What Problem does Rough solve?
The core problem that Rough solves is alignment. Alignment and discovery are like diet and exercise. Keeping your team aligned, and talking to your customers creates a positive cycle that improves your product in many different ways. Stakeholder management, communication, prioritization; these are all activities that become trivially easy to solve with an aligned team.
We avoid talking about alignment in our marketing material, since most people search for a solution to the symptoms of misalignment, rather than solve the problem at it's core. Sitting in too many internal meetings, needing a large number of middle managers, or complex internal politics are all potential symptoms of misalignment.
Articles in this Handbook
If you'd like to dig into something more specific about Rough, here are a few of our best articles. More general information about Rough continues below.
What makes Rough different?
Rough's main difference is that it is an org-wide Product Management tool. Most Product Management tooling is designed to be used by Product Managers, with a baked in expectation that those people will be sitting in dozens of meetings in order to communicate with the rest of the team.
We think that's a broken system.
Rough is a safe space for everyone, and in order to create that space we have had to make some sacrifices.
You won't find Gantt charts in Rough. We deal with priorities. Everyone understands a top ten list, and the implications when something moves up and down that list.
We understand that communication is where the most effort lies in Product Management. We track every way information has been communicated, and to whom. We also make that information public, so everyone can see who has and has not seen a pitch in it's current state.
We don't put any additional value on customer insights vs internal insights. It's important that everyone inside an org feels that their voice is worthy, and they'll be listened to when they raise it.
We don't work with tasks. We work with high-level documents (think epics, or pitches). The reason for this is that task tracking creates far too much noise in a system. That noise leads to disengagement, and disengagement invalidates the purpose of having everyone participating on Rough.
We embrace other tooling. We aren't trying to be an all-in-one "work OS". We don't want to pull people off Slack or JIRA. Rough's purpose is to collate conversations about product, wherever they may happen, and provide a space for those conversations to become action.
Why can't I just use [insert other tool]?
If you don't have challenges with scope hammering, prioritization, communication or estimation you should absolutely stick with whatever tool is working. Tools are only a small piece of the puzzle when it comes to creating good products. People, process, and culture are going to make a much bigger impact on your company than implementing any one tool.
Most product tools have more features than Rough, but they're focused on Product teams. Most all-in-one tools will capture more of your workflow, but the noise they generate eventually lead to disengaged teams. Rough occupies a specific place in your toolkit - insights and priorities.
Handbook Articles
Here are all of the articles we have in the handbook.