Aha! The tool you should be using as PM
This article should be less conceptual than usual as I will focus on Aha!, a really powerful software for Roadmap management. Maybe you now have in mind Jira or other tools with kanban boards: forget about them. Aha! is much more than that and it comes with everything you may need as a Product Manager.
The best way to show you its potential is to follow the natural structure of the tool with some considerations and comments from my side:
Strategy
Aha! stands out of the crowd due to this very section. As a PM, you should be crazy about aligning ideas and features to the business strategy. Well, this is the starting point for any other board and I recommend you to fill it thoroughly. It should contain the core business strategy which will help you set goals and initiatives.
By using already defined models (or creating your own), you can quickly have boards documenting the basis of your business which you can look at or share with others.
Moreover, you can also define Personas and Competitors. The most important thing you should consider about Aha! is that everything is linked. For example, defining your Personas will allow you to link Features attached to them.
Goals come with a very handy value-effort matrix, linked to Metrics and Releases. If you have validated goals with the right metrics, it will be super easy to develop your product in alignment to your stakeholders.
Releases
Releases are packages of Phases and Features. Think of phases as processes needed for a complete release to launch. For example: review product strategy, development, launch planning… On the other hand, features are related to the development process and should contain much more concrete actions and requirements.
Gantt charts are the default way of visualizing releases in time. You can see at a glance dependencies and timings, create new phases and features.
Features
I use Features as the backlog of every release. I write user stories and acceptance criteria in them and I order and prioritize them according to my Strategy. Also, Features might come from Ideas (remember my post about Ideas to Action?). Aha! has integrated a very powerful board for ideas submission to make sure they are correctly handled and transformed into Features if considered.
Every Feature can be linked to specific Goals. You can assign them to people in the team and change its Status, for example: Under consideration, In design, In development...
Something I find very powerful is the collaborative Diagram tool which comes with Aha! You can attach wireframes and sketches directly so that other can view, edit and comment on them.
Roadmaps
Finally, all information in the tool can be visualized in different ways for control and reporting purposes.
From all these views and reports you can also change and add absolutely everything: features, strategies, ideas… So even although it may seem like a summary section, you can configure the whole workspace and boards just from here as well.
As a PM, it is pretty common you need to prepare presentations for stakeholders. Aha! also comes with an online presentation tool where you can automatically import all your Strategy models, Releases Gantt tables and Features status, so you don’t need to worry about updating your slides every time you need to present something new: it will always be synced and ready to export.
My opinion
I really appreciate how tailored this tool is. There is a lot of software in the market focused on tickets and backlog management. However, taking an upside down approach where business strategy drives ideas, features and releases is vital. Aha! is really the only tool you need to manage the complete cycle of ideation, development and launch. I simply could not ask for more.
Read on…
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