product unique.

Pay attention to user feedback after the launch. Reach out to users, especially those who leave comments or suggestions. Show them you’re listening. Close the loop by updating them on changes or improvements you made based on their input. This builds trust and shows your commitment to customer satisfaction.

You can use Canny to close the loop! Our changelog helps your announcements shine bright, and your customers always stay up to date.

Sales enablement

Arm your sales team with everything they need. Provide them with:

• Product information
• Sales scripts
• Answers to common questions
• Slide decks
• Videos
• Testimonials
• Case studies

Make sure they understand the product’s unique selling points. This enables them to sell confidently and effectively.

A strong GTM strategy isn’t just about launching a product. It’s about building momentum and sustaining growth. With careful planning, adaptability, and a focus on customer feedback, your product is set for success.

The product marketing framework

Check out this strategy for your product marketing. It’s designed by The Product Marketing Alliance and includes the following phases:

1. Discover
2. Strategize
3. Define
4. Get set
5. Grow

Let’s discuss each stage.

1. Discover

It’s time to put on your detective hat. This stage involves:

• Talking deep dives into market research
• Getting to know your audience inside out
• Sizing up the competition

What’s missing in the market? Where can your product shine? This step is about laying the groundwork and spotting the golden opportunities (or the potential potholes).

2. Strategize

Now that you’ve got the intel, it’s strategy time. You’re plotting out the grand plan, setting some solid goals, and figuring out how you will hit them. Which channels will you ride? What tactics will you pull out of our marketing hat? It’s all about getting your ducks in a row and aiming for the bullseye.

3. Define

Here’s where you roll your sleeves and nail down what makes your product the superstar. What’s the big selling point? How are you going to talk about it? It’s storytime, and you’re making sure yours is one to remember.

4. Get set

Let’s get everything else ready for the big show. This involves:

• Coordination with your teams
• Aligning marketing materials
• Preparing the launch plan

5. Grow

The product’s out there, and it’s your job to keep the momentum going. You’re on the lookout for ways to bring in new customers and keep your existing customers happy. You’re also making sure your product’s presence in the market keeps getting bigger and better. At this stage, you’re analyzing, optimizing, and scaling.

You can use this framework to organize your product marketing initiatives. Give it a try!

Customer success and retention

We mentioned keeping customers happy in the previous section. And this point deserves its own section.

Customer success is all about making sure your users are getting the most out of your product. It’s like being a helpful friend who’s there to guide them through.

Work closely together with your customer success and support teams. Here are a few ideas.

Be proactive. Don’t wait for customers to come to you with problems. Reach out, check in, and make sure they’re doing okay.

Create educational content: put together guides, FAQs, and video tutorials. Make it easy for customers to find answers and learn quickly.

Have regular check-ins: schedule calls or send surveys. It’s all about keeping the lines of communication open.

Getting them to stick around

Customer retention is your measure of how good you are at keeping your customers coming back for more.

Always add value. Show your customers that you’re continually improving and giving them reasons to stay.

Consider rewards or incentives. A little thank you can go a long way.

Take customer feedback seriously. Show them that their voice matters and that you’re always on the ball.

Customer success and retention are like peanut butter and jelly – better together. Focus on making your customers successful, and they’ll want to stick around. Keep them happy, keep delivering value, and you’ll have a recipe for lasting success.

Putting product marketing strategies to work

Let’s talk strategy and apply all the principles we’ve explored.

Product marketing is a bit like being a chess master. You need to think a few moves ahead and have a solid game plan. Here’s how you can sharpen your skills and master the art of product marketing.

Let’s continue with our example of a graphic design tool.

1. Targeting the right audience

First, you need to know who you’re playing the game with. Who needs your product? Who will love it the most? Who is your target customer? Here’s how to approach targeting.

• Research: dive into market research to really understand your audience and the competitive landscape. Who is the competition targeting? Can you find an untapped market?
• Personas: create detailed buyer personas. Think about their needs, habits, and pain points.
• Segmentation: break your target market down into smaller groups. Tailor your approach for each one.

For a graphic design tool, you’d perform the following analysis:

1. Research the graphic design industry as a whole. Key players would probably include Figma, Canva, and similar products.
2. We identified a broader target market in the go-to-market section. Now create buyer personas to narrow it down. Ideally, you have a separate persona for a freelance designer, a designer in a marketing agency, and a designer on an in-house creative team.

2. Positioning

Now you understand the market and how your product fits in. Maybe this research gave you some ideas for differentiation. After all, you need to stand out.

Define your positioning – how do you stack up against the competition? Where does your product belong relative to competitors? How does it solve your buyers’ pain points?

Maybe your graphic design tool is cheaper than competitors’? Or comes with more robust features? Or targets a very specific industry?

3. Building a strategy and campaigns

Outline what specific product marketing activities you’ll execute.

• What’s the goal of your activities?
• What kind of content will you produce?
• Which channels will you prioritize?
• How will you know your strategy is effective?

Break down your activities into campaigns. Create a separate one for each feature, launch, and focus area.

Let’s illustrate this with our graphic design tool.

• Goal: increase product adoption
• Content: educational, helpful, and informative
• Channels: paid search, Instagram, LinkedIn and Pinterest
• Success measure: new signups
• Campaigns:
  • New features (e.g. AI, stock image library)
  • Existing feature improvements
  • Integrations
  • Promoting under-used existing features

3. Creating engaging content

Content is king. In product marketing, content marketing is your MVP (most valuable player). Here are a few things to keep in mind:

• Variety: use a mix of blogs, videos, infographics, and more.
• Value: make sure every piece of content brings value to the table. Solve problems, answer questions, and be helpful.
• Voice: keep your brand voice consistent. Be authentic and relatable.

A graphic design tool should have highly visual content. Create walk-through videos and feature clients’ designs (with their permission of course). Write helpful articles and guides about design principles. Share ideas and tips to help your users succeed.

Think back to your buyer’s journey mapping. What are the pain points and motivations at each stage of that journey? Try to have content for each stage. 

4. Leveraging marketing channels

You’ve got your audience and your content. Now, where are you going to share it? Here are some ideas.

• Email: perfect for personalized and direct communication. Be strategic and avoid spamming your audience, though.
• Social media: great for building community and brand awareness. You can pay to amplify your posts and get reach more of your target audience. 
• SEO: optimize your content for any relevant search terms/topics to make sure it’s easy to find on search engines.
• Paid search: helps you get traffic quickly. You know what search terms your buyers use when searching. This lets you run ads on those searches. 

All of these channels can be effective for the graphic design software. Share the latest updates via email and social media. Optimize each blog and webpage to outrank your competition.

There are many channels you could leverage. What’s important is knowing which work to help you reach your audience. 

5. Monitoring and measuring performance

You can’t improve what you don’t measure. First, determine what metrics you want to influence with your campaign:

• Signups
• Feature adoption
• Feature usage/engagement

Keep an eye on how your strategies are performing. Use the following:

• Analytics: use tools to track website visits, engagement, and conversions.
• Feedback: pay attention to what your audience is saying. What do they like? What could be better?
• ROI: always measure the return on investment. Make sure your efforts are paying off.

It’s easy to get lost in the sea of product marketing, especially if you’re doing lots of activities at once. But try your best to track all of the above. Then you can double down on what’s performing best.

Maybe Canva publishes 3 blogs per week and gets lots of traffic. And Figma might be running ads everywhere you look. How do you know what will work for you? Test and experiment. Avoid simply copying the competition.

6. Iterating and refining strategies

The game of product marketing is always changing. Stay on your toes and be ready to adapt.

• Test: don’t be afraid to try new things. Run A/B tests and see what works best.
• Learn: take every campaign as a learning opportunity. What can you do better next time? What feedback did you get?
• Optimize: keep tweaking and improving your strategies for better results.

Figuring out what works and what doesn’t is one of the many challenges in product marketing. Let’s discuss those next.

Common product marketing challenges

Product marketing can be a thrilling journey, but it has hurdles. Here are some common challenges you might face and how to overcome them.

1. Internal communication and collaboration

In an ideal world, everyone in your company would be on the same page. But that’s not always the case. What can you do about it?

Clear channels: establish clear communication channels within your team and across different departments. Give people a way to communicate effectively. It’s in-person meetings for some and Slack and Zoom for others. Empower your team to communicate the way they prefer.

Regular meetings: hold regular meetings to update everyone on marketing initiatives, product updates, and customer feedback. Don’t overdo it with meetings though – lots of conversations can be a Slack thread or an email chain.

Collaborative tools: utilize collaborative tools to keep everyone in the loop. Project management software like ClickUp, Monday, Jira, and Trello work great.

Stay in the loop: stay on top of feature and product development. Get clear about timelines so your strategy is proactive versus reactive. 

Support success and sales: make sure you produce supporting materials for sales and success teams. They rely on you for this content.

2. Keeping up with market trends

The market is constantly evolving, and staying current is essential.

Continuous learning: dedicate time for you and your product marketing team to learn about new trends and technologies.

Networking: connect with other professionals in your field. Attend conferences webinars, and join online forums.

Customer feedback: pay close attention to customer feedback. They’re often the first to notice shifts in the market.

Competitive intelligence: don’t forget to evaluate your competition continuously. Keep tabs on their progress and how you stack against them.

3. Handling feedback and product adjustments

Feedback is gold for product development. As a part of the product team, user feedback affects you too. But it can be a challenge.

Sometimes, feedback can throw your product strategy off the track. So product managers need to prioritize it. And you can work together on this.

Not every piece of feedback will require immediate action. And not every idea needs to become a reality. The trick is to figure out which ideas are the most impactful and focus on them.

Product managers are experts in prioritizing and managing feedback, so lean on them. Learn to be agile and ready to make product and strategy adjustments as needed.

Keep these ideas in mind whenever product marketing becomes challenging. Some essential skills will help you tackle them too.

Product marketer’s arsenal: top skills and tools

In product marketing, you’ll need more than just a sharp mind. You’ll need a well-stocked arsenal. Let’s break down the top skills and tools every product marketer should have.

1. Interpersonal and communication skills

First and foremost, a product marketer needs to be a people person and a storyteller. That includes:

1. Empathy. Understand your customer’s needs and emotions. Put yourself in their shoes.
2. Clarity. Communicate clearly. Whether it’s writing copy or speaking in meetings, make sure your message is easy to understand.
3. Persuasion: Master the art of persuasion. Learn how to convince others and sell your ideas.

2. Analytical tools and software

Next, you need tools to help you make sense of the data and derive actionable insights.

1. Google Analytics – for tracking website traffic and user behavior.
2. SEO tools – Moz or SEMrush for keyword research and website optimization.
3. Customer feedback tools – Canny can help you gather and manage customer feedback efficiently.
4. Product analytics tools – track product and feature engagement. If you don’t have a dedicated tool for that, you can also get this data through a CRM. Just make sure that your team is adding that information into your CRM.

3. Continuous learning resources

Never stop learning. The product marketing world is always changing, and you need to stay sharp. There are many ways to do that.

1. Online courses. Platforms like Coursera or Udemy offer a plethora of marketing courses. Product Marketing Alliance is a great specialized resource for this industry.
2. Blogs and podcasts. Follow industry blogs and podcasts to stay updated on the latest trends and best practices.
3. Networking. Connect with other product marketers. Learn from them and share your own experiences.

With these skills and tools in your arsenal, you’ll be well-equipped to conquer the challenges of product marketing. So, arm yourself and get ready to make your mark!

Conclusion: how product marketing can help your teams align and grow

We’ve gone through a lot in this post, unraveling the world of product marketing. We’ve seen how it fits into product management. From the product lifecycle to crafting compelling stories, we’ve covered it all.

Product marketing is more than making noise – it’s about connections. It helps you understand your audience and put your product on top. It’s about adapting and always listening to feedback.

And for product managers? Product marketing is your secret weapon. It bridges gaps. It turns features into real value. It turns users into fans.

We talked market research, messaging, positioning, and pricing. We’ve looked at challenges and how to tackle them. We’ve listed skills to hone and tools to have.

Canny is here to help with the right tools to boost your product marketing. So here’s to making smart choices and creating standout products.

Maria Vasserman

Maria loves all things creative – writing, photography, movies and beyond When she's not creating content to tell the world about Canny, she's either photographing a wedding, jumping at a rock concert, camping, travelling, snowboarding, or walking her dog

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A product roadmap guides your efforts and helps you stay focused. It’s the story and plan for your product – all in one. It helps manage product teams, stakeholder expectations, and endless updates. And the best part? You don’t have to start from scratch.

We’re excited to bring these free product roadmap templates to you! That’s right — they’re ready to use, don’t cost a penny, and can be a real boost for your product strategy. 

Why these product roadmap templates are your next big win

If you’re here, you might be on the hunt for a fresh way to sculpt your roadmap. Maybe you need:

• Better organization
• Closer alignment to your goals
• Improved communication with your team

These roadmap templates can help you with all that and more!

• Strategic vision: These templates aren’t just for short-term goals. They help plan for upcoming months and even years. This way, you can always stay one step ahead.
• Efficiency: no need to start from scratch. These templates free up your time for strategic thinking instead of mundane formatting tasks.
• Organization: seamlessly juggle your objectives, deliverables, and timelines. Eliminate chaos and maintain clarity.
• Communication: designed for everyone involved – from teams to stakeholders. They visually articulate your strategy ensuring alignment.
• Flexibility: every product is distinct. Your roadmap should be too. Choose from four varied templates based on your needs.

How to use product roadmap templates

Templates are a starting point, and it’s all about how you use them. Here’s how to make these templates work for you.

• Customize wisely. Begin with your overarching goals and align your roadmap accordingly. Be concise. Prioritize clarity over clutter. And remember – different projects might require different formats. Diversify as needed.
• Collaborate. Share the vision and rationale with stakeholders. Encourage feedback and recognize different viewpoints. This collective approach enriches your roadmap and fosters a sense of ownership among team members.
• Stay updated. Market dynamics shift. Ensure your roadmap is Agile. Celebrate achievements, learn from missteps, and consistently review and refine your approach. Solicit feedback, especially from users – their insights can prove invaluable.
• Stay consistent. A new method might seem daunting initially, but persistence pays off. A tool is only as effective as its consistent application.

Try product roadmap templates today

In product management, a clear roadmap is your guiding star. That’s why our free product roadmap templates are so useful. They simplify complex strategies, save precious time, and enhance team alignment.

Ready to give them a try? Here are your next steps:

• Start now! Download your free templates and embark on a well-defined product journey.
• Share your experience. Your feedback is crucial for our continuous improvement and community learning.
• Level up! Explore our roadmap software with a free Canny account.

Your path to a streamlined product strategy is just a click away.

Maria Vasserman

Maria loves all things creative – writing, photography, movies and beyond When she's not creating content to tell the world about Canny, she's either photographing a wedding, jumping at a rock concert, camping, travelling, snowboarding, or walking her dog

All Posts - Website · Twitter - Facebook - LinkedIn

The post Master product planning with these free roadmap templates + examples first appeared on Canny Blog.

The post Master product planning with these free roadmap templates + examples appeared first on Canny Blog.

One of the best ways to handle this kind of growth is to build your product team. But then you face a new problem. How can you scale your team without sacrificing quality or profit? After all, you don’t want to end up with  “too many cooks in the kitchen”. And you definitely don’t want to expand your team beyond what your budget can handle.

So, how can you overcome these problems and expand successfully? In this post, we’ll look at eight tried-and-true strategies for scaling a product team. But first, let’s get into the background information.

Why do you need to scale your product team?

There are many reasons for scaling a product team. Typically, it’s necessary because your organization is experiencing rapid growth. Your product has become successful and achieved product-market fit. You’ve attracted more customers, and there’s a growing list of user needs.

Scaling your team is often a reaction to feedback and product insights. For example, if you’re using something like Canny’s customer feedback tool, you have some great insights about your users.

Feedback from your users might lead you to consider adding a new product line for example. To do that, you need a bigger product team – to make sure they can cope with the increased workload. 

To continue growing, you have to make sure that your product can support its growing user base. And you have to do this without any drop-off in quality. It’s even more important if your company is experiencing hypergrowth. In that case, it’s vital to prevent your team from burning out.

Yes, there are dangers in scaling too fast. But you should begin the scaling process as early as you can. Otherwise, your team will have more work than they can handle, and this will seriously hamper their productivity.

What are the challenges of scaling a team?

So, we know why you want to scale your product team. But, what kind of challenges will you face while doing it? Well, the bigger a team gets, the harder it can be to keep everyone coordinated. Here are a few reasons for that. 

1. Disconnect

Why? First, large product teams generally have to deal with many products and features. They will face competing priorities, handle large amounts of data, and use a range of disparate tools and systems. This can lead to disconnected processes and even to silos developing within a team.

2. Range of opinions and expertise

Second, larger teams have a wider range of skills, specialties, experiences, and outlooks. On a product team, you’ll usually have UX designers, development teams, a product manager, and a QA engineer. There may also be a project manager, marketing strategists, and graphic designers.

This diversity is a good thing. But each of these team members will approach ideation and project management differently. It can be tricky to get everyone working as a close unit. It gets even more complicated  as new team members join an existing team.

Plus, in large teams, unanimous decisions aren’t possible all the time. There may be arguments about the best course of action, or the best tool to use.

3. Product quality

Big teams can struggle to come together around the key goal (to deliver a great product to your customers). In short, even with more people to handle the growing workload, product quality can take a hit.

4. Conflicting priorities

Another issue is – expanding business has shifting requirements. The team setup that works for you now might not be the same in a year’s time. So you have to try to forecast future needs and build some flexibility into the team. That means hiring for quality, not only for quantity.

5. Culture

It can also be difficult to generate a shared sense of company culture in bigger teams. You have to ensure the team is cohesive, even with new hires or restructured roles. It’s vital to make the right decisions about how you communicate and collaborate.

Let’s talk about some strategies to combat these issues.

Eight strategies for scaling a product team

Scaling a product team isn’t a walk in the park. But, with the right strategies in place, you can make the expansion a lot smoother. As promised, here are eight ways to do that.

1. Clear team responsibilities

A strong team structure is key when it comes to organizational growth. Yes, rapid growth comes with a lot of risk for your business. But you can mitigate this (and preserve product quality) with good team management.

Everyone on the product team must be crystal clear on their own responsibilities. When people know exactly what’s expected of them, they can get the task done faster. There’s no need to ask extra questions or wait for the team leader to respond. And everyone has ownership and accountability for their tasks.

Team members also need to have a good awareness of what their colleagues are doing. This way, you can prevent any confusing overlaps and duplicated work. Plus, nobody will feel like someone’s stepping on their toes. 

You don’t want two people working on the same product feature at the same time. Clarifying team responsibilities also helps you uncover any gaps in your operations. By dividing up tasks and roles, you’ll be able to see where key skills or personnel are missing. This gives you a better idea of who you need to hire to help your product team operate at its best.

TL;DR: help everyone get clear on their responsibilities. Make sure everyone knows who’s working on what and what the expectations are.

2. Streamlined resource allocation

If poorly managed, rapid growth can lead to a particular resource used up too fast on a single product area. This will delay production elsewhere while you wait for replenishments to arrive.

It can also cause different teams to fight over the same resources, which disrupts teamwork and may affect collaboration in the future.  

So, how can you prevent these problems? It’s vital to streamline and optimize your resources. You need to ensure you always know exactly what’s available and who needs it. The right software can make all the difference to this task. 

For example, you might use a cloud ERP platform to keep track of your resources. Enterprise resource planning tools usually have intelligent workflows and project management capabilities. This means that team members can also log in and check resource availability. 

On top of this, you could consider using organization tools such as shared calendars. This will help you to manage access to resources. Tools like this make communication much easier and prevent any potential clash. 

TL;DR: optimize your resources. There are many tools that can help.

3. Enhanced communication channels

It may sound obvious, but communication is crucial for rapid scaling of a product team. This is because it is crucial for good team relationships and smooth collaboration, as well as also being useful for delegating tasks and checking in on progress.

Regular communication helps to foster a sense of community. It also promotes transparency. Managers can share goals and updates with everyone involved, no matter how big the team is. That way, you’re keeping all colleagues in the loop.

As your product team grows, communication will become more complicated. You can resolve this by using enhanced communication channels. But which ones should you choose? Think about how your team works, and which technology would make the most sense for them.

Here’s an example. Stop relying on clunky email threads to discuss everything. Instead, you could introduce chat platforms such as Slack. Missive is a great email tool we use – we can have internal conversations just under an email thread.

These tools make communication clearer, easier, and more specific. They allow your team to fire quick questions and thoughts at one another. They also allow for unrelated discussions to break off into separate threads when necessary.

Make sure that you don’t overburden your team with too many check-ins. It’s easy to book your calendar with calls and feel busy. But it’ll get very hard to get any work done.

In fact, some companies are choosing to cancel all meetings. And many schedule no calls/meetings weeks for focused work.

TL;DR: communication is important. But it’s all about balance. Overcommunication exists, and it’s unproductive.

4. Agile, Waterfall, and Scrum project management 

There are a few approaches to project and product management. Agile and Waterfall methods are two of the most popular ones.

Neither is better than the other. But each works better for certain teams, projects, and timelines.

• Waterfall separates a project into ‘phases’ or ‘packets’ that flow one after the other.

• Agile is about developing projects in increments and on an ongoing basis. It allows many processes to run in parallel.

If you’re scaling a product team, Agile might be better. It’s fast and flexible, which is ideal when you’re scaling. It gives your developing team the scope to figure out how they work best. 

Again, the right tools can be a massive help here. Good business management software can help you manage projects in an agile way.

It also reduces many of the risks associated with Agile. For example, with access to real-time data, you can spot problems early. This allows your team to pivot in a different direction before issues arise.

Scrum

Another type of Agile methodology that you can use is called Scrum. This involves splitting the team up when it becomes unwieldy. Oversized teams are often inefficient and not great at communicating.

Scrum puts emphasis on regular feedback, continuous learning and adaptability.

When using Scrum methodology, you divide work and assign it to small teams (3-9 people). They meet regularly to discuss current tasks and any roadblocks. There’s also a Scrum master who helps to remove these obstacles to ensures team efficiency.

Scrum’s focused on collaboration and uncovering problems. This makes it a particularly useful methodology for complex projects and fast-paced environments. 

TL;DR: when scaling a product team, Agile method is your best bet. If your Agile team gets hard to manage, turn to Scrum to split it up.

5. Constant learning and development

A time of growth is also a time of learning and development. It’s especially important to take note of lessons learned as your product team grows. For example, let’s say a lack of resources led to a delay. Was it because of poor communication or poor forecasting? Find out what happened, and improve your processes going forward.

Making changes isn’t always straightforward. It’s all too easy for product teams to become set in their ways. Once they find a formula or dynamic that works, it can be difficult to shake things up.

It’s important for leaders to explain why changes are necessary. You should also highlight the benefits of upskilling and training.

When you emphasize learning and development, your team becomes more open to new ideas, members, and processes. This makes product management and product development more flexible and dynamic. It also gives your team structure the flexibility to expand without issue.

TL;DR: promote a culture of constant learning. Take notes of lessons along your product development journey.

6. Quality assurance processes prioritization

When you only have a few people working on a product, quality assurance is easy. Everyone focuses only on the product and invests in it. But, as your team grows, this focus often gets diluted. Team members’ attention deflects to other products and processes. Or it gets diffused throughout a larger team. That makes it easy for quality to drop.

Plus, when your business is new, the product may not be particularly complex. But, as you start to add more features or new product lines, it’s harder to keep on top of quality. To make sure quality doesn’t suffer as your development team expands, you should focus on quality assurance (QA). Bring in QA processes and emphasize their importance at all times. It’s worth hiring QA specialists or upskilling existing team members for this task.

TL;DR: watch the quality. Invest in additional QAs if necessary.

7. Cross-functional integration

Your product processes must integrate well with your marketing platforms and strategies. If not, you’ll experience problems. This disconnect could have a big effect on both your product and customer experience. 

For example, marketers will face problems while relaying customer needs to the product team. And the product team won’t be able to feed things such as product unique selling points (USPs) back to marketing. That’s not efficient for your team or your customers.

So, it’s important you break down these silos. You must make sure your product team is well-integrated with all other aspects of your business. The product team should be cross-functional. It must be able to communicate and collaborate across your organization.

We’ve covered integrating the teams themselves. It’s also crucial that you integrate your systems. Tools for communication, project management, and business intelligence should work together. It should be easy for your teams to access all the information they need from a single source of truth.

TL;DR: establish one source of truth among your tools.

8. Working side by side with automation

Automation is taking the world by storm, and it can work wonders for your expanding product team. The right automation can take a lot of the mundane pressures off your employees. This will allow them to concentrate on what they do best.

For example, resource management software can help you manage your inventory and resources. Similarly, business management software can produce automated workflows and onboarding schedules. This takes a major workload off your employees’ shoulders.

There’s almost no limit to the types of tasks you can automate if you have the right software. By boosting productivity, automation can bring a significant reduction in costs. That means there will be more cash for scaling your team and for ensuring the ongoing quality of your products.

TL;DR: embrace automation to save time.

A bigger product team doesn’t have to mean lower product quality

A large product team brings a variety of skills and perspectives to the table. Such teams are able to handle the increased workload that comes with rapid growth. But it’s harder to ensure smooth collaboration and to keep everyone aligned with the key goals.

To avoid problems with product quality, it’s vital that you make a plan for scaling your product team. That means:

• Hiring the right people
• Prioritizing the right tasks
• Choosing the right communication channels
• Integrating systems
• Identifying issues before they arise

Scaling a product team takes time, effort, and commitment. But with the right strategy, you can expand successfully without sacrificing product quality.

If you follow these eight strategies, growth will become exciting. You’ll also boost your product’s reputation in the process.

Sage

Sage is the global market leader for technology that exists to knock down barriers so everyone can thrive. Millions of small and mid-sized businesses, our partners, and accountants trust our finance, HR, and payroll software to make work and money flow. We digitize business processes, strengthening relationships between SMBs and customers, suppliers, employees, banks, and governments. Knocking down barriers also means we use our time, technology, and experience to support digital inequality, economic inequality, and the climate crisis.

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The post Eight tips for scaling a product team without sacrificing quality first appeared on Canny Blog.

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A product roadmap is like your North Star in the vast universe of product development. It’s a visual representation of your product’s direction, priorities, and progress over time.

We’re going to focus on product roadmaps in this article. But, we’ll discuss and show examples of other roadmap types, too.

We’ll also explain how to build and use a roadmap. These principles apply to many types of roadmaps, not just the product ones.

Let’s dive deep into the world of roadmaps and break it all down.

Why do you need a roadmap?

Here are a few reasons to start building a product roadmap.

1. Strategic alignment

It ensures everyone’s paddling in the same direction.

• Sales teams won’t promise some features that PMs aren’t even aware of
• Marketing won’t build campaigns for features that aren’t in the works
• Design won’t create wireframes for low-priority features

You get the idea.

2. Stakeholder communication

A roadmap is like a translator between you and your key stakeholders. There will always be people who want certain features shipped yesterday. How can you effectively communicate your current priorities? With a product roadmap, of course!

3.  Resource planning

Knowing what you’re building will help determine which resources you need. You’ll also know when you need them, in what quantities, and how crucial they are. Planning simplifies everything! If you plan properly, you won’t end up with too many or too few resources.

Now that we know why roadmaps are so crucial, let’s talk about who’s involved.

Who should create the roadmap?

Navigating the vast seas of product development requires a clear map and a skilled crew. For example:

Product managers (PMs)

That’s us! The captains of the ship. As a product manager or a product owner, you’re at the heart of the product’s journey. You understand the product vision, the users, and the market. Your role is to ensure that the product’s direction aligns with the business goals and user needs. You’re setting the course, deciding which ports (features) to visit, and ensuring the crew (development team) knows the route.

Project managers

The vigilant navigators. While a PM sets the course, a project manager ensures smooth sailing. They have a keen eye on the timeline, resources, and potential obstacles. Project management helps us avoid hitting icebergs or getting caught in storms. We call them “unexpected challenges”. 

Project managers work closely with the product team to ensure the roadmap is feasible. They also help coordinate the division of work and see projects to completion.

Founders

You might not have a large team yet. In this case, you likely have someone else in charge of the roadmap. If you’re operating a startup, founders likely own the roadmap. If you’re a startup founder trying to navigate the world of roadmaps, you’re in the right place!

Engineers

Similar to the point above, sometimes other team members manage the roadmap before a dedicated product owner comes on board. Engineers and product developers have deep insights into the inner workings of the product. So they’re well suited to manage the product roadmap.

C-level executives

They are the admirals looking at the bigger picture. They might not be involved in the day-to-day plotting of the course, but their vision is still crucial. They have a bird’s-eye view of the entire fleet (company). They also ensure that our ship (product) aligns with the broader fleet’s direction. They get insights from market trends, company and product strategy, and financial factors. These insights can significantly impact the roadmap’s primary goals.

While the product manager might be the primary cartographer of the roadmap, it’s a collaborative effort. Each role brings a unique perspective, ensuring that the roadmap is not only visionary, but also grounded in reality. After all, a map is only as good as the team that uses it!

Speaking of roadmap users – let’s discuss them next.

Who uses the roadmap?

Don’t let your product roadmap become another file lost in your Google Drive! It’s a living, breathing guide that serves multiple audiences. So encourage people to use it! Let’s explore who can benefit from this invaluable tool.

1. Internal team

Why? So the devs don’t go rogue on you.

Internal teams are the engine room of our product ship. This includes developers, designers, and QA testers. They turn the roadmap’s vision into reality. And they all need a holistic view of where the product is headed. It helps them understand the context of their tasks.

They also learn the priority of new features. Plus, they discover the interdependencies between different components. This clarity reduces the chances of misalignment or “wildcard” features that haven’t been accounted for. It’s like giving them a compass to make sure they’re always sailing in the right direction.

2. External stakeholders

Why? To keep them in the loop.

External stakeholders include investors, partners, and board members. They might not be involved in the daily grind but are still vested in the product’s success.

The roadmap is a snapshot of the product’s strategy, progress, and future direction. By sharing it with them, we’re fostering trust, setting expectations, and ensuring they’re always informed. It’s like sending them a postcard from our journey, letting them know we’re on the right track.

These stakeholders care where their money is going. If they have a way to always check in on your progress, they’ll have much more trust in you. Raising more funds will get easier!

Customers

Why? Transparency is the best policy.

In some industries, especially in the SaaS world, companies choose to share their roadmaps with their customers. When done right, this strategy can foster trust and set realistic expectations. This also creates an open communication stream. Customers can send you valuable feedback for future improvements.

They also appreciate being in the know. A public roadmap can make them feel valued and heard. It’s like inviting them on the journey with us, ensuring they know where we’re headed and why.

Curious to see how PMs build in public? Here are some of the best public roadmap examples.

Let’s talk about other types of roadmaps now.

Other types of roadmaps

Up until now, we’ve been focused on product roadmaps. There are also other types of roadmaps that you might find useful.

While product roadmaps are our bread and butter, the concept of roadmapping extends to various domains. Each type serves a unique purpose, catering to different audiences and objectives. Let’s delve deeper into these diverse roadmaps.

Technology roadmap

Purpose: navigate your tech projects

A technology roadmap shows the company’s plan to use new technology. This document helps the company connect its technology needs to its business goals. Your tech roadmap should align with your product roadmap. It lays the foundation your product is built on. 

For the tech team, it’s like having a crystal ball that predicts the future of technology within the organization. Here’s what it might look like:

Software development roadmap

Purpose: “When’s the next update?”

This roadmap is tailored for software products. It details the upcoming features, improvements, and releases. It’s a timeline of developers’ work and when users can expect updates. It’s like a product release calendar, ensuring everyone knows when the next software “season” premieres.

Some companies use their product roadmaps as a software development roadmap. If your roadmap is focused just on engineering, it’s likely a software development roadmap. If it includes other team members (designers, product marketers, etc), it’s a product roadmap. However, the lines may blur.

Here’s what a software roadmap might look like.

Business roadmaps

Purpose: zoom out to the bigger picture

This roadmap shows the company’s strategic plans, goals, and priorities at a high level.  It brings different departments together to work towards the same goals.  Think of it as the company’s strategic blueprint.

Here’s an example of a business roadmap:

“Business” is a broad term. You can also separate a few other roadmaps.

Marketing roadmap

Purpose: to spread the word about your products

This roadmap shows the plans for marketing and promoting products or services. It’s the game plan for brand visibility, ensuring the right message reaches the right audience at the right time.

A product can be exceptional, but you need users to make it profitable. That’s why outlining your marketing initiatives is so crucial.

When your product is complex, it’s easy to get confused while trying to promote it.

A marketing roadmap can help. Here’s an example of a marketing roadmap.

Let’s explore more roadmaps to help you stay organized.

Innovation roadmap

Purpose: “What’s the next big thing?”

An innovation roadmap is all about staying ahead of the curve. It charts future innovations and R&D initiatives.

 It’s hard to plan for innovation. But you can keep track of industry trends, watch the competition, and allow yourself to dream. 

Blue Ocean strategy is a popular framework for innovation. It focuses on finding untapped markets and hidden opportunities within them.

“In blue oceans, demand is created rather than fought over. There is ample opportunity for growth that is both profitable and rapid.”

W. Chan Kim, professor of strategy and management at INSEAD

To create an innovation roadmap, take your business roadmap as an example. Narrow it down only to innovative ideas that could help you break through the noise.

Innovative ideas can be groundbreaking for your business.

Project roadmap

Purpose: break down complex projects

This roadmap breaks down tasks, milestones, and deadlines. It’s the project manager’s bible, ensuring every task is on track and stakeholders are informed.

Some projects are straightforward. But, managing your product becomes tougher as it matures and gets more complex. That’s where a project roadmap can really help.

Here’s an example of a sample project roadmap.

Customer journey roadmap

Purpose: try on your customer’s shoes.

This visual representation maps out the customer’s experience with your product. You’ll know where to take your product next when you lay out the whole journey from awareness to advocacy.

It’s almost a brand empathy tool. It helps you experience the product the way your users do. Only then can you understand and cater to your customers’ needs at every touchpoint.

There are a few different ways to lay out your customer journey roadmap. Here’s one of them.

Policy/regulatory roadmap

Purpose: navigating the legal jungle.

This roadmap is great for industries with significant regulatory oversight. It outlines the necessary steps to achieve compliance. It’s the company’s legal guide, ensuring they stay on the right side of the law.

Educational/learning roadmap

Purpose: help you study effectively

This roadmap is tailored for learners. It outlines learning objectives, modules, and progression. This student’s guide ensures they know what to learn, when, and why.

Let’s say you’re studying product management. There’s so much to learn! Also, because this field is relatively new, there’s no single tried and tested learning path. There are so many options to choose from:

• Traditional classes in colleges and universities
• Online courses
• Bootcamps and crash courses
• Podcasts
• Blogs
• Glossaries
• Videos
• And much more

A learning roadmap can really help you get organized. You’ll know exactly:

• What you want to learn
• Where you need to start
• In what order you should approach the subject
• Where you can find the necessary information
• How to set and stick to deadlines
• How to set and measure learning outcomes
• And more

This will set you up for a successful career in product management. And speaking of careers…

Career roadmap

Purpose: climbing the corporate ladder one step at a time

This personal development tool outlines the steps, skills, and milestones you need to achieve career goals. It’s the professional’s compass that can guide you through your career journey.

Every day new jobs pop up. Do you want to become a chief automations officer? Or maybe a gamification marketing expert?

You need a plan. And a career roadmap can help you get there.

With proper research, you can get your dream job or even create a new role for yourself.

While the format might differ, the core principle of roadmaps remains the same. They aim to provide clarity, direction, and alignment. Whether you’re a tech guru, marketer, or student, there’s a roadmap tailored to your journey.

Let’s talk about actually creating roadmaps.

How to create a roadmap

Before you start, remember: it’s not about cramming everything in. It’s about prioritizing what truly matters.

We’re going to focus on product roadmaps in this article. Many of the principles apply to other types of roadmaps too.

There are several things you want to include in your roadmap to make it functional and useful.

What to include

User feedback

Your users are the lifeblood of your product. Their feedback provides invaluable insights into what’s working, what’s not, and what’s missing. When you incorporate customer feedback, your product will evolve in a way that appeals to its audience. 

When your users can see your roadmap, they feel included in your product journey. They’ll know that their voice matters, and their ideas actually come to fruition.

Features

A product feature is a tangible enhancement or addition to your product. Features are promises of value, solving specific user problems or needs. Clearly listing them ensures everyone knows what’s on the horizon.

Some features will come from ideas and requests from your users. Others will be a result of your research and brainstorming. And all these features should take the most prominent place on your roadmap.

Bugs

We know: you don’t want to include bug reports in your roadmap. But…you should still have a place where you indicate the bugs you’re fixing.

This may seem daunting – announcing to the world that you have issues in your product. But who doesn’t?

If you’re transparent about having and fixing bugs, your users will trust you more. Admitting that you aren’t perfect but committed to improving is a very effective strategy.

Prioritization criteria

Not all features or ideas are created equal. To make sure the most important things get attention, we need clear criteria for prioritizing. This helps balance urgency and impact when allocating resources. 

There are numerous ways to prioritize your features. At Canny, we use the weighted score model. And everyone who uses Canny can customize the weighted scoring formula to suit their needs. Here’s how we use it.

We took the factors that mattered the most to us and assigned a score to each of them (up to 100%). For example, we weigh more urgent items (priority) higher than design readiness.

We add these factors to our prioritization formula in Canny. It then scores ideas for us and tells us what the biggest priority should be. From there, it’s easy to add the winning ideas to the product roadmap and get to work.

Priority

Explicitly stating the priority level helps everyone know what to do first and what can wait. This goes beyond just the prioritization criteria we discussed above.

Votes

Vote counts can indicate the demand or popularity of a feature, ensuring user needs are front and center. This is especially true for user-driven roadmaps.

You can use votes as one of your prioritization factors.

Owners

Assigning ownership ensures accountability. It shows who is in charge of a task or feature, clarifying roles and responsibilities. 

Displaying ownership publicly helps align all your teams. 

Deadlines

Deadlines provide a timeframe for delivery. They set expectations and ensure timely progress, keeping the momentum going.

Clearly visible deadlines help with accountability.

Status

Keeping track of the status of each task or feature provides a real-time snapshot of progress. It helps in managing resources and setting stakeholder expectations.

Effort

Estimating how much work a task needs helps assign resources and set realistic deadlines.

Part of building your roadmap is understanding how many resources you have. You also need to clarify what tasks the team can accomplish in a given time with that set of resources.

Milestones

Milestones are significant achievements or phases in the product’s journey. They provide checkpoints to gauge progress and celebrate successes, keeping the team motivated.

You can showcase your milestones through statuses or changelog entries (when a new feature is shipped).

Here’s how statuses work in Canny.

Here’s how AgencyAnalytics uses Canny’s changelog to share their important milestones.

As mentioned above, this is a very long list. So avoid including everything just for the sake of it. Rather, review this as a list of potential ideas and pick the ones that make the most sense to your organization. Focus on items that help you achieve your OKRs and boost your KPIs.

What not to include

If an item doesn’t add value, clarity, or align with the product’s direction, it’s best left out. Overloading a roadmap can dilute its purpose and make it overwhelming.

For example, if your company isn’t public, you don’t want to share any financials on your public roadmap.

If you have a low-impact feature request that you likely won’t get to, also don’t include it on your roadmap. This will set the wrong expectations.

Building a roadmap from scratch feels like a lot of work. That’s why we created our free roadmap templates!

If you’re looking for a more sophisticated roadmap tool that can help you automate this process, keep reading.

Roadmap tools 

Canny offers a streamlined approach to roadmapping. Our product roadmap tool pulls in user feedback and helps you prioritize each idea in one platform. It’s like having a GPS for your product journey, ensuring you’re always on the right path.

There are other roadmap tools out there. Many aren’t designed for roadmaps, but can be adapted. For example, companies like SocialBee use Trello for their roadmap. 

We’ve gathered the best public roadmap examples here – take a look! Drawing inspiration from successful examples can give you new ideas.

Now that you’ve built a roadmap, let’s discuss how to use it.

How to use the product roadmap

An effective product roadmap relies on its implementation. It’s not just about creating it, but also about driving alignment, decision-making, and progress. Let’s delve deeper into how to make the most of your roadmap.

1. Communicate its value

It’s more than just a pretty visual. A roadmap is a strategic document that outlines a product’s vision, direction, and priorities. It is crucial to communicate its importance to all stakeholders, from developers to executives. So make sure everyone knows its purpose: to set expectations, clarify, and guide decisions. Refer to it frequently in meetings, presentations, and discussions to reinforce its importance.

Invite your users to review your roadmap if it is public. You should also provide them with the opportunity to submit ideas.

2. Stick to it

It can be tempting to pursue every new idea or piece of feedback. Still, try to follow the plans you initially outlined in the roadmap. After all, you prioritized those ideas for a reason. This sets a direction and provides a sense of stability. And that’s the whole point of a roadmap!

You still need to strike a balance between consistency and adaptability, though. Your product plan can change due to market shifts, user feedback, or technological advancements. Being too rigid can lead to missed opportunities or misalignment with current needs.

Our advice: use your best judgment. Try not to get too distracted, but also be ready to pivot.

3. Adjust as needed

The roadmap shouldn’t be set in stone. You may need to make changes as you collect more information, get feedback, or face unexpected obstacles.

Review your roadmap regularly. This way it’ll remain relevant and aligned with the product goal and market realities. Your roadmap will also evolve with the product, always pointing toward maximum value and impact.

A product roadmap is both a guide and a communication tool. Use it, reiterate its value, and stay consistent but flexible. And remember to make necessary adjustments. That’s how it can remain a dynamic tool that drives your product towards success.

Build better products with a roadmap

In the end, a roadmap is more than just a table. It’s your vision, strategy, and commitment to your product. So, grab that coffee, roll up your sleeves, and let’s build something amazing together!

Cheers to roadmaps and the clarity they bring! 

Maria Vasserman

Maria loves all things creative – writing, photography, movies and beyond When she's not creating content to tell the world about Canny, she's either photographing a wedding, jumping at a rock concert, camping, travelling, snowboarding, or walking her dog

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The post The complete guide to building effective roadmaps (with examples and templates) first appeared on Canny Blog.

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Self-driving cars, text generation, fraud detection, and more – AI seems to suddenly be everywhere.

So, how can you take advantage of AI, especially in the SaaS industry?

This blog post features several AI SaaS use cases for various departments. We’ll also explore how these AI SaaS solutions can help you get ahead. Hopefully, these examples will inspire you to automate some of your tedious tasks.

Is AI new?

Before diving into examples, let’s briefly explore AI’s journey. How did we even get here?

Before ChatGPT from OpenAI blew up, AI was already prevalent in SaaS. It helped companies:

• Send automated emails
• Respond to frequently asked questions (chatbots)
• Personalize website content, offers, and recommendations
• Screen resumes
• Score leads
• Segment customers
• And much more

In 2022, AI reached a new level. Generative AI (like ChatGPT) appeared seemingly overnight. After that, many AI tools followed. Today, many AI tools are helping practically every SaaS company save time and work faster.

“AI serves as a catalyst for handling those mundane and repetitive tasks. Thanks to AI, I can focus on more strategic aspects of my work.”

Deborah Bittencourt, Product Manager and Product Designer, IBS Consulting

Deborah Bittencourt, Product Manager and Product Designer, IBS Consulting

Now, let’s break down the seven ways AI can help you outperform your competition in SaaS.

1. Product development

AI streamlines various aspects of product development, such as:

• Analyzing users
• Generating ideas
• Prototyping
• Testing
• Writing and fixing code
• Detecting anomalies
• Surfacing vulnerabilities
• Managing projects
• Optimizing design and costs

Here are some sample prompts you can use for each of these points.

1. Analyze user data to identify the most engaged customer segments over the last quarter.
2. Generate a list of the top five feature requests from user reviews on our platform.
3. Generate three prototypes for the new dashboard based on current user behavior analytics.
4. Run automated tests focusing on ‌newly deployed features and summarize the results
5. Suggest optimizations for the current code base to improve performance.
6. Scan the system logs for the last week and flag any unusual activity.
7. Perform a vulnerability assessment for the latest build.
8. Predict any potential delays in the current project timeline and suggest mitigating actions.
9. Analyze the cost-efficiency of design alternatives for the new feature set.

There are many AI tools out there that can help. Let’s explore what’s out there (beyond ChatGPT).

TL;DR: it’s now easier to manage product development, thanks to AI.

Feature development

When you’re developing features, there are three main aspects where AI can assist:

1. Predictive analysis: AI can analyze trends to help you understand what features are more likely to be successful.
2. Natural Language Processing (NLP): For text-heavy applications, NLP can help in auto-categorizing user-generated content, summarization, and more.
3. Coding: AI can suggest new lines of code, entire functions, tests, and even complex algorithms.

“GitHub Copilot is already writing 46% of code and helps developers code up to 55% faster. Our R&D team (GitHub Next) has been hard at work to bring GitHub Copilot beyond the editor. Auto-completion is just the starting point.”

Thomas Dohmke, CEO at GitHub

TL;DR: AI can help you develop products and features that your customers will love. It can also save lots of engineering time.

2. Product management

AI enables product managers to automate numerous daily tasks, including:

• Detecting trends in customer sentiments
• Analyzing user feedback
• Brainstorming and prioritizing ideas
• Writing support documentation
• Creating project plans
• Tailoring user experience
• Automating reporting
• Analyzing competition
• Detecting bias

“The integration of AI into product management has been nothing short of transformative. An advanced AI algorithm can sift through vast datasets, deciphering intricate customer behavior and preferences.”

Kamil Rejent, CEO at Survicate

Roadmapping

To create an effective product roadmap, product managers need to:

• Prioritize features
• Evaluate market demand
• Forecast development timelines
• And so much more

AI can assist with these tasks and make the roadmapping process more data-driven and efficient.

ChatGPT is an undeniable leader that can also be very useful in product development.

“I continue to rely on ChatGPT for various tasks, from shaping our product roadmap to engaging with beta test users.”

Deborah Bittencourt, Product Manager and Product Designer, IBS Consulting

Here’s how AI helps Deborah create and manage product roadmaps:

1. Market research and insights
   AI can identify emerging trends, competitor strategies, and customer pain points, which can help determine our product development priorities. I still fact-check everything and bring more data from 2022 on.
2. User feedback analysis
   Depending on the amount and form of feedback I have, I experimented with feeding ChatGPT customer feedback, surveys, or product reviews to analyze and provide more insights. It can summarize common issues, feature requests, and sentiment analysis, doing some bulk work for me.
3. Prioritization ( my personal favorite)
   AI helps me create scoring models or frameworks to objectively assess and rank potential roadmap items. I like to ask ChatGPT to consider user impact, technical feasibility, and business value.
4. Roadmap documentation
   I use it to draft and refine my product roadmap documents, ensuring they are clear, comprehensive, and well-structured for communication within the team.

TL;DR: AI can help get started with roadmapping: research the market, analyze and prioritize feedback, and draft documentation.

3. Data analysis

There are also AI tools that dive a lot deeper. They can help:

1. Analyze data 
2. Uncover customer insights
3. Predict trends and project outcomes
4. Make more informed product decisions

“Leading SaaS companies utilize various AI tools such as natural language processing (NLP), computer vision, and predictive analytics. Examples include:

• Machine learning
  • TensorFlow
  • PyTorch
  • Scikit-learn
• Computer vision
  • Google Cloud Vision API
  • Amazon Rekognition“

Dennis Brown, lead software engineer, Ling Ltd.

The key is to feed AI your own unique data.

“It isn’t enough for AI to be trained on publicly available data. It must marry that data with internal enterprise data. This includes established product and service data as well as contextual customer interaction data.”

Umesh Sachdev, CEO & co-Founder of Uniphore

TL;DR: AI can assist with data analysis, but it needs unique data to be truly effective.

Looking at AI from this angle, you can’t help but get excited. Let’s explore how other teams can benefit from AI, too.

4. Customer support & success

It’s not just product managers who can benefit from AI.

AI-powered chatbots are probably already on your radar. Zendesk, HelpScout, Intercom, and others have been using AI to answer customer questions faster.

“Intercom has an AI tool that will summarize a thread in the notes. It is very helpful for longer threads. We also use Fin – their new AI chatbot that can answer complex questions and save us a lot of time.”

Jacques Reulet, head of customer support, Canny

Now, AI’s providing more accurate answers and imitates human conversations much better.

After the conversation is done, AI can process it and uncover insights.

It doesn’t end with chatbots, though. Customer service, customer support, and customer success managers can personalize their user experience through AI. For example, AI now makes individual product recommendations, tailored offers, and useful prompts possible.

TL;DR: AI chatbots have evolved to understand customer sentiment and can escalate issues to human agents when necessary.

5. Marketing

While marketing remains a creative field, AI can enhance certain aspects. For example, product marketers rely on AI to help them with copywriting and design.

“I use AI as a starting point for some tasks. It’s helpful for tasks requiring data analysis, automation, and content generation.”

Deborah Bittencourt, Product Manager and Product Designer, IBS Consulting

Many marketers are using AI to help specifically with copywriting and editing. While this is a great time saver, try to be a little critical of AI’s outputs.

Note: instead of copying and pasting what AI gives you, use it as guidance and a starting point. AI isn’t always accurate, and its writing rarely fits your style guide perfectly. But, with some human touch, you can produce valuable content. 

You can also create and read through complex documentation faster with AI.

“We’ve started transitioning some of our documentation to Notion. Their AI-powered tools have helped streamline the documentation process and save me time and effort. For design and creative inspiration tasks, I’ve experimented with Firefly by Adobe.”

Deborah Bittencourt, Product Manager and Product Designer, IBS Consulting

Beyond content, AI can help marketers:

• Research audience & competition
• Generate personas
• Evaluate and edit copy
• Create charts and graphs
• Personalize experience for your users

Andy Crestodina from Orbit Media shares some useful ChatGPT and Bing prompts for marketers here. He recommends to:

“Try everything. Never trust it completely. Once you find insights, focus on execution.”

Andy Crestodina, co-founder & CMO, Orbit Media

Similarly, Ross Simmonds from Foundation Inc is using AI to:

• Research the market
• Analyze reports and data
• Create content (written and visual)
• Save money!  

TL;DR: AI can help marketers get started with creative ideas, analyze the market, and personalize user experience.

6. Sales

Sales is another area that requires a human touch to be effective. Still, sales reps can use AI to:

• Transcribe and summarize sales recordings: tl;dv, Otter.ai, rev.com
• Find common pain points: H2O.ai, Gong.io
• Uncover feature requests: Canny
• Score leads: Hubspot
• Assess their own effectiveness: People.ai
• Write or critique email copy: ChatGPT, Collato

Technological progress has been accelerating and bringing us more and more data. More data is useful, but processing it gets complex. That’s why AI is so timely – it can help make sense of that data.

“As selling complexity grows, so does the need for documentation, approvals, and compliance reporting. Generative AI can reverse administrative creep by helping salespeople write emails, respond to proposal requests, organize notes, and automatically update CRM data.”

Prabhakant Sinha, co-founder of ZS

“The future? AI AND Humans working together for a more potent sales force.”

Collin Stewart, CEO, Predictable Revenue

TL;DR: AI can improve sales strategies through lead scoring, call recordings, and data management.

7. Growth

Most businesses need to grow and do it faster than the competition. While others are still figuring out AI, you can start using it to get ahead. For example, you can:

1. Understand how your customers use your product: Mixpanel, Amplitude
2. Find usage gaps: Looker (from Google), Tableau
3. Tie them to churn: Salesforce, Hubspot, Gainsight
4. Fill those gaps and improve retention: Marketo, Dynamic Yield

You can also analyze your own usage patterns. Maybe there are some processes you can optimize?

Growing involves using resources wisely. AI can help with smart resource optimization as well.

Some of these tools (Salesforce, Hubspot) combine a few of these features. Check them out to see if one tool can check more than one box for your teams.

All of those efforts can help your SaaS company grow faster.

“Top SaaS companies are leveraging AI to gain a competitive edge. They implement machine learning algorithms to automate tasks, improve customer experiences, and drive business growth.”

Dennis Brown, lead software engineer, Ling Ltd.

TL;DR: use AI to understand how your customers use your product.

8. Operations

Good operations = efficiency. Especially in startups, the operations department has to do a lot: legal, HR, finance, and more.

AI can automate a lot of that, for example:

• Repetitive workflows
• Insights gathering
• Scenario planning
• Resume scanning
• Budget optimization
• Fraud detection
• Risk assessment
• Compliance monitoring
• Forecasting
• Resource allocation
• Feedback loops

It’s hard to find an AI tool that can do all of that at once. Depending on your organization’s priorities, some of these may work well:

• Oracle’s Enterprise Resource Planning Cloud
• SAP Integrated Business Planning (IBP)
• IBM Watson

“Artificial intelligence is more than a buzzword. AI is rapidly reshaping the fabric of business operations.”

Whitney Vige, SEO Content Writer, Asana

TL;DR: AI tools can help you boost operational efficiency by eliminating repetitive tasks.

Limitations

No tool is perfect. And most AI tools are still fairly new, so they come with some limitations you should be aware of.

Many experts agree that AI raises concerns around:

• Privacy – where is the data going?
• Accuracy – can we trust this information?
• Originality – is this plagiarism?
• Humanity – will our customers get annoyed by AI and miss human interactions?

“My primary concern with AI is how personalized product insights can be. Most AI data is broad and generic information. It doesn’t always perfectly align with specific user needs. As a product manager, it’s my job to go after user research and testing. I need to ensure that AI-driven solutions are aligned with our users’ unique requirements and expectations.”

Deborah Bittencourt, Product Manager and Product Designer, IBS Consulting

Does this mean we should disregard AI and stick to what’s worked in the past? Definitely not.

Instead, we must critically assess all the information AI provides us. We must still use our critical thinking, seek a deeper understanding of our users, and improve what AI gives us.

Because these concerns are common, most AI creators are actively improving their tools.

What’s next in AI?

More and more AI trends and use cases surface every day. Generative AI tools like ChatGPT are only the beginning.

Here’s an example of a conversational AI voice assistant that goes beyond services like Google Home and Amazon Alexa you might be used to.

In our recent blog post, we also highlighted top AI tools for product managers – check it out.

Experts predict AI will get more accurate, process larger amounts of data, and do it all faster.

“In essence, the marriage of AI and SaaS is not just a fleeting trend; it’s the wind beneath the wings of any SaaS firm.”

Kamil Rejent, CEO at Survicate

TL;DR: stay on top of AI trends to work faster and smarter.

AI – the future of SaaS

AI is changing our lives, especially in the SaaS industry. Every part of your organization can benefit from AI.

So, start implementing AI into your daily processes today. You can save time, get ahead of the competition, and enjoy your job more. After all, AI will handle your mundane tasks, and you’ll have more time for deep and creative work.

AI can help you boost customer satisfaction, too. When your users get help and answers faster, they’ll appreciate it.

Introducing AI into your workflow doesn’t necessarily mean spending more money. Check out your existing SaaS tools. Chances are, they’ve added AI components.

“SaaS companies today elevate customer journeys, predict market shifts, and automate tasks seamlessly through AI. We use Salesforce Einstein, Zendesk AI, and HubSpot’s AI functionalities.”

Ranee Zhang, VP at Airgram

Did we miss any cool companies or use cases? Let us know, and we’ll add them!

Want to stay up to date on the latest trends in SaaS and product management? Sign up for our newsletter here!

Maria Vasserman

Maria loves all things creative – writing, photography, movies and beyond When she's not creating content to tell the world about Canny, she's either photographing a wedding, jumping at a rock concert, camping, travelling, snowboarding, or walking her dog

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The post 8 ways SaaS companies can use AI to get ahead first appeared on Canny Blog.

The post 8 ways SaaS companies can use AI to get ahead appeared first on Canny Blog.

But sometimes what starts as a bug report can turn into a great new feature.

Identifying these feature opportunities can help product development and lead to smarter use of resources.

Not to mention they make your customers feel heard!

In this post, we will:

• Explain the difference between a bug report and a feature request (it’s not as obvious as you might think!)
• Show how to sort bugs to identify feature requests
• Share how we at Marker.io use Canny to organize and prioritize these requests

Let’s dive in!

Bug vs feature: what’s the difference?

A bug is an unintended software error. A feature is an intended functionality.

Bugs disrupt the user experience and appear under specific conditions. Features should enhance the user experience.

And at first glance, it’s that simple.

But in real-world scenarios, the lines start to blur:

1. Design decisions. What your users consider a bug (“Why can’t I do X?”) might actually be a conscious design decision from the product team.
2. Undocumented features. Developers sometimes add minor product features that new users might perceive as bugs or glitches. This highlights the need for a solid changelog.
3. User expectation ambiguity. Different users might interpret features differently. This leads to a gap between expectation and actual functionality.
4. Unintended benefits. What starts as a bug can become a feature if users find value in the unintended behavior.

People who aren’t tech-savvy often label any undesired behavior as a “bug” – even if it’s just a feature they don’t understand. Testing the product with users first can help avoid this confusion.

So, while the terms “bug” and “feature” may sound simple, they can get confusing in practice.

Now, let’s look at how you can clear up these confusions.

How to turn a bug report into a feature request

Let’s look at a real-world example.

Marker.io, our tool, helps development teams collect website feedback from clients and colleagues. This includes bug reports with screenshots, annotations, technical metadata, and more.

A few months back, a customer contacted support. They said: “Hey, my client can’t see bugs that were already logged by our internal QA team. This leads to duplicate reports. What’s going on?”

But our tool is made this way on purpose. We wanted to keep it simple for guest reporters who aren’t tech experts, so they don’t get overwhelmed by lots of complicated bug reports.

Again — a conscious design decision, perceived as a bug!

So, we turned that bug report into a new feature request, in Canny, on behalf of the client.

This turned out to be something other customers wanted, and it gave us:

• Insight into our customers’ pain points, which we can use when designing the new feature
• Ideas for other use cases, explanations, and expectations from our end users

This kind of information is invaluable to us.

But there are a few challenges:

1. Figuring out the problem and rephrasing it as a feature request. “My client can’t see feedback from internal QA” – presented as a bug – really means “Allow guest reporters to see feedback from members”. In some cases, we need to discuss this further with the customer.

2. Grouping similar feature requests. Users describe your platform in various ways. This means customer support has to work hard to figure out what features are being asked for. They have to avoid duplicate requests and combine them into existing ones.

Case study: transforming bugs into features

Sometimes, features and enhancements can be perceived as bugs.

They can:

• Create performance issues
• Cause unwanted behavior (e.g., autoplaying videos…)
• Introduce security flaws
• Make the product more complicated from a user experience perspective

But with smart product design, you can also flip the script, and turn limitations into advantages.

That’s exactly what happened with Gmail.

They had a built-in delay of about five seconds when processing an email message.

Some might have viewed this as a performance issue or minor bug. But the Gmail team turned it into the “undo send” feature.

Now you can even customize how long you have to cancel an email, from five to thirty seconds.

If your product makes users wait for a bit, consider implementing a similar hack. You can get an easy win that elevates your product’s user experience.

This proves once again that sometimes the line between a bug and a feature is more about perspective and creativity than anything else.

Bug vs feature: how to prioritize

Managing a backlog full of customer issues while juggling a feedback board loaded with feature requests can be tough.

Some teams choose to “fix all bugs before working on new features”.

However, developers often find working on new features more exciting.

For a novice project manager, deciding what to prioritize can be tricky.

But there’s a simple solution to this issue. Despite their differences, bugs and features share one thing: missing functionality.

Simply put, “bug” or “feature”, as shown above, is just a label.

Yes, understanding the nature of each issue aids in task prioritization, but:

• Can you confidently say that all your bug fixes are more crucial than new features?
• …and are these new features truly going to affect your bottom-line more than this app-breaking bug?

(Extreme examples, but the point stands)

What brings the biggest value for the customer?

Whether it’s a bug or feature request — rearrange your bug tracker’s labels. For instance:

• Paying (this bug/lack of feature is impacting paying customers)
• Breaking/deal-breaker (we will lose customers due to this missing feature/bug)
• and so on

With proper organization, the item with the highest customer value tops the list, whether it’s a bug or a feature request.

Another good way to gauge feature request value is with Canny’s upvote feature (and you can even sort by MRR impact!).

Remember these two points during this process:

• Don’t assume that creating a new feature is quick. It often ends up introducing more bugs.
• Your developers are likely to advocate for new features over bug fixes. Yes — working on a new feature is more fun than fixing bugs. No surprise there!

Maximizing product development: the bug vs. feature equation

Turns out that the difference between a “bug” and a “feature” is pretty nuanced.

Design choices and how customers see things can make a bug become a feature, or vice versa.

But the main principle stays the same: focus on customer value. Evaluate the impact of the bug or feature on the user experience, improve your product, and prioritize tasks effectively.

Nathan Vander Heyden

Nathan is Head of Content & SEO at Marker.io, a visual feedback tool to collect bug reports and feedback during website development.

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The post Bug vs feature: what’s the difference? (guide + examples) first appeared on Canny Blog.

The post Bug vs feature: what’s the difference? (guide + examples) appeared first on Canny Blog.

By this point, you’ve seen ChatGPT and how it can streamline your everyday product management tasks. But does it all stop here?

Definitely not!

AI’s projected to continue growing. It’s valued at nearly 100 billion USD and is expected to grow 20x by 2030 – up to almost two trillion USD (Statista).

But what led to this massive and rapid growth?

Why AI and why now?

In 2022 the whole world woke up to ChatGPT 3.0. The possibilities of generative artificial intelligence suddenly became endless and very accessible.

But what exactly happened?

1. We now have more data than ever. And everyone needs a way to manage it. AI not only manages it, but also uses data to learn and evolve.
2. We finally got enough computational power to power AI.
3. Open source building became prevalent, and progress started happening even faster.
4. Robots proved themselves: they beat humans at chess and Go, “drive” cars, give medical diagnoses, and create text.
5. New deep learning algorithms led to breakthroughs in image and speech recognition.
6. More and more investors boosted the industry.

Now, many of us can’t imagine living and working without AI.

Automation saves us time on tedious tasks. We get more efficient and productive. At the same time, AI also gets more efficient and intelligent. Machine learning helps AI get smarter every second.

Generative AI is the latest development and a big buzzword right now. It produces human-like content: text, images, videos, music, and more.

The question on everyone’s mind is – will AI replace me as a PM? Here’s what Rachel Wynn, a fellow product expert, thinks.

“Artificial intelligence tools will help great product managers work better. They are a catalyst for product managers to uplevel their skills and focus on work that AI can’t do. This is good news for everyone. If product managers are worried about AI taking over their jobs, they should learn to use AI while further developing the skills.”

Rachel Wynn, Founder & Coach at Wynn Product Consulting

So let’s not fear technological progress – let’s embrace it! 

Top AI tools for product managers

Let’s explore some of the best AI tools for product managers. You might’ve heard of some of these, but we hope you also discover some new ones.

Note #1: we’re breaking these tools down by category. Some of them blur the lines between those categories though.

Note #2: this is not a comprehensive list of all AI tools. These are the top tools we either use or find fascinating at Canny. Want to add a tool to this list? Shoot us a message!

Let’s jump in!

Text-based AI tools

ChatGPT

ChatGPT, a chatbot by OpenAI, is, of course, at the top of the list. Many SaaS tools are using ChatGPT to power their AI components. And for a very good reason – ChatGPT is crushing it!

This generative AI tool needs little explanation. You can have human-like conversations with it and get all sorts of text:

• Research
• Text editing and rewrites
• Code fixes
• Text generation
• Code generation
• Text summary
• And more

ChatGPT-4 now connects to various plugins that can process text –  from webpages and PDFs.

These plugins can also generate memes, diagrams, and more.

Overall, ChatGPT-4 has moved way beyond simple text generation.

Product managers have successfully used ChatGPT to:

• Prioritize ideas
• Manage data
• Create launch plans
• + more

We’ve covered seven different use cases from top product managers here – check it out for more ideas and prompts!

Google Bard

Bard is Google AI’s response to ChatGPT. In Google’s words, it’s “a conversational generative artificial intelligence chatbot.” So it’s more than just an AI writing tool.

Bard can:

• Answer various questions: open-ended, challenging, and unusual
• Write scripts, poems, emails, and letters
• Compose music
• Translate languages
• Solve math problems
• Code

Product managers can use Bard to:

• Quickly learn about new developments in the industry
• Gather competitive intel
• Analyze images
• Write support documentation
• Summarize articles
• Create project plans
• Generate code
• Brainstorm ideas
• Communicate with the team and customers
• Prioritize ideas
• Analyze feedback

Alisha Outridge is the Chief Technology & Product Officer at TuneCore. She is one of the early adopters of Google Bard and other AI tools for product management.

Missive

Missive is a team inbox that you can use for internal and external communications. It streamlines email, SMS, and social media messages into a unified inbox.

This tool helps product managers in many ways. 

“Missive also provides a platform for real-time interaction with clients and team members. Everyone can stay on the same page: customer support & customer success, PMs, developers, etc.”

Philippe Lehoux, CEO at Missive

Missive’s AI integration can really boost productivity. You get the full power of the GPT-4 prompt at your fingertips. It lets you:

• Summarize and extract essential points from customer emails
• Write replies to customer questions
• Fix your grammar mistakes or typos
• Streamline the most tedious part of your job
• Excel at the most exciting and important aspects

Missive and Canny have been long-standing partners, and we’re excited to see them doing so well with AI.

Recruitee

Recruitee helps automate recruitment tasks. Using OpenAI’s natural language processing (NLP), it can now:

• Draft engaging and easy-to-read job descriptions
• Create copy for career site/section of the site
• Put together email templates for candidates

This helps product managers involved in hiring and expanding their teams.

Notion

Notion is all about smarter document organization. So it’s only natural that they rely on AI to improve their tool.

Now Notion AI can help product managers:

• Summarize any text (like meeting notes)
• Analyze text and instantly generate action items
• Fix spelling and grammar
• Translate
• Edit voice and tone
• Explain, expand, or shorten any text
• Help you get started or move past writer’s block

tl;dv

tl;dv is a meeting recorder that transcribes and summarizes your calls. It’s useful for calls with customers, prospects, and your team.

Within seconds after the call, you receive a full recording, transcript, and AI summary of your meeting. It also automatically logs action items in your favorite productivity tool.

“I’ve enjoyed using call recording tools for customer calls. Tools like tl;dv help synthesize information from customer calls. I like using these AI summaries alongside my notes. The latter focus on non-verbal communication.”

Rachel Wynn, Founder & Coach at Wynn Product Consulting

Instead of worrying about taking notes, PMs can focus on being present. tl;dv integrates with all popular video meeting tools. It also lets you create clips from video recordings.

“tl;dv empowers product managers to customize their AI summary output. For example, you can tag a conversation as a UX research interview or a sprint planning session. Our AI can automatically recognize and tag bug mentions or UX feedback and send it to your favorite tool (like Canny).”

Raphael Allstadt, co-founder and CEO of tl;dv

Design, image, and video generation

Descript

Descript helps you write, record, transcribe, edit, collaborate, and share videos and podcasts. Video creation often has many moving parts. Descript is centralizing them all in one place

It gets better. Descript released a new tool called Regenerate that brings audio editing to a new level.

“Say you recorded a customer interview, and now you’re editing it. Most of the edits will sound good, but not all of them. Some cuts create a sudden change in the speaker’s tone.

That’s where Regenerate comes in. 

Now you can just select the gap between the words and click Regenerate. It will grow new audio cells that make my edit sound seamless. No scarring, no unsightly growths.”

Andrew Mason, CEO and founder of Descript

Descript is taking care of videos too. Descript’s new Eye Contact effect basically rotates your eyeballs in their sockets. This way, you’re always looking at the screen throughout your video. This is super useful when you’re glancing at your notes or script while recording a video.

Source

Overall, product managers can really showcase the benefits of their products. They can also take their user interview recordings to the next level.

DALL-E

DALL-E uses text-to-image models developed by OpenAI. It relies on deep learning methodologies to generate digital images from prompts. These prompts are called natural language descriptions.

With DALL-E, you can create any sort of image. Why would a product manager need that?

• Ideate physical products
• Create a brand identity
• Generate product announcement visuals 

Midjourney

Midjourney is a similar tool – it also generates images from prompts. But it focuses on “image manipulation and transformation. It offers various tools and filters to modify and stylize existing visuals.” (Simplilearn)

Product managers need to do a lot of talking, convincing, and explaining. So why not use visuals to help?

“People are notoriously poor at reading text while listening to you talk about a topic. Instead, create imagery that matches the point you’re making in your slide. Also, remove extra text and let your voice make the point.”

Garrett Rysko, Group Product Manager at Stealth Startup, featured speaker at ProductSchool

Garrett’s article on Medium illustrates how PMs can use Midjourney to create:

• Visual prototypes
• Buyer personas
• Web and logo design
• + more

Figma

Figma is known and loved by many designers around the globe. Our design team at Canny uses Figma too!

Figma’s AI additions are making the tool even more powerful. Figma acquired Diagram to bring more AI features like:

• Ideas summary
• Design recommendations
• Production-ready code generation

Now, PMs can visualize their ideas so much faster and easier with Figma.

“In this new era of AI, the possibilities are endless. Not just for design, but across the entire product development process.”

Noah Levin, VP of Product Design at Figma

“Figma has endless AI plugins to choose from. That allows us to focus more on designing at a high-level vs. spending time in individual pixels.”

Sarah Hum, co-founder, designer & product manager at Canny

Tome

Tome lets you communicate and get your ideas across with ease. People have called it “the PowerPoint killer”. This tool helps you create stunning yet simple presentations. Our design and product teams at Canny love it!

Tome’s AI tools help product managers:

• Move past the writers’/designers’ block
• Rapidly generate images, text, variations, and outlines
• Build on what you love until you achieve your vision

“Tome isn’t a deck, or a doc, or a splash page. It’s built for the way we communicate today: a fluid, multimedia canvas that lives on the web and looks great on any screen. Consider Tome your AI thought partner.”

Henri Liriani, co-founder and CPO at Tome

Canva

Canva is a beloved tool for many designers and marketers. Since its inception, Canva has evolved to be a very easy to use tool that saves a lot of time. Most people need to quickly create some visuals, and Canva has simplified that process.

Now, Canva’s testing and adding AI components, too. Gabriela Otero, Content Specialist at Canva, commented on Canva’s AI.

“Magic design can create designs in seconds based on a written prompt from a user. And Canva’s AI image generator does exactly what you expect it to – it creates custom images. There’s more to come as well!”

Gabriela Otero, Content Specialist at Canva

Canva is a bit similar to Figma. It lets PMs visualize their product ideas and better communicate with the team.

Flux.ai

Flux.ai is a very niche tool for PCB (printed circuit board) engineers. It’s quite impressive as it is. Their AI addition, Copilot, is reducing the busy work involved in this process. 

Flux Copilot is a conversational AI and LLM (large language model). It helps design and even wire components together. Basically, it can help hardware engineers build faster, smarter, and more creatively.

Here’s how Copilot can help product managers:

• Brainstorm solutions to kick off new projects or debug
• Suggest and create connections on schematic
• Answer contextual questions like the capabilities of a particular component

Data science and management

Kadoa

Kadoa uses AI to effortlessly extract, transform, and integrate complex data from sources like websites, PDFs, or CSVs.

“We’re on a mission to eliminate the need for manual data processing work. That work is tedious, error-prone, and expensive.”

Adrian Krebs, co-founder at Kadoa

The team at Kadoa noticed a common pain point very early on: extracting scattered and unstructured data from various sources. That process is both expensive and maintenance-heavy.

They came up with a solution. Kadoa uses AI to navigate, understand, and transform unstructured data from any source. The orchestrating AI agent chooses the best strategy for each task, such as where to go and what to extract. Their vision is to become the Zapier for data. They aim to provide the building blocks to solve any data processing problem.

Kadoa helps product managers specifically by enabling them to access and analyze data without coding or manual work. Popular use cases include:

• Competitor monitoring
• Market research
• Lead generation

“One of the superpowers of AI models is not generating text or images. It’s understanding and transforming unstructured data. So we’ll see many use cases around unlocking the potential of unstructured data and workflow automation.

Adrian Krebs, co-founder at Kadoa

Today, billions of dollars are spent on manual data entry and data processing work. By automating these processes through AI, businesses can start growing with the help of data.

Operations

ClickUp

ClickUp is another tool we use daily at Canny. And their teams love Canny back!

Now it’s even easier to work through projects in ClickUp. For example, product managers can use ClickUp AI to:

• Summarize text
• Suggest action items
• Edit and format copy
• Generate AI content ideas
• Suggest feature names
• Write surveys

Alltius.ai

Alltius.ai released an AI component called KNO. Its goal is to become your perfect AI assistant. This virtual assistant can help PMs:

• Get faster and better answers than search engines
• Provide better responses than traditional chatbots
• Reply to users across all channels

“I am amazed at how many things KNO can do well without explicit training. In fact, we are so knee-deep into generative AI tools that almost every part of our business uses some aspect of it. From forming the bedrock of our core learning platform, writing code, and all the way to creating marketing campaigns – it’s all AI.”

Vibs Abhishek, co-founder and CEO at Alltius.ai

Peak.ai

Peak is the AI platform that optimizes product inventory, pricing, and customer personalization. With Peak, you don’t need to spend valuable time on mundane operational tasks.

Peak has always had AI at its core. It’s less flashy than generative AI that’s stealing all the headlines right now. But, for some businesses, this type of “boring” AI is more valuable.

Product managers can ultimately create better physical products with the help of Peak AI.

Kindly.ai

Kindly.ai helps your support and sales teams delight your customers. You can improve your customer communications with Kindly through:

• Virtual shopping assistant
• AI chatbot
• Conversion optimization tools

These are all powered by advanced machine learning algorithms that enhance user experience.

For product managers: this chatbot can uncover:

• Customer feedback
• Feature requests
• Bug reports
• Ideas
• + more

Automating the chatbot experience can make idea management a lot easier.

Customer insights

Segment (by Twilio)

When it comes to customer engagement, the “intelligence” part of AI gets trained on customer data. So it’s imperative to have clean, accurate, and usable data.

Twilio acquired Segment and built their AI component to help users do more with their data.

Twilio’s CustomerAI combines the power of LLMs with rich customer data. This helps product managers engage with their customers better.

Twilio and Segment users can now:

• Get deeper insights about their customers
• Optimize marketing campaigns
• Personalize customer communications

The last point is significant because “92% of businesses today use AI-driven personalization to drive growth.”

Understanding customer needs and pain points better leads to building more tailored products. That’s what Segment can do for product managers.

Amplitude

Amplitude is an AI-powered tool that has been using AI technology for a while now. Their features like recommendation engine and product monitoring are proof of that.

Both of these features preceded the AI hype of 2022. Product experts have been relying on Amplitude Recommend since 2021. And Amplitude Insight came out to help PMs monitor their product performance, usage, adoption rates, and their KPIs.

Since then, Amplitude has added even more to their AI toolkit.

“We’ve identified the two biggest blockers for product managers:

1. Having high quality data
2.  Being able to translate a question into the analysis.”

Jeffrey Wang, co-founder & chief architect at Amplitude Analytics

To help with those challenges, Amplitude built these new AI tools.

Here are some of the newer AI tools Amplitude’s added:

• Data Assistant – helps to measure and qualify data
• Ask Amplitude – build the bridge between business questions and insights
• Amplitude Experiment – identifies the hypothesis, designs the experiment, builds the variants, deploys the changes, and assesses the results

“All of these AI tools exist primarily to empower product managers. They can ask and answer their own questions about their users. We want PMs to be able to run experiments without needing a data scientist by their side at each step. Our ultimate goal is to bring the best practices of building great products to every PM at every company.”

Jeffrey Wang, co-founder & chief architect at Amplitude Analytics

The future of AI for product management

One thing’s for certain: AI is here to stay.

“AI will soon be everywhere: in both software and hardware products. It will help humans become even more efficient. Some jobs will be lost, and some new will spawn.”

Gjermund Norderhaug, Head of Product at Kindly

Most product experts agree that AI can help you manage products better.

“AI will augment the product managers’ tedious manual work more and more. Cleaning nasty backlogs, writing PRDs, or taking meeting notes will become a thing of the past. This will help them spend more time speaking to customers, deeply understanding their needs, and providing creative solutions to their problems.”

Raphael Allstadt, co-founder and CEO of tl;dv

Choosing your AI tools can get complicated with so many different options, though.

“Every organization needs to be selective when choosing AI tools. Simply adding AI won’t solve problems. There is no “one size fits all” for product organizations.” 

Rachel Wynn, Founder & Coach at Wynn Product Consulting

We hope that this list has been helpful!

Remember: AI isn’t here to take away your job. Instead, it can help you become a more efficient product manager.

“AI will support rather than replace, complementing and augmenting how you work.”

Benjamin Humphrey, CEO and co-founder at Dovetail

If you want to stay up to date on product management trends, sign up for our newsletter right here!

Maria Vasserman

Maria loves all things creative – writing, photography, movies and beyond When she's not creating content to tell the world about Canny, she's either photographing a wedding, jumping at a rock concert, camping, travelling, snowboarding, or walking her dog

All Posts - Website · Twitter - Facebook - LinkedIn

The post Emerging product management AI tools in 2023 first appeared on Canny Blog.

The post Emerging product management AI tools in 2023 appeared first on Canny Blog.

There are many ways to continue your education. There are always schools, but they require lots of time and investment. Their material is also often outdated.

You can also check out online courses and other free resources out there – blogs, guides, ebooks, educational videos, etc. At Canny, we strive to help you stay updated on the latest product management trends. That’s what this blog is all about!

One of the ways we enjoy learning is through podcasts. That’s why we started our own! And there are many cool podcasts we draw inspiration from.

That’s what we’re going to talk about in this blog post. Keep reading to discover the best product management podcasts.

Why podcasts?

You could read articles, take courses, download ebooks, or go on social media. Why listen to product management podcasts? There are a few reasons.

Easy to digest

Podcasts are usually regular conversations. They’re not overly technical, so it’s easy for most people to understand.

Learn from the best in the industry for free

Most, if not all podcasts are free. And many great minds in product management share everything they know in their podcasts. Why not take advantage of that?

Get tried and proven methods

Many podcasts we mention here give you actionable tips and insights. You can implement them right away knowing that someone else has already tried and succeeded using these methods.

Multitask while listening

If you love multitasking, podcasts are made for you. You can walk, work out, clean the house, or do other mundane tasks while learning. That’s what we do! What’s not to love?

Learn the PM language

If you want to get an “in” with the product managers, you’ve got to speak their language. And there’s no better way to learn it than listening to a product person. When you learn how they talk, you’ll become one of them!

Let’s explore our favorite product management podcasts.

Lenny’s Podcast

Lenny’s Podcast feels like you’re listening to two friends talking. And very often, that’s exactly what it is!

Lenny Rachitsky draws from his years of experience in product management at Airbnb. His guests, just like him, talk about working in large and established companies like Microsoft, Amazon, WeWork, and others. He also features guests from smaller companies.

We like Lenny’s personal touch and unique stories. We also resonate with his humility – he’s not afraid to admit that he doesn’t have all the answers and talk about his struggles as a product owner.

Overall, Lenny’s podcast is a valuable insight into product management. It offers fantastic career advice and actionable tips from top minds in product.

Lenny’s podcast gets lots of love on social media – see a few examples below.

 “Lenny’s Podcast has amazing guests (like PMs from Airtable, Asana, Airbnb, Instacart). The discussions are interesting and well-edited without being rambling.”

Laura Campbell

Lenny’s podcast is the only one on our list that features a person’s name. What a cool way of capitalizing on your personal brand!

Get ready to dedicate some time to these podcasts – they are lengthy (60+ minutes).

The Product Podcast 

The Product Podcast is created by Product School – an excellent resource for new and experienced product managers alike. It uses a variety of formats:

• Interviews
• Panel discussions
• 1:1 conversations
• Day in the life episodes
• Conference recaps
• Webinar recordings
• And more

New product managers will find lots of value here – it features excellent interview and career advice.

Product professionals with experience can get an insight into the future of product management, various approaches, frameworks, and more.

The Product Podcast attracts brilliant PMs from companies like the NY Times, AmEx, LinkedIn, and more.

Here’s what people say about this podcast:

“It’s a great resource on different facets of product management from accomplished product leaders.”

The episodes vary in length – from short 15-minute chats to 40+ minutes discussions.

Product Hunt Radio

This podcast has not one but two hosts – Ryan Hoover and Abadesi Osunsade. So this podcast is almost a talk show. 

Ryan Hoover is the founder of Product Hunt (hence the name), so his dedication to finding and spotlighting awesome products is evident.

Abadesi Osunsade is another great product expert and educator. She also spent some time at Product Hunt before becoming a trusted advisor for many reputable companies. There’s a common thread across Abadesi’s career – her focus on education.

These attributes make Ryan and Abadesi exceptional podcast hosts. And it shows. Their episodes feature discussions about various product management topics:

• Raising capital
• Designing and selling great products
• Hiring top talent
• Pivoting and progressing your career in product management
• And a lot more

Each episode is about 45 minutes long.

Product Chats

We can’t leave out our own podcast, can we?

Product Chats dives deep into various aspects of product management. From just starting as a PM to leading large teams in established organizations – we’ve got it all.

Product Chats features product professionals from G2, Sephora, Help Scout, and others. They all share their journey in product management and advice for aspiring product leaders.

Here’s a preview of one of our podcasts.

This podcast’s episodes are a bit shorter – 20-30 minutes each.

Masters of Scale

This podcast is hosted by Reid Hoffman – LinkedIn co-founder, Greylock partner, and a Silicon Valley investor. His impressive career in product includes Apple, Paypal, Zynga, Airbnb, OpenAI, Microsoft, and more (as if this wasn’t enough!).

“Each episode proves an unconventional theory about how businesses scale, with guests sharing their stories of entrepreneurship, leadership, product strategy, management, and fundraising.”

Reid Hoffman

The podcast also shakes up the typical interview format. Bob Safian (former editor in chief of Fast Company) leads the “Rapid Response” section. It focuses on crisis response, rebuilding, diversity & inclusion, leadership change, and much more.

Each episode is between 20 and 40 minutes long.

How I Built This

How I Built This is hosted by National Public Radio’s (NPR) famous radio host and journalist Guy Raz.

Guy’s background in journalism makes him an outstanding host. Listeners note Guy that he asks tough questions, making the podcast particularly interesting.

“In each episode, founders reveal deep, intimate moments of doubt and failure and share insights on their eventual success.”

Guy Raz

This podcast features prominent founders from Headspace, Spanx, and Discord. How I Built This invites not only PMs, so you get a slightly different and well-rounded angle on product development.

“How I Built This is more narrative-based – it focuses less on the technicalities of products. I particularly liked great interviews with the founders of Discord and Headspace.”

Reddit user

Prepare to spend 30-80 minutes on each episode.

100 PM

If you’re looking for a more technical product management podcast, this one’s for you.

100 PM features interviews with one hundred active product managers – from startups to enterprises and everything in between.

The podcast aims to be the web’s largest single free resource for product management topics. It has tons of great discussions about business, technology, and design.

The host, Suzanne Abate, is a prominent investor and educator in product management. 

100 PM also features case studies and various product management models you can adopt.

Note: this podcast has been on hold for a while. The content is evergreen though, so you can still get a lot of value from it!

One Knight in Product

Despite being one of the younger podcasts about product management, One Knight in Product has gained traction.

This podcast features conversations with product managers, product leaders, product marketers, UX professionals, and anyone involved in product management and delivery.

Jason Knight, the podcast’s creator, loves outstanding products. He also enjoys telling the world about them. It’s evident from his podcast, Medium articles, and social media presence.

Each episode is 40-50 minutes long.

Rocketship FM

This podcast has been featured in Forbes, Huffington Post, Inc, and Entrepreneur. It touches on topics like:

• Entrepreneurship
• Product management
• Tech
• Growth
• Sales
• Funding
• And more

Michael Sacca, designer, entrepreneur, and CEO at Gigantic, and Mike Belsito, co-founder of Product Collective, host this podcast.

Product Collective is another valuable resource for PMs you should definitely check out.

If you’re looking for a tech and business podcast that covers a wide range of trending topics, check out Rocketship FM. You’ll learn about product management but also about the tech industry overall.

Each episode is around 30 minutes long.

Product Thinking

Last but not least, we’d like to highlight Product Thinking from Melissa Perri.

Melissa is well known in the industry. Her engaging social media presence attracts many product managers every day. No wonder her podcast is such a hit!

“It’s not just about training the product managers who work alongside developers daily to build a better product. It’s about taking a step back, approaching the systems within organizations, and leveling up product leadership to improve these systems.”

Melissa Perri

What stands out about Product Thinking is its actionable advice that PMs can apply right away.

Melissa is also the Founder & Lead Instructor at the Product Institute. She shares a lot about that initiative on the podcast too.

The length of each episode varies from 15 to 60 minutes.

20VC

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC) interviews the world’s leading venture capitalists. 20 VC provides insights into the venture capital space and the journeys of successful founders.

Some of the guests include Sequoia’s Doug Leone and Benchmark’s Bill Gurley.

The podcast is broken down into categories:

• 20VC fund
• 20 growth
• 20 sales
• 20 product

The podcast also features notable founders such as Spotify’s Daniel Ek, LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman, and Snowflake’s Frank Slootman.

Listeners praise Harry Stebbings, the host, for his engaging questions and the ability to extract valuable insights from his guests.

“Harry is terrific. The content is interesting and he doesn’t waste time. Love 20vc.”

YossiLevi12

“The content is interesting, and the guest lineup is great. Harry has engaging questions for his guests, and I’ve learned a lot. This podcast is a must-listen for anyone interested in early-stage investing.”

Harry Campbell

Each episode is about 45-60 minutes long.

BUILD with Blake Bartlett

BUILD with Blake Bartlett focuses on the three key ingredients required to build a software startup: people, product, and growth. It features conversations between venture capitalist Blake Bartlett and some of the most intelligent individuals in the software industry.

OpenView produces the podcast. It’s a venture capital firm that has invested in companies like Datadog, Expensify, and Calendly.

Some fans call this podcast underrated and appreciate insights from many CEOs of product-led growth (PLG) companies.

This podcast is great for busy PMs – some episodes are only 2-3 minutes long. More in-depth conversations are about 30 minutes long.

The Product Manager Podcast

This podcast has two hosts: Michael Luchen, director of product at float.com, and Hannah Clark, editor of The Product Manager. The show offers a comprehensive view of product from various perspectives. It features candid and actionable insights that can guide listeners through every stage of the product life cycle.

Each episode is 20-30 minutes long.

Why spend time on podcasts?

Are you still wondering if podcasts are worth your time? First, try listening to a few. Maybe you’ll love the format so much that you won’t need any more convincing.

Overall, you need to stay curious to continue growing. No matter where you are in your PM career, it’s essential to never stop learning.

After all, the investment in yourself is one of the most valuable ones out there. Nobody can take away your knowledge! We hope that you’ve enjoyed these recommendations. If you’d like us to mention your podcast, give us a shout!

Maria Vasserman

Maria loves all things creative – writing, photography, movies and beyond When she's not creating content to tell the world about Canny, she's either photographing a wedding, jumping at a rock concert, camping, travelling, snowboarding, or walking her dog

All Posts - Website · Twitter - Facebook - LinkedIn

The post Top 13 product management podcasts every PM should listen to first appeared on Canny Blog.

The post Top 13 product management podcasts every PM should listen to appeared first on Canny Blog.

One of the best ways to do that is through product announcements. There are a few different types of them.

A release note is a document that outlines the changes made to a product. Release notes update your users, teammates, and stakeholders on your product development progress.

Changelogs are more technical documents that dive deeper into the changes. They’re primarily for developers to keep track of progress.

We’ll cover different types of product release notes and changelogs, their importance, and best practices. We’ll also showcase some examples and templates, discuss changelog management tools, and help you get the most out of your feature announcements.

If you’ve never published release notes or want to improve your product documentation, follow along. 

Release notes vs changelogs

First off, let’s go over some definitions.

What are release notes?

As mentioned, release notes are basically your product announcements. The target audience is users, so release notes explain changes in plain language, omitting the technical jargon and details. The main purpose is to explain the effect on the user.

A changelog is a file, an article, or a webpage that lists all notable changes to your app, site, etc. Changelogs focus on the technical aspects of the changes, such as new features, bug fixes, code refactoring, and API modifications. They often contain references to specific commits or code changes in the version control system.

Historically, changelogs were for developers. Here’s a typical changelog entry from Facebook on GitHub.

Some people refer to changelogs as release notes. And others make a distinction between these two terms.

Canny’s Changelog tool blurs the lines between release notes and changelogs.

“Coming from the product development world, we saw the need for better product announcements. Users want to know what’s new and improved in your product. And we needed an easy tool that helps us do that. So we created our own tool – for us and other SaaS companies out there. It brings customer feedback and product announcements together.”

Andrew Rasmussen, co-founder at Canny

Whatever you call your product announcements, it’s important to have them. Here’s why.

Why do you need product announcements?

Changelogs and release notes are important for:

• Documenting your work
• Educating your customers
• Keeping your products updated
• Positioning yourself as transparent

Here’s more about each of those reasons.

They document your work

At its core, release notes help your team stay organized. When you have release notes, you can quickly reference them to see what was changed in the past and how.

You’ll also minimize the back and forth with your team through release notes. 

Not every project involves all team members. So, release notes are a great way to keep uninvolved teams informed. They’ll learn about changes as soon as you publish your release notes.

They educate your users

New feature adoption is a common problem for a product manager. Many users crave efficiency but are still hesitant to try new things.

Release notes help push them in that direction. They break down the new feature, guide users through it, and remind them how your tool works. A good release note is a free teacher.

Release notes are also an opportunity to link to additional help docs and remind users where they can find support resources.

They make the product feel fresh

When people use a product, they like to see it evolve. Right now, for example, AI is all the rage. Many tools are adding AI components to their software. And at this point, users are almost expecting it.

If you decide to add AI to your tool, you’d want your users to know about it, right? There’s no point in putting in all the hard work if no one notices. You want your users to know and use these new features.

Especially if your product uses a subscription model, people want to see it updated. Consumer demands change, and your product needs to measure up.

From minor design improvements to major feature enhancements, your tool will go through many iterations. So let your users know about it. Show your progress and invite your users to join you on this journey.

Release notes are a great way to do that.

They help you be transparent

Similar to the previous point, release notes help you keep your customers around. Here’s how.

1. A user submits a feature request
2. That feature idea makes it to the product roadmap
3. They automatically subscribe to the progress of that feature
4. You build that feature and publish a release notes entry
5. They get an auto-notification about it (if you’re using Canny’s Changelog)

Bonus: they can see other updates in your release notes too.

This shows that you listen to your users. That’ll help them trust that you’re improving your product.

People love seeing the “behind the scenes” and “how it’s done” content. Release notes can shed light on your “backstage” software release processes.

Types of product announcements entries

Overall, release notes are pretty standard and straightforward. Depending on the nature of your new release, you can borrow certain parts from each release note entry (which is what we did with Canny’s Changelog).

There are a few types of posts you’d add to your release notes. Let’s discuss each one.

Major update announcements

Intended audience: users, leads, team members, shareholders

When you’re adding a major new feature, make sure to give this announcement the attention it deserves.

These release notes can be longer and include more details, such as:

• Before and after screenshots and screen recordings
• Clear explanation of the change

Note: Give users some time to get used to the change too. Many tools keep the old (legacy) version available for some time for this exact reason.

Non-major update announcement

Intended audience: current users, team members

You can keep it simple when adding or fixing something less groundbreaking. Make sure to explain why you did it( we often show how many upvotes we got on our Canny board, for example).

Explain what changed, but don’t go too deep into the technical details. Instead, link out to help guides and additional resources.

Bug fixes

Intended audience: developers, current users

Bug fixes are a great example of non-major feature enhancements. You don’t want to draw too much attention to the fact that you had bugs. But let’s be real – every software has them. And showing that you’re working on them makes you look transparent and trustworthy.

Security updates

Intended audience: current users

While very important, security updates fall under the category of non-major updates. They showcase your organization as responsible and reliable.

Very few people want to read lengthy descriptions of your security updates. So it’s even more important to keep these short. 

Changelogs

Intended audience: developers

A standard changelog is detailed and technical. It usually includes:

• Version number
• Release date
• Description of the latest release or a fixed bug
• Compatibility with previous versions
• User impact
• Manual for future use
• Screenshots and links

Developers use changelogs to schedule upgrades, troubleshoot issues, and stay updated about the latest software developments.

Version control system logs

Intended audience: developers

There are a few terms that people use interchangeably to describe these updates: 

• Version control system logs 
• Commit logs
• Revision history

These are records that keep track of changes made to a project or set of files over time in a version control system (VCS).

A common example is GitHub. Developers use it to share code, work on projects together, and manage and track code changes.

Github logs are visible to the public. This is a space where developers can collaborate and share ideas – kind of like social media for coding.

Version control system logs usually include the following information:

• Commit ID: a unique identifier for each change or commit made in the VCS. Typically, it’s a hexadecimal string, such as a SHA-1 hash.
• Author
• Date and time
• Commit message: a descriptive message that summarizes the purpose or nature of the changes made in the commit
• Changes: a detailed listing of the modified, added, or deleted files in the commit + specific changes made to each file. This may include line-by-line differences or a unified diff format.
• Branch or tag. Branches are different lines of development. Tags indicate specific points in the version history – releases or milestones for instance.
• Merge information: if the commit involves merging changes from multiple branches, the log will contain information about the branches involved.

A project’s version control logs are crucial to tracking and understanding its history.

Developers can:

• Find the record of all changes
• Review and revert to previous versions
• Figure out who made specific changes
• Understand the evolution of the codebase over time
• Coordinate work and collaborate
• Resolve conflicts when merging changes from multiple sources

If you’re looking for more inspiration and ideas, BroadInstitute provides great sample changelogs. Check them out here.

Product update formats

Different companies use different formats for their product announcements. Depending on your product and audience, you can pick a format that works best for you. It’s important to choose a format and stick with it. We’ll explain why consistency is so important later in the article. First, let’s walk through the various formats.

Text file

This is the simplest and most common format for a software release note. You can simply create a text document that lists the changes in reverse chronological order (put the newest releases at the top).

Each entry should include the version number, a brief description of the change, and any relevant details.

This format is easy to create and read for most users.

Changelog format

If you prefer a more technical approach, you can follow a typical changelog format. You can include categories like:

• Added
• Changed
• Fixed
• Removed

This format is particularly useful for developers and technical users who want a quick overview of the changes in each category.

With a changelog tool, you can also create HTML files for example.

Markdown

Markdown is a lightweight markup language that helps you format text quickly and easily. You can write release notes in Markdown and easily convert them into HTML or other formats.

If you’re hosting your updates on a platform like GitHub, you’ll likely use the Markdown format.

HTML

HTML provides a bit more flexibility with styling and layout. You can include links, images, and other multimedia elements, making your release notes more visually appealing.

PDF

PDF is a good option if you need to share your updates with external stakeholders or use them in official statements. The layout and formatting stay consistent, and it looks presentable. 

PDF is easy to read, print, and share across teams.

What to include

Depending on the format you choose, consider including the following elements to make your announcements more engaging.

Bullet-points

You can create a series of bullet points, each bullet representing a specific product change or a feature.

If you’re looking for a concise and skimmable format, this is it. It gets straight to the point.

Visuals

We recommend combining some written descriptions with visuals like screenshots and GIFs. They break up the text, help visual learners, and tell a story better than words can.

With screenshots, we recommend drawing readers’ attention to the part that you’re talking about. You can add boxes around the most important parts and/or blur the irrelevant parts of the page. Here’s an example.

Videos

Creating a quick video walkthrough can make your updates even easier to understand. Some people are visual learners, so they’d enjoy seeing rather than reading.

Generating release notes

There are a number of ways to generate release notes.

1. Version Control System (VCS) history

Version control systems like Git allow you to generate release notes based on commit histories. For instance, you can extract commit information using the git log command with specific formatting options, such as dates, authors, and changes.

2. Commit messages

Encourage your developers to write clear and informative commit messages describing each commit’s changes. Following a consistent format, such as the changelog format, can be helpful.

3. Integration with issue tracking systems

You can automatically create release notes by connecting issues and pull requests to versions or milestones in your issue tracker. You can use tools like Jira or GitHub for that.

4. Manual changelog

You can manually keep track of the changes you make to each version. You’d need to maintain a separate file where you add entries for each release, including the added features, changes, and bug fixes.

5. Automated tools

You can generate a structured and formatted changelog with these tools. They analyze your commit history, tags, and metadata. Some popular changelog generation tools include:

• Conventional commits

This tool follows the conventional commit message format and generates changelogs.

• GitHub Changelog Generator

This tool is designed to generate changelogs for GitHub repositories.

• Keep a Changelog

This project provides guidelines and a tool-agnostic format for writing changelogs. It also offers a Python library called towncrier for generating changelogs.

6. Canny’s Changelog

Canny’s Changelog is different. It’s designed so that everyone, even non-developers, can:

• Add entries
• Easily understand it
• Quickly find what they’re looking for
• Sort the entries
• Find more information

It’s much more visual and concise than most other changelogs. And it looks like a newsfeed, not a developer portal.

Canny’s Changelog is available on all plans! Here’s what our clients say about it.

[insert a GiveButter case study clip about the changelog]

Our changelog lets you easily tie your feature requests with product updates and notify your users.

Best practices for release notes

Here are a few more guidelines to make sure you publish engaging release notes. Follow these tips if you’d like your release notes to be an asset instead of a burden.

Make them clear & concise

It takes time to find the time, energy, and motivation to read long texts. It’s even more true when it comes to technical language.

If you want your release notes to be a truly useful source of information, make them as straightforward as possible. Answer the following questions:

• What was the problem?
• What changed?
• Why does it matter?
• How does it affect the user?
• Where can they learn more?

Simplify your language, keep sentences short, and break up the long paragraphs.

As a general rule, stick to only relevant information. It’s easy to get very involved and start describing the whole history of your tool. But leave that for another day.

Remember: even if your product is technical, you might have non-technical users. So try to make it interesting and valuable for them as well.

Post consistently

Some changes might be more significant than others. Still, try to publish most of your updates as release notes. People appreciate your updates – they’ll feel like they’re with you on your journey. They also get a sense that you’re constantly improving.

This will also keep you accountable. Knowing your users expect consistent updates will make you hit your deadlines more often.

Format consistently

Also, keep the format of your release notes consistent. Here’s an example from Keepachangelog:

• Added new features
• Changed for changes in existing functionality
• Deprecated for soon-to-be-removed features
• Removed for now removed features
• Fixed for any bug fixes
• Security in case of vulnerabilities

Use a variety of formatting to make your release notes entries even easier on the eye.

Headings help break down the text and logically group the changes. So does white space.

Text formatting (bold, underlined, italics) highlights the most essential parts and helps readers skim the text. Bulleted and numbered lists have a similar effect.

Follow reverse chronological order

Always publish the latest changes at the top – that’s the most relevant information for your users. They can scroll down to see your historical progress too.

Use visuals

Often, it’s easier to show than to describe something. Visuals like screenshots, GIFs, and videos can help here. Moreover, they’ll familiarize your users with the new features quicker. Next time they log in, they’ll remember the visual and know how to use the new feature.

Visuals also break up the text and make reading easier and more enjoyable.

Insert links

We keep repeating that release notes need to be short. But what if you’ve released a major change and need to explain it in detail?

That’s where you insert links to in-depth help articles and additional documentation.

You can also use your release notes to keep your users engaged. While they’re hooked, don’t let them get away. Link to related resources and keep them on your site longer!

Avoid confusion

We can’t stress this enough: make it simple. Here are some tips to help you do that:

• Stay away from confusing date formats (we recommend sticking to YYYY-MM-DD format)
• List deprecations, removals, and any breaking changes
• Document only noteworthy differences
• Don’t list commit log diffs

Involve other departments

If you’re using Canny for your product announcements, your users will get automatic notifications when a new changelog is published.

Still, you can amplify the message further. Involve your product marketing team – they can help spread the word.

Release notes and changelog examples

Now that you know what makes good release notes and changelogs, let’s illustrate it with examples.

Many of our clients use Canny’s Changelog tool. They find it easy to keep users up-to-date in one central location.

“When we built our Changelog, we wanted it to be more than your typical list of changes. We created a tool that helps you close your feedback loop.”

Sarah Hum, co-founder at Canny

When a new changelog entry is published, everyone who submitted, upvoted, or commented on this request gets an automatic notification. That includes current users and prospects. And this really makes the sales job easier.

Imagine this: a lead previously requested a feature and didn’t convert because it didn’t exist. Now they’re getting a notification that this feature is shipped. If that feature was a real dealbreaker to them, they might reconsider buying from you now.

Your current users will also find out about the new feature right away and will be able to try it out.

Canny’s changelog empowers you to follow our advice above, including custom formatting.

Here’s what it looks like.

AgencyAnalytics keeps their updates brief and to the point. When they introduce new features, they include visuals to keep it engaging and break up the text. See some examples of great release notes below.

We love ClickUp’s use of emojis and links – it keeps the readers engaged and curious to learn more. Notice how they link out to release notes and more information. They don’t clutter their changelog entry with it.

CommentSold’s changelog entries are typically longer, but they’re still easy to read and understand. It’s a great example of a more detailed but still digestible changelog. They walk you through the steps you need to take, and text styling (bold text in this instance) makes it easier to read.

Hive is great at telling a story in their changelog. Here’s what wasn’t working, how we fixed it, and how it works now. We love how they show a screenshot of a feature request that led to the development of this feature.

Respond.io is another example of a short and highly visual changelog.

GitHub’s changelog is another great example. They also have a separate Twitter account and an RSS feed for users to follow along the journey. It’s important to be where your users are!

We use our own changelog too!

Sometimes, it’s still hard to get going. That’s why we’ve prepared some templates – check out the next section.

Release notes and changelog templates

If you’re inspired to get started or amplify your changelog (and we hope you are!), check out these templates. They’ll give you prompts for your release notes, changelog entries, and some examples to spark that initial motivation.

Here is a release notes template for a bug fix.

And another release notes template to announce a new feature.

To get these + more editable templates, download our free Changelog templates right here!

Why product announcements are important

There’s no better way to keep all your stakeholders involved, engaged, and updated than through release notes.

Product update announcements don’t need to be a hassle. With a changelog tool like Canny, you can keep track of all your progress and delight your customers at the same time.

Book a free Canny demo and see how easy it is!

Maria Vasserman

Maria loves all things creative – writing, photography, movies and beyond When she's not creating content to tell the world about Canny, she's either photographing a wedding, jumping at a rock concert, camping, travelling, snowboarding, or walking her dog

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The post Why do you need release notes? (featuring great examples and templates) first appeared on Canny Blog.

The post Why do you need release notes? (featuring great examples and templates) appeared first on Canny Blog.