Aha! Erfahrungen

Using Aha! for Project Management

Kommentare: Overall I am very satisfied with the product and customer service.

Vorteile:

I like the flexibility to create and modify schedules and reports. I can create tasks for team members and Aha! sends them reminders (upcoming and past due). I manage business operations projects and this feature has been very helpful and has eliminated my having to chase down most tasks. I like the feature to create various reports with multiple slices of data/views for different purposes by just adding or removing filters vs. building something from scratch. Customer support is top notch. Someone always gets back to me within a couple of hours if not sooner whenever I reach out with questions or requesting help.

Nachteile:

This software is complex, IMO not very intuitive and has a steep learning curve. There are tutorials that are very helpful and walk you through most everything you can think of, but it takes time to watch them and/or read. Once you get past the initial phase of learning the software and features you need, you will love it.

Aha is a great product management tool

Kommentare: Aha's ability to centrally manage many projects and provide seamless Jira integration save time by eliminating the need for developers to switch between applications. It's helpful for making a road map and organizing ideas visually for the company.

Vorteile:

I like how simple it is to log requests for help and suggestions for new items. It's also great for working together on projects with other people in your team.

Nachteile:

The biggest thing that bothers me with Aha is that there isn't a particularly helpful or user-friendly dashboard where you can see all of your open support issues and ideas at once.

Visualization and big idea level

Vorteile:

We've tried a few project management programs and although we didn't decide ultimately to go with Aha long term (see cons below for why) individual users on our team (including myself) still use it for some long term strategy planning. The visualization process is really the best in the market.

Nachteile:

We couldn't use this as our main project management because of cost, in order to justify the cost I would have made a case that their customer service was more robust than it was. I can always get the info I need, but less tech savvy people had a harder time figuring things out without the hand holding that their customer service just doesn't easily provide.

Not worth

Vorteile:

It was simple to use, but this is only thing i can say.

Nachteile:

Sorry, but I did not like this program at all. It was not my cup of tea.

Aha! is an excellent product management system

Kommentare: A very user-friendly and straightforward interface. It's fantastic that a single platform can be used to oversee everything from product to service management to strategic planning to operational reporting.

Vorteile:

A fantastic tool for project managers to use as a roadmap organizer. The ideas are fantastic, and the integration with Jira at the tactical level of engineering is functioning smoothly. Additional sophisticated features, such as various business modules, aid in the strategic direction of PM.

Nachteile:

It's odd that there aren't any external roadmap samples or case studies available from the makers of one of the greatest roadmap products in the world to aid with the design of your personal external roadmap.

The Best End-to-End Product Management Software Available

Kommentare: I have implemented and used Aha! across several companies and have seen it grow for nearly a decade. It keeps only getting better.

Vorteile:

Aha!'s data model is robust and flexible to account for our unique way of running our business. The reporting and notes/collaboration tools allow us to consolidate all of our PM-based efforts into a single system. This helps keep everyone aligned, organized and efficient.

Nachteile:

Because the application is so robust, there are some workflows sub-optimal user experiences (e.g. accessing views and report versions, creating capacity plans) that make onboarding new users cumbersome.

An Amazing Tool to Align Strategy and Execution for Product Management

Kommentare: Great experience from setup to use. Fanatical customer support and the fact that they follow their founders "Lovability" mantra (within 95% ;-) It has made me successful in helping companies tie product execution to company strategy. AHA tools usually create artifacts to help keep all stakeholders aligned.

Vorteile:

Any organization that wants to be thoughtful, deliberate, and wants to link everything they build to the reason WHY they are building it should use this tool. It takes energy and effort to adopt, but the results are amazing. Every feature and release can be linked to a strategic element. In fact, what you are getting with AHA is not only a tool, but a best-practices thought model for product management (this can be challenging to implement but the rewards are high if you get through it. A key benefit is that once created, roadmaps and reports stay FRESH, meaning all changes to dates of features and releases are instantly reflected in your roadmaps and reports. No more updating Excel rows where cells are months!! Last but not least, their support is second-to-none!

Nachteile:

While I really like AHA overall, the UI has many challenges. There are many inconsistencies (some places have a save, other autosave, some screens have a URL, others don't, some settings can be applied to everything at once, others have to be set manually one-by-one). Also for a single page app, it often struggles with refresh after edit more than it should in 2021.

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

Kommentare: 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.

Vorteile:

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.

Nachteile:

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.

Aha is the only game in town

Kommentare: We tested and demo'd all of the top-rated pieces of software that call themselves Product Management Software. Nothing compares to Aha, in my opinion, it is the only software that offers all of the key features I need. There are definitely a few tweaks that could be made, but nothing else even comes close to this tool. I am very happy with it.

Vorteile:

It is made by Product Managers for Product Managers It has features around the vision and strategy of the company There is clear separation between ideas and features There are Personas that can be attached to ideas and features There are goals and strategies There are areas to store your files You can create shareable presentations that update dynamically You can build wireframes within the tool You can house everything you need as a Product Manager is one locations The support is amazing Integrates with JIRA

Nachteile:

I find it difficult to find what I am looking for in the knowledge base Some of the features are not very intuitive to use There are a few features I would like to see added

Aha takes product roadmapping to the next level

Kommentare: Aside from having every feature a product manager could dream of, working with Aha through the purchase process has been a very positive experience. Their customer support is fast, friendly, and helpful. I know if I had additional questions or needed help , their team would be there.

Vorteile:

Aha is incredibly feature-rich. It can handle ideation, business planning, product management, and so much more.

Nachteile:

With all the functionality, the learning curve is a bit steep. For example,

An awesome platform worth 5 stars

Kommentare: The past 14 or so months with Aha! has helped us evolve our internal processes and break down barriers to provide more consistent and streamlined cross-collaboration across our teams. Working with Aha! has been a very positive experience.

Vorteile:

I always tell people that Aha! brings together the why and the how of a solution, giving the view into the overall strategy components of a solution, mixed with the back end development and ongoing progress. It captures everything our teams needs to collaborate, stay informed, share, and stay on track. It's easy to use and the support team is fantastically responsive, knowledgeable and friendly. As someone with little technical background, the platform and an ever-growing knowledge base made it easy to customize the experience to our unique needs.

Nachteile:

Sometimes too many options can be a bad thing. Aha! will let you do basically anything you want, but sometimes having that ability makes it feel overwhelming. However, I'd hardly call that a con since 1) I'd rather have too many options than not enough, and 2) the support team and knowledge base help you through whatever scenario you're in.

The standard for Product Management tools

Kommentare: I am now using Aha! in my 3rd company. One was enterprise SaaS focus, one was a 70 person team and now as a bootstrapped start-up. Each experience has been very positive. I've been able to accomplish what I need without a lot of fuss or distraction.

Vorteile:

Aha! is a great canvas to organize your business, product and customer journey. You can take many of the miscellaneous thoughts you have rattling around in your head, and the many post-it notes you have scattered around your office and put them to use in an organized way. It is hard to emphasize the importance of seeing your ideas and tasks written down and prioritized. Aha! makes it easy to articulate your goals and initiatives in a way that is compelling. Then when feature requests come in (as they inevitably will) you have a canvas for deciding how a request compares against the priorities and compared to other requests. It helps you and your stakeholders come together, discuss and come to a consensus on 'what should we build next.' Another think that I love is the fact that Aha! team does not have a sales function. Instead the platform has invested in a top notch customer support team who will help you customize and build out your plans. They help with introductory, small and big projects.

Nachteile:

Can't think of any specific shortcomings. The platform is very deep and customizable so it can grow with your team's needs.

Simply the best

Kommentare: Aha has listened to its customers and consistently delivered a product that does exactly what it says on the tin. Customer support is of course world class - fast, responsive, intelligent and useful proactive assistance. Concierge service that comes with Ent+ is extremely useful.

Vorteile:

Everything works how you'd expect it to. It is EASY to use if you spend an hour or two looking at the help videos and basking in the glow of what an amazing product you're investing in. Trustworthy company, eat their own dog food, led by a guy who wrote a book called Lovability. For us, finally being able to visualise our ambitions, go beyond simple roadmapping pitfalls to an optimised value-driven world, integrated with project management tools. Perfect.

Nachteile:

Onboarding through the help files isn't that great, as it's now a fairly large and complex product. However, the accompanying videos are short and perfectly poised to help. You should expect to commit people to this product to understand and train others. Once you've configured and set up it's a breeze and a joy. I could have done with more help containing output from workshops and discussions, whereas currently you need to use a combination of Notes and description fields, or some sort of crossover with Ideas. It isn't very clear and that is surprising seeing as product managers use it. You'd have thought a clear workflow capturing initiative and feature level discussions would be normal.

Couldn't live without this product

Kommentare: I love this product, it has been great to use, and the customer support is outstanding and always able to help me solve my issues.

Vorteile:

The ease of use is awesome, and bringing new users onboard is simple and quick. The integration to JIRA, and SSO, makes my administration and use simple and straightforward. It allows me as a product manager to manager the roadmap, and dev to concentrate on their JIRA environment which they are comfortable in.

Nachteile:

The presentation module could use some more customizations, and tools, it is OK, but I end up creating PDF's and moving them to powerpoint.

Game Changer for Product Portfolio Planning

Kommentare: Aha worked with us in a very patient and collaborative manner to understand our needs and create the right solution package to help us make this transition successful. They worked with us over the course of 3 months on the setup and were available on a daily basis to answer questions and provide advice.

Vorteile:

1. The roadmap interface is intuitive, clean, and provides the visual information at a glance that our end users can easily understand. 2. The integration with JIRA is robust and reliable. 3. The support is excellent with quick turn-around and helpful solutions.

Nachteile:

I would like a "drag and drop" ability to manage dependencies between Releases/Epics/Stories on the roadmaps. I'm sure it will be added in the future, as Aha provides an excellent forum for obtaining feedback.

Convenient Tool for Product Managers, Aha!

Kommentare: Aha! is no doubt a sophisticated tool for driving product strategy, sharing your roadmap, and detailing features. It's very flexible and configurable so it requires a little while to get fluent with everything it may possibly do, and be aware of the best workflow patterns with it. That said, once you discover your groove it gets much more easily. Pricing is also in the premium end of the market, particularly for smaller companies, but you do tend to obtain what you pay off.

Vorteile:

Aha! offers a comprehensive range of strategies for managing the entire product management and marketing cycle. I began using product development tools like Jira and then VersionOne, but they both appeared and functioned as if they were developed on purpose and eventually evolved into product management tools. None of them were in charge of product marketing. It was clear from the moment a fellow CTO introduced me to Aha! that this tool was explicitly designed to handle the full scope of product management. The governance features that assist product owners in focusing on the business plan and priorities also aid in the definition of product strategies to achieve those objectives. Customer personas assist the development team in remaining customer-centric. Our product owners enjoy working with feature development because they get to decide both how the features should function and how feature delivery should be prioritised. The Aha! Score, which can be customised, helps to balance value with development costs. Contributors are encouraged to request functionality, and the review process ensures that the promotion (or lack thereof) of a concept to a feature is transparent. Executive management and the board of directors expect product roadmaps to include information in an accessible format and Aha! has delivered efficiently so far.

Nachteile:

The tool is extremely effective, with numerous features that make it simple to build a complex puzzle that occupies all of your time, causing you to lose track of the original goal: efficiently produce a product that meets consumer standards and business objectives. Keeping the model easy necessitates discipline. Aha! is so powerful and so customizable that it took me a while to figure out how best to apply it to my particular situations and challenges. That said, their amazing customer success team has been and continues to work patiently and diligently to help me make the most out of it.

An advanced strategic tool with lots of functions and possibilities

Kommentare: Aha! is the only tool we are using for common road mapping all over the company. Our plan is to also use the idea portal in the future. That will be step no. 2 for us, we just have tested it a bit so far. Roadmaps are prio.no. 1.

Vorteile:

Aha! is our first common road mapping tool in our company. It helps us to get a common focus on the work to do, and for aligning towards our company strategy. We are getting more and more advanced with different views = roadmaps, but also with the minimum alignment between the different divisions. We use different Release layout, e.g., for SW and for mixed SW/HW.

Nachteile:

I would say that it is a challenge in the beginning for users like me, that have not a product manager background, to see what to do and where it all fits. So a very easy "Aha! for dummies" guide, like the really good film clips that are found in the Aha! internet pages, that would have made my working life a bit easier. But a really like the short film clips, they are very useful. Maybe that could be an option, to make them available from the data model? The you get a bit more info than the text there, they could be linked to the short films directly. =)

Aha is a great way to manage the product portfolio

Kommentare: Aha provides a place to capture our entire portfolio in one place and allows independent support of each business division. This is enabling enhanced planning dialogue and greater transparency throughout our organization. We use it to model and support our value stream which makes it easy to ascertain current information about the disposition of each feature. This, in turn, informs better decision making. Also, on the rare occasion when we do need support, the team at Aha is always responsive and always very helpful. And the tool is always available and stable and has not left us hanging at any critical moments

Vorteile:

the flexibility/configurability is the best thing about Aha. It can be configured to match business processes and needs and does not force adherence to any particular process. The diverse needs across our entire business portfolio are supported.

Nachteile:

understanding "the lay of the land" within the tool is always a little confusing for my new users. Some expect to have hand-holding type navigation, but that is not this tool. A few minutes to show them the basics usually gets them up and running.

Great Tool for Project & Portfolio Mgmt

Kommentare: We can share project information and status immediately within our team, also useful for visual displays for internal and external meetings.

Vorteile:

As an IS project management team, we like Aha's ability to organize all project and portfolio information in one spot. The custom report section's timeline report is used frequently for all portfolio reviews, and it allows us to drill down to a product, release, feature with 3 clicks. We also use the comments sections for meeting minutes and another task tracking. I would estimate we only use 50% of Aha's capabilities but are very happy with our purchase. I Also customer service is 5 star when I submit an email I get a response often within the hour.

Nachteile:

There is a bit of a learning curve, but videos help. I think you need a senior resource that will take a couple weeks to sift through all the features and identify what's important for your implementation vs. nice to have. Since we are an IS PM team, we don't use strategy and ideas, we only use product, release, features & reports tabs. We have experimented with strategy and ideas features but have not had the time to fully explore. There are a couple of items I have mentioned to customer service: I would like the ability to store documents with the assurance I can recall if needed - currently, when I attach word docs I have to keep a backup in SharePoint based on advice from customer service. I would like the calendar to exclude weekends as the default (or as an option) currently when I set up releases using my templates I have to go in and change start and end dates to workdays,

Best end-to-end product management tool on the market!

Vorteile:

Aha! is a complete end-to-end product management solution that has the capability to organize features using simple-to-complex org hierarchies while simultaneously promoting product management best practices. There were many areas in which Aha! outshined other tools: application stability, overall performance & speed, ease of use, (just the right amount of) flexibility in feature organization, and out-of-the-box intuitive planning structures (eg feature organization, release planning, roadmaps, idea management), and it's full set of field integrations with JIRA. While many of these sound like fundamental requirements for any product tool, I found a majority of the 9 or so tools I trialed to be significantly lacking in these areas. Aha! is more expensive than some of the other popular product tools out there but the cost is easily justified by their larger feature set that'll save teams time and money, along with providing a stable and consistent user experience. Also, Aha! was also one of the very few tools that supported the capture of ideas directly from mobile phones and enabled users to easily attach mobile screenshots to an Idea or Feature card.

Nachteile:

Since AHA is a very robust, flexible app that can scale with a business, there's an initial learning curve (as is the case with any software that provides this level of flexibility). The up front time investment is worth it because once the application is set up, it's very easy for the team to understand, navigate and use!

Aha moments around every corner

Kommentare: Ability to produce a roadmap for the first time in company history while integrating that with Aha Develop for targeted sprints which has increased delivery time and quality of each release. The ideas portal has also been crucial to our business and engagement with our users.

Vorteile:

It is user friendly while being extremely robust as you get deeper into the functionality. So far I've found that almost everything is possible in Aha and sometimes just takes a little thought on how you want to achieve it that will fit your organization.

Nachteile:

I can't say there is anything that I don't like about this software. We're in the middle tier package and anything I would mention here is included in the highest tier.

All a product manager can dream of!

Kommentare: There's a few major benefits:
* consistent roadmaps throughout the product porfolio
* transparency on roadmaps and release plans throughout the whole company
* closer collaboration & transparency with customers through the ideas portal
* higher efficiency in Product Management due to clear structure and standardized processes
* better focus on strategy instead of only tactical fire-fighting
* easy integration with the R&D tool (Azure DevOps in our case)

Vorteile:

As a product manager you get a lot of information daily from all kinds of sources - and none of the tools that R&D typically use support you in structuring that information. So, you end up with Excel sheets, One Note notebooks, word docs in Sharepoint folders - everything scattered out. When we introduced Aha! the immediate effect was that suddenly everything has a place: from vision to strategic goals to tactical user story specifications, wireframes etc. It's right where you need it when you need it.

Nachteile:

Introducing Aha! requires a mindset change in the Product Management team - everybody needs to embrace it and actually start using it to make an impact. This has been, and still is, the biggest challenge we're facing. I do not recommend buying Aha! if you don't have an internal champion who will help standardizing the usage and train the other team mates.

Game changing Product Management Software

Kommentare: Exceptional!

Vorteile:

The software makes Product Management possible at scale. What I love is the ability to gather all different feature and enhancmeent ideas from around my company easily through Aha's idea portals. All of our employees now know to drop any of their ideas into our portal so that the product team can actively manage them and push them into the product. Gone are the days of countless emails saying, "I wish the product did xyz..." or being stopped in the hallway to be told about a feature request. Our employees easily transfer ideas from our clients directly into our portals too. It's a lifesaver!

Nachteile:

The product is great and I don't have any negatives to say! Takes a little while to think about how you want it implemented, but it's very flexible and can scale with your team.

Excellent product and excellent service

Kommentare: The service at Aha is outstanding! Just recently, I had a question that I needed some help with. I sent it into customer support and had an answer within a few hours. CSR worked with me to solve my problem, gave me great suggestions, and left me with a lot of confidence in Aha.

Vorteile:

I love that it's specifically built for product managers, instead of trying to force us into using project management software. I daily use the reports for monitoring progress, as well as for setting expectations within the company around our roadmap. I've used the integrations both with Jira and Azure DevOps, and both are very solid! The ideas portal is fabulous! Easy to configure, easy to use, and saves me hours of headaches trying to manage that.

Nachteile:

Creating a brand new report from scratch is actually harder than you would think it should be. Though, if you want to create a report from a template, it's super easy. Also, the UI definitely feels a bit dated in places. When trying to convince my company to use Aha rather than Productboard, it was difficult for them to see past the "Sexier" UI in Productboard to understand that Aha had better & more features

Full featured, as deep as you need it to be

Vorteile:

There is so much here. It is made my product managers for product managers. And as product management has so many variations in practice, this tool is configurable to suit pretty much all practices, processes and workflows.

Nachteile:

The ability to customize is initially overwhelming, and its difficult to make sure all things are considered before configuring for deployment. Theres simply too much to learn. There are also certain things like workspace prefixes that once set and used, cannot be changed. So don't make any mistakes when configuring!