Backpack
I want to point out how important Backpack has become for my day-to-day management of an array of products.
I’ve got a paid account, and create pages here for all of the products I currently manage. I’m sharing pages with the people in the company that need to see them, and I’m adding task lists, important documents, and making full use of writeboards to create roadmaps, feature & benefit sets, and so on.
No, it’s not a true Project Management tool like Basecamp. But, I’ve used Basecamp, and tried to get people to use Basecamp properly, but not with much success. I’ve already had plenty of success with Backpack, and thus far, everyone seems to be really into it.
One other great thing that I have taken advantage of is the unique e-mail address assigned to each page you create. I’ve got these added into my Outlook contacts list, and whenever I get my hands on a feature idea, or something that’s related to any of the products, I just forward it over to the page, and it automatically appears. How cool is that? It’s coming in really handy when I have to review market data and research points brought up by others in the company.
It’s a fantastic tool, and while 37Signals doesn’t mention Product Management as one of it’s intended purposes, I think they should add it to the list.
