How we enabled real-time roadmaps within Aha!

Harold Schuringa

Product Planner

We had a problem

In the past, we did not have a product plan or roadmap that was accessible to our team and customers. This was a huge challenge — it meant that everyone had poor visibility into our team’s work. Colleagues could not tell which features would be delivered per release. This made it tough to plan ahead and answer questions. Our team collaboration also took a hit. We did not have a Web-based tool that allowed colleagues and customers to deliver feedback. We received so many great ideas and feature requests on a regular basis. But without an easy way to capture and manage these ideas, they often went nowhere. This meant that a lot of great suggestions never made it into our projects.

Aha! as a solution

Aha! allows us to easily create roadmaps and fine-tune all of our features. Using one Web-based tool to capture our company vision, update strategic initiatives, and manage ideas has been a crucial change for our team. Now, everyone involved in our product release — from customers to stakeholders — can use Aha! to see what we are doing — and, more crucially, why we are doing it. Aha! makes it very easy to allocate product features to upcoming releases.

Building a roadmap is complex, but Aha! has made it easy.

The Features board is a huge help with this; it helps us see which features will be shipped, as well as the status of each feature. And Aha! notebooks is a lifesaver for us. Our product team provides regular updates to our colleagues and customers. Naturally, these two groups need to see different views of our work. Aha! notebooks allow us to publish as many views of our data as we need to. This ensures that the audience for each notebook sees what is most relevant to them and absorbs the information more easily.

Life is good

Previously, we did not have an up-to-date product portfolio. The fact that we can update Aha! in real-time is brilliant. It means that our whole product team can reference one shared tool and see the status of each product. It has also given us a clear roadmap for the first time, as well as more clarity about our work.

Using Aha! is great. Our colleagues and customers feel more heard and respected than ever. Nothing is more valuable than that.

Now that we can see which features roll up to each release, our team has a better understanding of our work and why we do what we do. And the Ideas portal has changed how we manage customer requests. Now, they have their own portal to share, vote on, and crowdsource ideas for new features.