2002
Australia
Challenge:
Alex Yehorov
PRODUCT MANAGER
See how Productboard helps Prospecta teams:
Helping businesses ensure data quality, integrity, and compliance is far from the easiest customer problem to solve. Yet, Prospecta braves the challenge; its enterprise platform empowers teams to set data strategies, remediate data concerns, and automate processes.
Prospecta prides itself on ease of use, and product manager Alex Yehorov — praised recently for “doing now, what customers need next” — is playing a key role.
Determined to improve efficiency, collaboration, and customer relationships, Alex decided it would be best to leverage Jira for engineering ticket management and find a new, purpose-built platform to visualize how everything connects across the product lifecycle.
Here’s why Alex decided Jira and Productboard would be better together — and how teams across Prospecta now collaborate more effectively with both systems to build what users need most.
Alex describes Jira as “an excellent tool for developers — because it works so well for their sprints.” However, he says Prospecta struggled using a task-oriented system to manage the scope of what they were building across the product lifecycle. Consequently, two internal dynamics developed, affecting organizational efficiency and user satisfaction:
Without a single source of truth linking users’ needs to a real-time roadmap highlighting the status of features in development, Prospecta’s Product and Engineering teams struggled to share information, set expectations, and communicate about roadblocks. Ultimately, these challenges affected the speed of product development, straining business efficiency.
Alex says time zone differences made collaboration even more difficult — without a comprehensive system to bridge gaps asynchronously. “We have huge gaps in distance and timing with our developers based in a different country, which can create difficulties in communication that we had to overcome,” Alex says.
Without a holistic product management process (including real-time roadmap access) customer-facing teams faced communication issues of their own — in their case, straining user satisfaction directly:
“Our customers were submitting a suggestion or a bug, and it wouldn’t always be looked at, and you can imagine how that frustration can build or escalate.”
Alex Yehorov
PRODUCT MANAGER
The answer Alex hoped for? A comprehensive product management platform designed to complement engineers’ work in Jira.
Alex and his colleagues reviewed multiple product management platforms, but often the UI was too difficult to navigate.
Then, a breakthrough — Alex found the platform he felt sure could help.
“Productboard came up, and it was exactly what I was looking for — it allows you to create product structure in the form of components, features, and subfeatures, not to mention the Insights and roadmap additions. Just being able to put in place a structure, to visually communicate that product structure to the entire business — was so valuable. It worked really well for us because we had three traditional parties involved — a developer, business analyst, and product designer — who each needed a view of the roadmap configured for their needs.”
Alex Yehorov
PRODUCT MANAGER
Alex was confident that having a clear product structure in place would pave the way for better visibility and collaboration across teams — changes that would be sure to improve customer satisfaction. He was right.
Once Prospecta’s teams were able to easily access user feedback, feature progress, and roadmaps in one comprehensive system, the organization was able to more efficiently solve customers’ problems — and share the results with users seamlessly.
Productboard has helped teams across Prospecta:
Alex was thrilled to drive these outcomes, and he’s eager to help others in industry do the same.
How do you sell a better way to manage the product lifecycle to a company already wary of its current approach?
Alex says the key is showing cross-functional teams why access to the same source of truth will help them do their jobs more effectively. From there, you can build trust in changing your product management process — one that strengthens collaboration between Product and Engineering.
Then, you can signal to cross-functional teams: a platform that prizes visibility will allow management to help if resourcing becomes an issue, and ensure customer-facing teams can transparently communicate back to users exactly what the company is doing to help them.
Here’s the 5-step approach Alex recommends:
Alex says the ability to represent Prospecta’s product strategy in Productboard’s inviting, accessible interface was essential to secure stakeholder buy-in before he changed workflows.
“The visibility and ease of use Productboard offers have been so helpful for our cross-functional teams to quickly find information they need without having any technical background. This is where the platform works brilliantly, because we have a clear roadmap story that’s easy to grasp for anyone looking at it.”
Once teams at Prospecta realized how Productboard could help them genuinely feel part of product decision-making, they were receptive to a streamlined product management approach.
“Productboard was the single source of truth we needed to help us establish a product management process. It’s where we close the feedback loop on prioritization since everybody goes there by default. Now, we can attach one person from each department to a story and then mark the status knowing the request connects right to Jira.”
Alex Yehorov
PRODUCT MANAGER
Across tech companies, it’s common for customer-facing teams to ask Product: “what’s next?” As Alex prizes efficiency, he made sure internal stakeholders could find out for themselves.
“If Sales, for example, says, ‘I need a collaboration feature ready by Q2 because I promised it,’ they don’t even need to talk to us; they just log in to Productboard and see where it is on the roadmap. And, if they want to drill down, they can easily click and drill to a feature, and see when it’s been delivered. They didn’t even need training beyond what I quickly showed them.”
Customer-facing teams weren’t the only ones saving time. Product managers and engineers moved from user discovery to feature delivery much faster with technical context and customer feedback living in the same place.
“I can’t even say how much time Productboard has saved us, and that’s what I really care about at the moment. We can deliver 15 or 20 stories a month now — overall about 25% more features than before — and I know exactly where we plan each one, because they’re in Productboard.”
Alex Yehorov
PRODUCT MANAGER
Productboard has helped Prospecta’s Product team offer Engineering something developers wanted all along: enough information — and space — to thrive.
“3. Empower engineers to be problem-solvers: offer context & creative freedom. Productboard has helped Prospecta’s Product team offer Engineering something developers wanted all along: enough information — and space — to thrive.”
Alex Yehorov
PRODUCT MANAGER
Now, when Alex and others in Product await development work from Engineering, they don’t have to navigate multiple systems to find answers. The good news arrives in Productboard directly: as a Jira status change.
Centralizing all things Product has helped leaders at Prospecta save time, too. But their big wins center on accountability and reporting.
“Now, I can focus on design and reporting, which is an enormous time savings. Every team that’s involved in delivery is now highly visible. We can say we have a responsible person, whether it’s the product analyst or developer, and we know who is doing what and that helps us generate reports based on resourcing needs or realigning teams.”
Alex Yehorov
PRODUCT MANAGER
As Productboard allows lead developers to provide estimations directly in the platform, Engineering no longer needs to run estimation meetings with the entire Dev. team. This helps developers focus on what matters most — user story delivery — and saves Prospecta money, easily 5% in Engineering costs per year.
After making significant improvements to Product’s relationships with Sales and Engineering, Alex was ready to look outward. He redesigned the way Prospecta gathered and leveraged customer feedback and ensured users could appreciate the difference.
Alex set up Insights integrations, including with Zendesk, to ensure customer feedback always pushed to Productboard. That process paved the way for more active engagement with users across the product lifecycle. Here again, Productboard and Jira worked together seamlessly.
“The Insights feature in Productboard has inspired us to involve customers in every story we can. After our meeting with a user is over and we build, we do two things. We share the Jira ticket with the customer and give them external access to Productboard, to read through the story, see our roadmap, and submit comments through Jira tickets or Productboard.”
Alex Yehorov
PRODUCT MANAGER
These days, Prospecta’s subject matter experts meet weekly to review and reply to customer feedback in Insights. Plus, every new Prospecta customer gets credentials to access the company’s Productboard Portal.
“Now, Prospecta customers can expect that when they share their concerns and write with ideas, we’ll reply. Productboard has helped us increase the involvement of our customers, which is very valuable because it shows people that we do care about their opinions — and that makes them more loyal in the end.”
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