Share Ranked Features With Engineering — From the Prioritization View
"The prioritization view has been a game changer for us!" "We are super fans of this new view." These are just a couple of the love notes we have received since launching the prioritization view in Aha! Ideas and Aha! Roadmaps. Many of you use this view to drive meaningful conversations about the ideas, epics, and features that would be most valuable to your customers. But you told us you could use a better way to communicate this information to engineering once priorities have been set.
You can now save the priority of features to a custom field in Aha! Roadmaps — then send the rank directly to your dev tool via an integration.
Start in the prioritization view with a filtered list of the features you want to rank. Then sort by product value score to bring the highest-value features to the top of your list. You can fine-tune your priorities from here — moving them up or down into the desired order and saving the view. You can create as many versions of the prioritization view as you need to evaluate rankings through different lenses. Simply save the views as reports with unique names.
Prior to today's release, you could share the prioritized list with engineering via an export or secure URL. Now you have a more seamless way to do it — by applying a ranking within a custom number field. Once your rankings are locked in, click the Apply rank button. Note that this is a one-time action. If priorities shift, you will need to re-apply new rankings. When ready, you will send rankings directly to your dev team's tool via an integration. Most of our examples here reference how this functionality works for features, but you can also apply rankings for ideas and epics.
While we were at it, we made a few other enhancements to the prioritization view. Now you can filter by category, due date, and other advanced options to quickly narrow in on the details you want to view. You can also edit status and assignee inline — making it easier to update pertinent information alongside setting priorities.
Let's take a closer look at how to share feature priorities with engineering:
Set up your rank field
To get started, add a custom number field to your feature layout in Aha! Roadmaps. In the example below, we named the field "Product priorities." We recommend making this field read-only to preserve the ranking established on the prioritization view. Next, set up a one-way field mapping from this field to a corresponding custom field in your dev tool. Each time you apply a ranking within the Aha! field, your engineering team will see the same information in their own tool.
If you have saved multiple prioritization views, some of your features may have different rankings per view. For each rank to appear on the feature, you will need to create unique fields for each of the different rankings.
Align on feature priorities
Let's use the prioritization view to rank features for an upcoming release. Here, we used filters to narrow in on a set of features that are up for consideration and sorted by product value score. Make sure to adjust the order to best reflect your priorities. Then, you can apply the rankings — this information will be saved on the feature card as well, so you can also use it to sort roadmaps and reports.
Only owners and contributors with access to the custom field have the ability to apply the rankings from the prioritization view.
Communicate with engineering
Now it is time to send the details to engineering. In the example below, you can see that the priority ranking is visible in Jira alongside other key details — like release name, description, and assignee. The engineering team can use this information to guide sprint planning — ensuring the most valuable features are implemented first.
Keep your prioritization view as the single source of truth with a one-way integration to your dev tool — preventing any changes there from impacting the rank field in Aha! Roadmaps.
Keep product and engineering in sync on the highest-value work.
If you are not already using the prioritization view, we hope you give it a try. Start sharing ranks with development teams today to focus on delivering the most value to your customers and your business.
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Aha! Roadmaps is the best way to set strategy, prioritize features, and share visual plans. It includes Aha! Ideas Essentials for crowdsourcing feedback. If you are interested in an integrated product development approach, use Aha! Roadmaps and Aha! Developtogether. Sign up for a free 30-day trial or join a live demo to see why more than 700,000 product builders trust our software to build lovable products and be happy doing it.
