Death by Tooling: How Multiple Tools Kill Product Management

How you can avoid unnecessary fragmentation and unintentional chaos.

Do you feel overwhelmed by the tools you use?

We know the product game is complex, and some tools strive to simplify it. Yet, the more fragmentation you have, the more confusion you get.

How many tools do you use?

Let’s look at some potential ones:

• Roadmap: airfocus, productboard, confluence, notion, Airtable

• Backlog Management: Jira, Asana, Click-up, Trello

• Discovery: Miro, Figma, Mural, Lucidchart, vision

• Data Analytics: Amplitude, Google Analytics, PostHog, MixPanel, CrazyEgg, HotJar

• Communication: Slack, MS Teams, Zoom, E-mail

• AI stuff: Lovable, Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Perprexity, Uizard.io

More tools = worse communication.

Let me share a brief story with you.

Communication Breakdown

I arrive at the office, and the COO is waiting at my desk.

“David, I want an update about the price automation. I tagged you in the channel C-Level Projects, and you didn’t reply. After that, I commented on Confluence, and you didn’t reply. I went to Jira and added another comment to the Epic, and you once again ignored it.”

I missed all of those notifications—shame on me. Then I told him, “Sorry, I didn’t see any of that. A question I have: Did you try reaching out to me in person, or maybe a direct message?”

He was surprised and said, “We value full transparency. That’s why I didn’t approach you directly.”

Does that ring a bell for you?

Let’s take this story to talk about PM tooling and understand if they help you or add noise to the game.

When Tools Become Dangerous

What do you use tools for? Seriously, have you ever reflected on it?

Tools should streamline how you work, but you should control the workflow. Sadly, the reality is slightly different. Teams often let tools define how they work, and they unintentionally become victims of their beloved tools.

Here are weird situations:

• Software engineers move a ticket to another lane, place a comment, and expect that it has been “communicated”

• Product folks shared the new prototype on a Slack channel for feedback and considered the task done, even though almost nobody reacted

• Long comment threads on a ticket last for days, and nobody tries to solve that

• Teams cannot connect their work to the roadmap because another tool takes care of that

It’s easy to hide behind tools, tag others, and “think” you did your part.

It’s hard to reflect on what’s needed to progress, use helpful tools, and ditch them when distracting (sadly, often).

Hard question for you: Which tools do you use just because others use them too?

Aim for End to End Tools

You will probably need a few tools to support you. Yet, you should be mindful of that. The more you fragment information, the more confusion you get.

Aim as much as you can for end-to-end tools.

For example, don’t put your roadmap in a tool, run discovery in another, and manage delivery in a different app. This will ensure information gets lost, and teams will inevitably face friction.

Use end-to-end tools as much as you can.

Linear brings a good alternative to it.

You can have a roadmap, initiatives, projects, and tasks in one place. In summary, teams can connect their daily tasks to the big roadmap picture. At the same time, C-Level can see what’s going on and what needs attention. The three levels are good and easy to follow. Although the word project isn’t my favorite, the benefits of having everything in one place help me swallow that.

The advantage of having different levels in a single place is that it avoids context switching and confusion. However, that doesn’t remove the need for communication. Let’s discuss this one.

The Most Important Tool You Can Have

Your mindset is the best tool you can have.

When you know what it takes to drive value, you will naturally adapt your actions to achieve the desired results. You will use tools to serve your needs instead of letting them define how you should work.

I’m not against tools, but I’m heavily against letting tools trap you in boxes.

Like the story I started this episode, when you tag someone on a chat, a tool, or a thread, that doesn’t mean you communicated; it means you used a tool to reach out to someone. Your job is to ensure the communication takes place and actions happen. Don’t shift your responsibilities to tools; use them to help you.

Sometimes, your best action is removing a few tools and simplifying the game.

Here are a few things I do:

• Pre-Go-to-market: Use one tool for everything. You don’t need multiple. If you add Jira, Confluence, Miro, Notion, ProductBoard, and so on, you lose focus

• Market-fit: Very much similar to the previous one, but you may already need some structuring. A slightly more diverse tool can help you streamline your work, for example, Linear

• Growth: When scaling up, you must do the same with communication. If you’ve followed the above point, it will be about gradually continuing that. You will be tempted to add a few new tools, but hold on. Only add tools when you can no longer achieve the desired results

Review Tools Usage

It surprises me that most teams start using tools, quickly get used to them, and never review how helpful they truly are.

Once a quarter or twice a year, step back and go through all your tools. Do the following:

• How does [Tool] increase transparency?

• What would happen if we remove [Tool]?

• How does [Tool] make our work easier?

• Which cases [Tool] complicate our work?

Be honest and mindful.

When you answer the above questions, you will inevitably realize that some tools prevent you from creating value. Ditch them and focus on collaboration instead.

Every new tool is a path. Eventually, you create a maze, and nobody knows the way out.

You have to ensure that tools don’t define how you work. You are the driver, not the passenger.

What do you say?

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Whenever you’re ready, I can help you boost your career

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