Aha!

I will use this software for the rest of my career. It's worth every penny.

Comments: If you've used developer-centric tools (Jira, for example), you know that they may be great for tracking stories and sprints, but they have very limited support (if any) for tracking the actual thought process in coming up with those stories. Either they don't have enough levels of hierarchy, or they try to get away with tags for everything. This is the first product that I've every used that has a structured methodology and design approach to evaluating your goals as a company / department; figuring out what initiatives support those goals; further breaking the initiatives down into master features (sometimes called Epics in other packages), and then individual features (stories). It also generates beautiful roadmaps, and has a transformational scorecard feature that lets you set up the criteria that matter, then rate all of your features, then calculate a score so you have a definitive order in which to do things.

Pros:

The comprehensiveness of this software is incredible. It has almost everything you can possibly conceive of when building nearly any type of product or service. It helps you organize, plan, communicate, rate, rank, document, and create everything you need, except the actual software code (but you can just assign the stories to your dev team, and/or sync to another product). It also empowers you to have the conversations with stakeholders to figure out truly what's important (as opposed to the endless chorus of "it's all important"). I wish I would have known about this years ago.

Cons:

The single largest missing feature is OKR support. There are goals and metrics, but not a structured way to do OKRs for products/teams. But there is also plenty of other software in the world that does it. We did struggle a bit with the integration with Jira, but that's largely because of Jira deficiencies.

Finally A Product Management Application That Solves All Needs

Comments: From the moment our trial started, I was impressed by the software and support we were provided. We weren't provided a sales pitch to later lead to a demo with no direction as is the case with most new application onboarding. Our sales person was also our technical advisor with a background in product management. They were able to answer all questions during our initial call. They demoed the product as it related to our experiences. And, they provided technical support throughout our trial. It truly was an excellent experience.

Pros:

Aha! solves nearly every need we have for product management. It easily integrates with systems we've found difficult to connect in the past and it provides a straightforward, easy-to-use interface for stakeholders to provide Ideas and Requirements. One or both of these have been a major struggle for other applications we've tested. On top of this, Aha! provides a structure to our product management and future roadmap that we've not had in the past. This is important as a single user may work across multiple workspaces managing a multitude of products.

Cons:

If you are not familiar with the technical setup, there are some complexities to work through, especially if integrating with other systems. However, once done correctly, these integrations work flawlessly. Also, if you are new to agile product management or you've never worked in a rigid product roadmap structure in the past, there is a learning curve. With this said, once learned, it will make you a better product manager while making you far more productive.

Alternatives Considered: Lucidchart, Azure DevOps Services and Smartsheet

Reasons for Switching to Aha!: They solved for nearly all of our use cases and provided an experience and product that will allow use to grow over time.

I like using it

Pros:

Overall I like using it as it allows you to build a really advanced roadmap and track release numbers / features. It's also very easy to use even for people who are new users.

Cons:

If your roadmap is large, the site will lag a little which is understandable but tiny bit annoying.

So glad to have finally found and settled on Aha! Quite aptly named!

Comments: This is one of the slickest, most beautiful, well-thought-out, powerful, and extensible tools I've ever seen. It took a while to get all settled into exactly how it fits in with my needs, but the documentation AND customer support were second-to-none during the trial to help me get there. Once I did...wow, it's slick and powerful.

Pros:

I loved so many things about Aha!, but probably the most important thing was my ability to manage and prioritize a LOT of my product's features that can also be tied to Epics, Storys, Initiatives, and Goals in a very slick and powerful interface.

Cons:

The product becomes cost-prohibitive, especially for startups, if you wish to use the "Develop" side of the product as well as the "Roadmap" side. For some reason, you need to step up to an extremely expensive Enterprise version, which makes little sense as smaller companies would of course want to use sprint planning and many other critical lower-level engineering and development features. The trials only allow one or the other, not both (without a very confusing experience), which seems odd for the same reason.

Alternatives Considered: Jira, Trello and Asana

Reasons for Switching to Aha!: Aha! has well-thought-out capabilities that blend strategy and roadmap planning with powerful feature management. I don't believe there is another product out there that comes close in this regard. And in such a gorgeous, flexible, and easy-to-use interface.

Using Aha for Education Assessment products

Comments: We are introducing the product management function accross the business. Therefore introducing the departments and senior management to the functions of Aha has been my priority.
The multiple benefits have included, multi person access as a reviewer / viewer. Transparency of the portfolio roadmap, clarity and confirmation of epic and feature details and the development priorities.
A prime benefit has been the capabilityof the tech team and CTO to cost up the features and epics in more detail than previously, supporting investment requests.

Pros:

For my role as Head of Product Management: The strategic view of the product portfolio is all important for the company to see and for me to report. The functions I use most are the strategic and portfolio roadmaps, goals and linked initiatives. I absolutely love the dashboard function, especially for executive resporting. And now use the different workspaces for the different departments who are dependant on the product management scheduling, this is also an added bonus.

Cons:

I really wish the functions would allow clarity for Strategic objectives, rather than goals and support the framing of dependant team and individual OKR's. I also find it difficult to delete releases and features on the Strategic level workspace. It would benefit the different types of users to have the functionalities that they need and navigate to it easily. From my role as head of to the associate product manager, we have different uses and feature requirements.

Alternatives Considered: monday.com

Reasons for Switching to Aha!: I was used to Aha from my previous company, we found the functionality to be expansive, used accross tthe departments it was coordinated and allowed mixed methodologies in its monitoring and reporting in the products being eveloped. The product management function in the company I am now in is new. I wished to introduce the best in class product management tool, for transparency, acountability and reporting capability accross the company. we have offered many in house demo's and everyone is very impressed, especially as they now know how they can access the information they need to fulfill and support their departments too