Dragonboat Reviews

Pros

Dragonboat is a very flexible tool which allows different product owners to manage their roadmaps how they prefer to, yet still make it possible to roll-up what is important at the enterprise level, such as resource needs. The tool is super flexible to organize the backlog of Epics by timeframe, initiatives, sub-roadmaps, OKR's, theme, or any number of other fields. Assigning T-shirt size effort is easy with inline editing, similar to excel. The Portfolio List, which allows quick changes to the view and further provides capability to group and summarize effort, ended up being my easiest part of planning. The dashboard view makes it super easy to visualize the roadmap without overwhelming the audience you are sharing it with.

Cons

For those teams that have many increases/decreases throughout the quarters, resource capacity was not as robust. I would have like more refinement of when resources started. For those with more of a constant size team, it would not be an issue.

Alternatives Considered

ProductPlan

Reasons for Switching to Dragonboat

Flexibility on how roadmaps can be created, resource capacity, overall flexibility.

Pros

Excellent tool that helps with building out a roadmap and easy to see what your priorities are. The Jira integration comes in very handy.

Cons

The solution has been buggy but I do also know we purchased the tool during the growth phase.

Alternatives Considered

Jira

Reasons for Switching to Dragonboat

Met our use cases perfectly and cost of the tool was very affordable.

Pros

The features I like the most is the quarterly planning with OKR cascade in the Timeline view. Once I set up strategic goals and OKRs for the quarter it's very easy to link tracks, features, and ideas. I like that I can easily see the high-level picture in one view and can drill down if needed.

Cons

I would love to have more comprehensive Allocation Report. At the end of the quarter I generate shareholder report by resource allocation. Would be great to have the same OKR cascade that's on the Timeline view (strategic goals, OKRs, features, ideas, etc.) and coupled with time allocation by discipline. To have as an outcome the following pie chart as an example: in Q2 we spent X% resources by time on strategic goal Y as measured by OKR1.

Alternatives Considered

ProductPlan, monday.com, Asana and Productboard

Reasons for Choosing Dragonboat

To have a level-up views of strategic goals and OKRs and not only the product roadmap.

Switched From

ProductPlan

Reasons for Switching to Dragonboat

Combination of features and pricing for the size of the company we are, and how well it suits our needs to create a holistic helicopter overview across the company, while giving an option to drill down into the details if needed.

Pros

Integration offerings matched a lot of other enterprise tools we used, which was a key factor in deciding on a Product tool. Also impressed with the level of onboarding support we were provided with - thank you!

Cons

Initial hiccups with setup that were quickly resolved with an attentive and hands-on client success manager.

Pros

Dragonboat has made it easy to have a central source of truth for the road mapping for dozens of products. I appreciate how PMs can easily manage their upcoming work and collaborate on larger projects by leveraging higher level initiatives. They have great filter and dashboard features so it's easy to quickly see different views of the product portfolio.

Cons

I would like it to be a little easier to share Dragonboat views outside of Product Management at scale. They have the basics where you can publish public views and publish views for individuals. I'd love to have groups of external users (so I could share a version of the roadmap with the sales team).

Pros

By using Dragonboat we are able to better plan our product development process. We now can work with engineering and product managers from a bottom-up perspective and my executive leadership team from a top-down perspective. We can see what we are trying to achieve, where we are trying to go, what are the major initiatives and projects that we need to do, how do resources tie to features that tie to business objectives, and more.

The roll up reporting from Jira to OKRs has really made a huge impact from an insights perspective on what we're doing and what we're going to achieve. Now I can have a good conversation with executives with a known understanding of the data.

Cons

I don’t have many. The support team is really helpful and has helped us to roll out the tool every step of the way. Whenever there is an issue, they are quick to address it.

Pros

Resource planning, quarterly alignment and roadmapping are the main problems that brought us to Dragonboat. We have been able to increase team collaboration for product prioritization, incorporate quarterly alignment into our processes and increase visibility into our roadmap.

Cons

Dragonboat is a powerful tool that may require a bit of a learning curve to get properly setup.

Pros

Dragonboat is very adaptable to whatever the size of the company/business. ONE of my favorite features is the Dashboard Snapshot. This is the view I use with senior leadership. They like the simplicity of them and they can in an instant know how things are going with any one of the strategic initiatives.

Cons

Nothing stands out. There has been a hiccup here and there, but their team is fast to respond and releases tons of amazing features quickly.

Pros

What I love about Dragonboat is that it's much more than just a product portfolio management software. It enables a framework for how to run a successful product company. It's insightful and intuitive. Every outcome-focused product org should use it.

Cons

Not many to report here. It took a bit of time to translate our structure into Dragonboat, but their support team has been very helpful, answering our questions and needs promptly.

Pros

Adaptive for company operating model
All necessary features are in place
Easy to onboard and get first results

Cons

Some non-blocker issues happen from time to time
UI/UX is a bit outdated but still manageable

Pros

We had been using spreadsheets for quarterly planning but it became unmanageable. We found Dragonboat to be easy and lightweight with no change to our current Jira process. I love that it's easy to manage dependencies and resources in a visual way, we're now able to identify bottlenecks way up front.

Cons

As with any new tool, there was a learning curve when we were getting started, but the team quickly figured it out and integrated it into our overall process.