Aha! Erfahrungen

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.

Never going back to Jira

Kommentare: Fantastic overall. So impressed with the product, as well as the service. Would definitely recommend.

Vorteile:

Very powerful software, and almost no learning curve compared to Jira. So much more intuitive despite having a ton of advanced capabilities. I especially love how easy it is to share information with non-users, without having to manually update spreadsheets or slide decks.

Nachteile:

The Roadmaps pricing is a bit steep, but the Develop pricing is affordable enough that it makes up for it.

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen: Trello

Warum Aha! gewählt wurde: Tired of Jira's illogical UX and unnecessary complexity.

Zuvor genutzte Software: Jira

Gründe für den Wechsel zu Aha!: Aha! was more flexible in terms of which software development methodologies we could practice; Trello was too purpose-built for Kanban and Linear was too specific to Scrum.

Don't recommend. Read review for details..

Kommentare: Would never recommend.

Vorteile:

Cool logo. Good space to house personas and competitor analysis.

Nachteile:

In the initial onboarding process I would contact customer support for clarity, seeing as how I've never used such a software. I had one phone call, fairly short. I was later tasked with sole responsibility for the software - evangelizing and coaching others on how to use it. When I reached out to support for more clarity, the reps did EVERY possible not to get on a call with me. They would email me back every other day - directing me to instructional videos - refusing to get on the phone. I needed to integrate with Jira, "Please HELP!!??"- guess what? "We have some videos that can help you. Awful support. As well, not very user friendly, not customizable, and just down right inferior cosmetically.

Powerful and flexible (tread with care)

Kommentare: For all it's flaws, I love this product. It lets me do what I want, how I want (and I can be quite demanding).

Vorteile:

The best thing about this product is the huge flexibility resulting from the degree of customisation that is available. This is dangerous if mishandled, obviously, but in a company where processes are evolving, it has allowed me to accommodate all manner of requests and requirements.

Nachteile:

The UI can be a little inconsistent. Many features are paywalled; I'm constantly being upsold as if I'm on a freemium version. Some of the tools are a little unloved (text editing is clunky and unreliable, some presentation tools lack flexibility). And navigation isn't the smoothest.

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen: Trello, Craft.io, monday.com und Productboard

Gründe für den Wechsel zu Aha!: Huge flexibility to mould it to our (changing) processes, and to capture eveything.

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.

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen: Productboard

Gründe für den Wechsel zu Aha!: Richer reporting, deeper feature sets, better use of strategy elements, MUCH better integration.

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.

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen: Planview Portfolios und Clarity

Gründe für den Wechsel zu Aha!: This was an enterprise tool previously selected by my company. I would have preferred a PPM tool, but at the moment we don't need such a robust tool for project/portfolio management, so Aha! just fits the bill, and now that I've learned it serves me beautifully. Plus we are also using it for product management and integrating it with Jira.

Powerful and customizable solution for PMs with a steep learning curve

Vorteile:

Aha Ideas provides flexibility, security, and automation, allowing us to interact with customers at scale in a fashion that fits our business. Aha Roadmaps+ offers a very compelling product planning tool that integrates directly with our Jira instance. Aha regularly updates both products with new and compelling features. Aha also reaches out on a regular basis to check in, showcase new things, and troubleshoot any issues we're having.

Nachteile:

The seat-based licensing model prevents us from fully adopting Aha Roadmaps as our standard planning tool. Doing so would require our program managers, engineering managers, and designers to have paid seats. Also, as with other highly customizable tools, it's very confusing for the uninitiated. We've had to create extensive internal documentation for onboarding new product managers. Finally, we've been asking for a SOC2 report for years, Aha hasn't been willing to undertake this (ISO27001 is not equivalent).

Great product

Vorteile:

Tons of functionality; quick responses from support

Nachteile:

Difficult to learn. Recommend going for Enterprise Plus Plan so you get that Concierge help!

The only software option for a quality Product Manager to use!

Kommentare: Always extremely positive. I love the platform and I am delighted by the quality and friendliness of the employees. You make my projects look good!

Vorteile:

They really have thought of everything! The platform has such comprehensive functionality, everything you could need to plan, deliver and communicate your product releases. With so much content, it's a tough job to ensure users can easily learn and get value from the platform but this company is Best in Class at demo's; KB articles, how to videos and live training sessions. Everything is super clear and easy to learn. Why wouldn't you want this as a Product Manager?

Nachteile:

Sometimes the sheer volume of "what's possible" can be overwhelming. Simple things can be hard to figure out because you didn't notice this one setting that is active. With that said, the times that I have needed to figure something out, the articles are super clear and the response time for support is unreal.

Good for feedback

Vorteile:

It's so easy to use and allow users to submit their ideas and proposals thru the platform

Nachteile:

There isn't anything specifically, sometimes I feel it is a bit barebones, but when deploying to tons of users and customers, it honestly is better that way

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.

Enterprise-grade with powerful flexibility and integrations

Vorteile:

Aha! has made a huge difference in our ability strategically plan our releases and align across multiple delivery teams. It's the only tool flexible enough to accommodate our broad and multifaceted product suite, and allows us to report on it all without requiring engineers to create reports for us. The customization and integration capabilities are better and more user-friendly than any I've seen in any product. When configuring customization and integrations in other products, I often find myself thinking "if only this were as easy as Aha". Same thing about reporting - it can be a bit complicated but I think they do a great job of making it as simple as possible even with a huge variety of options and massive flexibility. Their support is also incredibly responsive and friendly, and their documentation is good. It's been really easy for me to teach myself the ins and outs of the product and get answers to my questions.

Nachteile:

Our biggest barrier to getting more value out of Aha is the cost. We would love to bring our scrummasters and UX leaders into Aha in more than essentially just a read-only capacity, but the cost to do that is prohibitive. While the benefits of Aha are huge, so is the cost, so it's something we need to be constantly ready to justify to management. The navigation is also somewhat poor, and there are a handful of specific views that are hard to use, which is a point of confusion for many users. But that's not too bad since we can usually create the view we want via a report.

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen: ProductPlan und ProdPad

Warum Aha! gewählt wurde: Because our development teams make heavy use of Azure DevOps Server, we had previously been trying to use that for our product & release planning as well. But Azure DevOps server didn't provide enough ways to track work across many projects and teams, the reporting was not flexible or user-friendly enough, the customization was a nightmare. At the end of the day, we needed a tool built for product managers, not engineers.

Zuvor genutzte Software: Azure DevOps Server

Gründe für den Wechsel zu Aha!: Aha was the only tool that offered the level of customization and hierarchy that we needed for a large and multi-faceted suite of products, and it also integrated well with our development tools. Most other tools we looked at seemed like they were made with small portfolios or startups in mind, not a fully fledged enterprise-grade product suite.

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.

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen: ProductPlan und Productboard

Gründe für den Wechsel zu Aha!: The others tend to focus on planning and prioritisation, whereas Aha has the reporting, strategic end of things is stronger, plus frankly Aha employs product managers to help you. You simply cannot compete with a support team of your peers.

This product has it all.

Kommentare: Excellent experience so far. Putting more time into the setup and structure pays dividends later down the track. This is where the training and documentation really puts it ahead of the competition as we have not had a situation where we have not found an answer.

Vorteile:

This product can scale like our aspirations - it is very useful when you are small for structuring how to work, and when you are large for managing the multiple streams of development. Great integration to other products like Azure DevOps and Microsoft Teams as well, this formed a large part of our decision-making for purchase.

Nachteile:

At first we struggled with integrating this with our standard project management tools. Then we realised that educating our delivery leads to use the built-in tools was more efficient (and cost effective) than double-handling! Problem solved, and efficiency gains as well.

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen: Microsoft Azure und Basecamp

Warum Aha! gewählt wurde: Ease of use and ability to scale as we grow.

Gründe für den Wechsel zu Aha!: The ease of use and intuitive nature of the platform was the main driver. The other was the advanced features that we think will be required as we grow. We did not want to limit our growth to the initial software, or have to migrate mid-flight in our growth range.

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.

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen: Productboard

Gründe für den Wechsel zu Aha!: I was familiar with it, and the price is fair.

Offers room to grow in to

Kommentare: Overall Aha! is a very well documented and supported product. The support I've received both over the phone and via email has been great - they really do have experienced product managers available to answer technical questions as well as talk about implementation details/best practices (note: they will make you schedule an appointment if you need to go to the level of screen share...I struggled with that at first but I think it's a gentle way of teaching folks to fish...as most questions can be answered if you take the time to read the documentation). We have also had a good response on a couple of key feature requests which I was impressed by given our modest account size.

Vorteile:

What has been most useful to us is the ability to let the respective teams remain in their tools of choice while being able to knit together an end to end picture from top-level goals down to the execution of features and go to market activity. The pre-built integrations to Salesforce, Zendesk, GitHub, Slack, and Asana made linking the picture together across our org a pretty light lift.

Nachteile:

We struggled with the UI here and there as well as getting folks fully up to speed on the available capabilities/best practices as it is feature-rich. Our approach was an incremental deployment starting in the middle of the data model. If I had a chance to do it again, I would start at the top with clear goals, vision and a focus on capturing product strategy details and then move down through the initiatives and into tracking the implementation details via releases/epics/features. Some of the new enterprise + features around collecting customer feedback are pretty interesting.

Product Management made easier!

Kommentare: As a Product Manager I definitely have seen improvements in my release planning and processes. Users can really visualize sprints, releases and backlog items and easily navigate throughout the system. Being able to share beautifully colored roadmaps with executives is a definite plus!

Vorteile:

Drag and Drop in the Workflow BoardDrag and Drop in Sprint Planning - easily move items to defer to later Sprint, move back into the backlog, etc.Easily move items from ideas to featuresIntegration with TeamSupport to quickly receive priority issues from customer support calls.

Nachteile:

Because there are so many features I feel like I am not taking advantage of everything. I find myself creating 'workarounds' for things I need to do when there may be a better way. However, the support is awesome!!

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!

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen: Jira, ProductPlan, Craft.io, airfocus, Strategic Roadmaps, monday.com, Asana, Productboard und ProdPad

Powerful Product Management Tool

Kommentare: Great productivity tool for any Product Management Team.

Vorteile:

C-Suite and Executive level Goals and Initiatives are linked all the way down to Features and Defects worked on by Engineering. Live reports (can be used in Aha presentations) are a huge time saver. A versatile tool that provides the Product Management team with lots of options for roadmap creation, program increment & release planning and tracking. Support is amazing and very responsive. Live updates to the software. Great to get new features without extra wait time.

Nachteile:

Live updates to the software. Sometimes the updates are unexpected and break current behaviors internal processes with no warning. Takes days/weeks to adjust afterward. Unclear on why certain features are changed. The response is frequently that user groups said it should work the new way. No clarity of how to access this pool of user groups to share opinions. If possible, both new and old options need to be allowed. Where possible need to allow to turn certain features on/off at the global level. Recently started to push out certain features (e.g. Automation) only to higher subscription tier levels. Software is expensive enough to have all features at all levels. More direct/hands-on support can be kept at higher levels.

Flexible software to allow Product Managers to refocus on strategy

Vorteile:

I particularly like how Aha! allows the PM to link the features/tasks the team are working on to the reasons why these features have been defined and prioritized over others. It gives a clear direction to the entire team. I recently joined a startup company as a product manager and I felt daunted by the amount of features and tasks that were waiting to be developed in the backlog. The team was working in Agile mode, releasing features as soon as they were developed. It was extremely complicated to organize them around objectives and priorities and we had no visibility on when each of them would become available. Some members also felt that the team was sometimes working on features that should not be considered high priority. Aha! solves these problems as it helped us organize the developments into theme-boxed releases (even if we actually put features in production as they are developed) and the master features improve clarity by grouping features into epics. Each of them are also now clearly graded in term of business value and effort and linked to overarching goals and initiatives in order to justify the priorities. The dynamic reporting features are also a real time-saver. Finally the hotline is amazing! I had a couple of exchanges with them and their reactivity and helpfulness was way above my expectations.

Nachteile:

I have only used the software as a trial until now, so I haven't spent too much time in adapting it to our specific needs. Once we sign up for the paid version, I know that I will have to dedicate a few days to set it up to best fit our needs and customize a few of the options. I am glad that their support team is so responsive. I am pretty sure I will need their help and I am looking forward to working with them and benefiting from their experience from other companies.

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.

Roadmapping

Kommentare: The online ideas portal is very easy and convenient to use. The product structure for portfolio management takes some time and energy to invest in, but once set it is very powerful and easy to use.

Vorteile:

AHA! is a perfect tool for product roadmapping from ideas to shipped releases.

Nachteile:

There are quite a lot of features in AHA! that are too overwhelming to use

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen: Productboard

Gründe für den Wechsel zu Aha!: The ideas portal and extra possibilities