Jira entered the project management market very early on, and did not seem to have any direct precursors (project management tools that supported the entire product development journey). I would categorize its entry as one into a blue ocean of ‘project management software’ that provided a unified platform for members of different teams to share context and track and assign work. So it entered a new market. The belief about PMs here is that they needed a source of truth for all the projects that they were working on, and step-wise tracking of all the important features and their corresponding role assignments.
Linear, on the other hand, is a newer player and looked to resegment the PM software market to focus on customers that emphasise speed and efficiency over workflow customization ability. It is therefore playing in a red ocean since products like Jira were already out there when Linear came into the picture. The assumption made about PMs here is that they emphasise productivity and efficiency of output over having a lot of control and oversight over how the workflow works. They would be willing to sacrifice customisation for speed. It enables higher consistency and requires the user to be adaptable to changing their workflow to allow for higher output speed.
Productboard entered a new market (a blue ocean, because no one knew they wanted it before it came out and improved productivity). While it is still software that serves PMs, the nature of the problem it aims to solve is different. It comes at an earlier stage of the product life cycle, closer to the needfinding and customer interview stages rather than product development like Jira and Linear. It allows PMs to track interviews, insights, and prioritization of features before they go into the product roadmap and development phases. For this product to be successful, it needs to be true that PMs had trouble managing and maintaining the early stages of product feature introductions, including customer interviews, feedback and insights from user data and leadership.
