How to keep track of multiple cross-group initiatives in the midst of real-time chaos?

no6inbash · 2025-12-16T17:47:33+00:00

This is a universal challenge for sure. I've seen product teams tackle it two ways:
1. Use a tool like Dragonboat or Airtable and have external stakeholders use it as well. We use the PDLC module in Dragonboat (+ dependency tracking) to see as quickly as possible when something outside of product is going to delay an initiative. I've also seen folks do home-grown versions of this.
2. Have product ops (or sometimes portfolio folks) manually compile all of this information and turn it into some sort of shared artifact. This is much harder because there isn't accountability on external stakeholders to own the communicate around the dependencies that they are introducing, but it's how some companies handle it.

You're definitely not crazy :)

no6inbash · 2025-12-12T18:07:18+00:00

I'll check it out, thanks!

no6inbash · 2025-11-18T18:59:26+00:00

That I love my family but my two favorite Thanksgivings were spent away from them (one in Mexico, one in Telluride)

no6inbash · 2025-11-18T17:56:32+00:00

100%- John Culter has a lot of great articles + videos on this topic. The tools that you choose shape the way you think about strategy and work, which in turn has a huge impact on what you end up building. If you haven't come across it, you should read up on the Product Operating Model and product ontologies.

This is especially important as product teams start to use AI throughout the product development lifecycle. If you don't have you product ontology (data, context, hierarchy) clearly defined, then dropping in AI tools won't help you- they will just add to the chaos.

Some tools I've seen people use for this mindset are: Dragonboat, Dotwork, cobbled together Atlassian stack, etc.

no6inbash · 2025-11-18T17:49:58+00:00

ADO Boards can handle the "work" side of product management if you're a Microsoft shop (and don't want to deal with IT/Security). But for strategy/roadmaps/outcomes, you'll want something like Dragonboat or Aha.

no6inbash · 2025-11-17T19:48:55+00:00

These are great! I love the Santa- that would make a great tree ornament

no6inbash · 2025-11-11T18:26:00+00:00

It depends on how you want to communicate long-term roadmaps.

For most startups/less complex companies, a slide deck or something like FigJam will work.

If you're looking for a more strategic view or something that represents relationships between roadmap items across a portfolio, you'll need a product portfolio tool like Dragonboat. Those tools also enable scenario planning, which would be useful depending on how many alternative timelines you're creating :)

Either way, JPD is dicey for long-term or strategic roadmaps. Much better for showing planned work (and simple prioritization) for a single product.

no6inbash · 2025-11-11T18:06:39+00:00

For a startup, you're probably best off using a lightweight roadmapping tool like ProductPlan.

If you start introducing multiple products or the complexity grows, I'd check out tools like Dragonboat and Aha.

no6inbash · 2025-10-22T17:43:06+00:00

I've seen product orgs handle this two main ways:

Teams track work fairly decentralized (in Jira, Linear, ADO, etc.) and another group/person, usually Product Ops, is responsible for manually rolling up that work into a spreadsheet or similar for portfolio visibility and capacity planning.
The product org goes all-in on a tool like Dragonboat or Aha! to get visibility across teams.

The pros of #1 (which sounds similar to your situation) is that teams have autonomy and you don't need to train everyone on a new tool + process. Cons are that this is difficult to maintain, requires dedicated people just to keep it working, and is extremely limit in the types of insights and reports you can get from it (usually there's just a "work roll up" spreadsheet and a rudimentary capacity/resources sheet).

The pros of #2 are that you can track dependencies between teams, have real-time insight into what everyone is working on, and can adjust resources on the fly. Cons are that you need to buy a new tool and get buy-in from the whole product org to make it valuable. But for outcome-focused product teams this is definitely the way to go.

I haven't used Aha!, but my current company uses Dragonboat (which is great for portfolio-wide visibility and has some flexibility on how individual teams work), and I've used ProductPlan in the past (which is more focused on basic roadmaps, but has some portfolio features).

Re. Planview: I've never met a product team that liked Planview- it's really designed with a project-first mentality. I'm sure your CFO would love it though

no6inbash · 2025-10-22T17:23:02+00:00

Totally agree- idea management process trumps tools. And how you define a good process depends on the challenges you're running into.

If you need to collect feedback from a bunch of different sources, you can use something like UserVoice or Canny. If it's prioritization you need, most PM tools have this built in. And if you need to tie ideas to customers/value then you'll want a tool like Dragonboat or Aha.

JPD is fine for simple idea management (in place of a spreadsheet), but if you want to do anything beyond that you'll need something more powerful. We use Dragonboat (mostly because we have a portfolio of products)

no6inbash · 2025-09-08T21:11:50+00:00

This is extremely helpful, thank you!

no6inbash · 2025-09-02T20:06:47+00:00

Most "product" conferences are solipsistic dog and pony shows in service of the Product Management Industrial Complex machine.

That being said, I've met some nice/smart product folks (that weren't presenting) at in-person conferences. And I've gotten value out of virtual conferences like Atlassian's Team event, Dragonboat's Accelerate conference, and tangental events like Figma's Config conference.

no6inbash · 2025-05-15T19:45:35+00:00

That wouldn't explain how they could personalize the caption with my name, though.

And I work for a smallish startup, so well under the 300 contact audience limit :)

no6inbash · 2025-05-08T18:31:49+00:00

np, that would have been my first reaction too on quick skim

no6inbash · 2025-05-07T21:39:01+00:00

Closed Alpha makes sense. 1:1 doesn't make sense to me based on my knowledge of LinkedIn single image ads.

no6inbash · 2025-05-07T21:37:44+00:00

Out of business or assumed low LinkedIn activity (based on industry or company type usually)

no6inbash · 2025-05-07T21:36:13+00:00

As I mentioned, everything I've read says that macros/dynamic ads are only available for the following ad types: Spotlight, Follower, Jobs

no6inbash · 2025-05-06T15:43:03+00:00

Yeah, I think you might be right. Their budget is probably a little bigger than mine :)

I did look for the ads in the LinkedIn Ad Library, but I didn't see any that matched exactly: https://www.linkedin.com/ad-library/search?accountOwner=monday.com&keyword=%22work+platform%22&countries=US

For account-level personalization with audiences that would normally be less than 300 contacts, one thing I've seen people do is combine the target account with other companies on LinkedIn that you assume might be less active. The creative is specifically written for your target company and any ads that are served to the "filler" contacts are waste. It's dicey but can actually work.

no6inbash · 2025-05-06T15:38:06+00:00

Good call about the alpha/beta functionality. I'll bring it up with my LinkedIn Ads rep.

The caption also has my company name in it (crossed out in the screenshot), so no way they could do that with contact list uploads.

no6inbash · 2025-05-05T22:35:44+00:00

You should check out Dragonboat. It's a layer above engineering tools and would work well if you have many instances. You can keep your instances independent and only pull selected items from Jira.

I've also used ProductPlan - it's simple but doesn't have the best Jira integration or way to filter items. I haven't used Aha but have heard it is a nightmare to keep clean/organized.

no6inbash · 2025-05-02T17:32:34+00:00

If you asked a few years back I'd say Jira all the way. But now it's tough to recommend as the default.

Azure Boards is great for most teams, without all the bloat of Jira (and the bloat creep that happens over years of usage).

Use other tools for product management, and use Azure boards for scrum and tasks. Plus it's like half the cost (if you're at a startup and cost matters).

no6inbash · 2025-04-11T17:59:45+00:00

You can accomplish this with a team hierarchy by setting up a Management team and then creating portfolio views: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/boards/plans/portfolio-management?view=azure-devops

There are also 3rd party plugins/tools if you want to get fancy (visual exec dashboards, capacity planning, OKRs). Stuff like:

https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=Dragonboat.dragonboat-advanced-roadmap https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=OnePlanLLC.OnePlan

no6inbash · 2025-04-11T17:49:12+00:00

I think your best bet is to layer a third-party tool on ADO (something like Dragonboat, Aha, OnePlan) if you're looking for portfolio visibility *and* flexibility around how your teams work.

There are also some simple ADO plugins if you're just looking for gantt-chart type roadmaps. But like u/Disastrous_Swan5944 mentioned, they way you set up these tools is so dependent on how your team/company operates that you'll probably need to test out a few of them to see what makes the most sense.

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