Aha! Reviews

Pros

I first used Aha! four or five years ago - and it was good then, but has come a long way.

I really like how Aha! brings together the why of product strategy with the how of product management. It enables our team to collaborate, stay informed, share, and stay on track in these areas in ways that are very difficult to do with JIRA alone, or some combination of product specifications and JIRA.

It's intuitive and the support is very responsive, knowledgeable and friendly. There is a lot of customization possible, although I have not dipped into that much yet. But it is clear that as the size and scope of our development organization and product line grow that Aha! has everything needed to manage, prioritize & focus our efforts.

Integration with Atlassian JIRA is also strong and a good option. We looked at only using Aha! - including for managing our development tickets & sprints - but that is not a fit at this point. Keeping the clutter & detail of all the workstream & ticket management for development separate is a better solution.

I definitely recommend Aha as best in class for product management.

Cons

The one major improvement that I see is the need for some type of Knowledge Base / Documentation tool set similar to Confluence. Write now, I find that I have to keep meeting notes in separate documents, as these will tend to cover multiple tickets, and have other work to assign tasks and so on. With Confluence + JIRA, you can both document meetings and develop specifications in one place, and then link this to all of the tickets that are related.

Alternatives Considered

Todoist, Jira, Confluence, Wrike and Twist

Reasons for Switching to Aha!

Better combination of features and focus on specific needs of software product management.

Pros

- Easy to use and learn
- Excellent support team, knowledgeable and responsive (all former product managers!)
- Several templates to choose from, or create your own
- Well defined structure for strategy, vision, goals and initiatives - single source of truth for the Product team
- Easy to share content with stakeholders
- Highly configurable to our organizations terminology and product hierarchy

Cons

- The presentation capabilities are somewhat rudimentary (formatting, graphics)
- Limited ability to support the Jobs-to-be-Done methodology (there are ways, but it's a bit of a square peg in a round hole)
- Embedded tables aren't sortable so it's a bit like older versions of Confluence

Alternatives Considered

Jira, ProductPlan, Asana and Productboard

Reasons for Switching to Aha!

Aha is more comprehensive, going beyond the roadmap and the "what" we are building to having dedicated space and structure for the "why" and "who" that drives the strategy. It's really product strategy + product development all in one. We weren't looking for an engineering tool like JIRA - we have that. We needed a place for business case development and strategic planning, sharing of real-time roadmaps, and a single source of truth for all things related to product strategy. The other tools seemed like targeted solutions to parts of product management rather than the entire discipline.

Pros

It is very visual, don't need a separate tool for workflows, folks can work on something together, love the whiteboards.

Cons

There is a huge learning curve, can get quite complex, whiteboards need more options like lucid charts, white boards don't maintain zoom level when you go back to it.

Pros

Tons of features giving you the ability to follow up on biggest to most minute details of projects which makes it very malleable to various needs.

Cons

The learning curve is steep compared to You track.
Schedules epics activities development tasks todos and several other features can be hard to distinguish and somewhat confusing.

Alternatives Considered

YouTrack

Reasons for Switching to Aha!

Leadership decided

Pros

We like the ability to standardise our product management processes and data model across teams that had historically operated in different ways. Integration with Jira makes it easy to reflect development work being done with limited manual intervention required. The support team is always great and prompt to respond to queries. Good communication on new/upcoming features, too.

Cons

Some small improvements could go a long way for us - prioritisation views for initiatives, clearer record rankings, more configurability of the nicer-looking roadmap views, and so on. Additional configurability in user licenses would also be really beneficial (i.e. adding advanced functionality for just a subset of users) as there are some add-ons that could add a lot of value to some users but aren't always needed by all.

Pros

The breadth and depth of its functionality. You can really tell this is a platform built BY product managers FOR product managers.

Cons

The ramp up time took a little longer than we would've liked but thats the nature of the beast when you are working with a tool this powerful. Once I, as the power user, got the hang of everything, I was able to hold a few lunch and learn sessions with the rest of the team to get them up to speed as well.

Alternatives Considered

Roadmunk and Asana

Reasons for Choosing Aha!

Not nearly enough power for what we require.

Switched From

Productboard

Reasons for Switching to Aha!

Better roadmap functionality, much bigger emphasis on planning and external facing capability to allow our customers to share their feedback on our roadmaps.

Pros

What I love most in Aha! that it is highly customizable to all of our needs, and incredibly easy to use. I also like the reporting capabilities, it has never been easier to me to create real time reports literally in minutes and not to worry about the correctness of the data. Third thing I would mention is the stellar customer support and the frequently released new and cool features of the software.

Cons

Only that the editor license is not available to more people within our team due financial circumstances but as I always say Aha! costs this amount for good and valid reasons.

Pros

There are so few tools that allow you to develop the strategic direction of a product alongside the aspects of delivery. Being able to add the strategic vision, goals and initiatives plus link those to the releases and roadmap is awesome! I also love how as the product management I can see all the work passed to my team in a release schedule view whilst also maintaining a Kanban view for my team's workflow management.

Stop messing around with Jira/Confluence, Monday or Trello and get on Aha!

Cons

The tool is so rich that it can take some getting used to but once you get stuck in then you really feel the benefit!

Pros

Very robust, yet flexible to my needs and presentation. Always accessible with the cloud-based format. Visual illustrations of roadmaps and timelines across many projects and programs conveys customisable key messages to all key stakeholders- Executives, managers, and team members, alike. Customer support is also awesome; I was able to engage in a 1:1 tutorial and answer all my queries at that time and readily afterwards.

Cons

A bit of a learning curve as to how to apply the software to fit my requirements and intentions. Customer support helped a lot to easily overcome that.

Alternatives Considered

Roadmunk and Visio

Switched From

Roadmunk and Visio

Reasons for Switching to Aha!

For the integration and features noted above.

Pros

I am new to Aha! and was setting up my workboards. I was stuck at a place and contacted the expert team. [sensitive content hidden] guided me through the process.

Cons

Have not used the product enough to write on this.

Pros

I am a management consultant. I work with small to medium-size businesses. Often these engagements involve helping leaders get their arms around a complex set of long-range forecasts roadmaps, projects, initiatives, strategic goals, products, services, and more. Aha! brings clarity to my clients like no other tool I have used. There are other tools that do this or that but nothing is as easy to use and drives clarity for leadership in an organization.
I love the ability to create a live web page that shows changes and updates to the roadmaps and other documentation in real-time.
The time savings alone in not having to create a new slide deck for the executives is a sheer delight to my clients.

Cons

If you are looking for something to manage the details of your project, I would not use Aha! It just isn't made for that. I always set Aha! on top of a project or product management system; jira or smartsheet.
Getting your head wrapped around the hierarchy of Aha! can be a learning curve but once you get that down it makes sense and works great.

Alternatives Considered

Jira and Pivotal Tracker

Reasons for Switching to Aha!

That's simple, Clarity. Aha! beats everyone hands down for creating clarity at an executive level.

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.

Pros

The roadmap functionality and features, ideas portal and the ability to create dynamic presentation are key features that have been critical to our product teams. I like that we can connect the strategy of our business, goals and mission at the function and feature level. The UI is easy and intuitive and connecting to Jira is a huge plus for our collaboration with solutions engineering teams.

Cons

SAFe methodology is not completely implemented - although we have found ways to engineer it to fit our organizational maturity in adoption of SAFe

Alternatives Considered

Product Management Dashboard for JIRA and Productboard

Reasons for Choosing Aha!

It did not provide useful tools for product management, strategy, ideas portal. It was hard to see the tracebility and provide senior level management reporting

Switched From

Jira

Reasons for Switching to Aha!

Customer support, ease of use and setup, great UI, ability to have cohesive view across all areas, strategy, product, development teams, marketing, etc.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Alternatives Considered

Microsoft Azure and Basecamp

Reasons for Choosing Aha!

Ease of use and ability to scale as we grow.

Reasons for Switching to 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.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Alternatives Considered

ProductPlan, Roadmunk, Asana and ProdPad

Reasons for Switching to Aha!

Best combination of functionality, interface, and support. Aha has tremendous experience in this field and it shows in their product.

Pros

While the product is very good, Aha's customer service and support is far and away the best I have ever encountered, not only from software providers but pretty must across all walks of life. So responsive, so informative with the responses, and if anything needs some additional work, they are quick to schedule a timely call to work through solutions to satisfaction.

Cons

Navigation can leave a little to be desired. can be very confusing if not in it every day

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Pros

Vast amount of functionality related to almost all aspects of project management. The scheduling tools to set up different timelines and dependencies on a project is the best I have seen in a single self-contained project management tool. Apart from basic time management and scheduling tools there are also a wide array of data analysis that can produce graphs, charts, and reports on project details recorded into Aha!, providing info previously unrecorded or not taken advantage of while using previous platforms. This allows you to see how much time you spend, your pain points, and areas of improvement for a single project or for the entire company as a whole.

Cons

As with any complicated software, the software has a steep learning curve and it is difficult to build new processes in a company for a program with this much coverage and that touches so many aspects of the company. Oftentimes when we began using the product for a certain purpose we found that it was often required to make adjustments in other areas of the company to effectively use the software. A good example would be our adjustment of protocols in the company with JIRA to effectively leverage functionality in Aha!. This often meant work required in those areas that was not initially foreseen. However, when was said and done - after on-boarding the product the benefit was a net increase in our ability to effectively manage projects.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Pros

Prioritizing work and managing the roadmaps are the most intuitive and foundational parts to Aha!. The Integrations to various development systems are also strong.

Cons

Additional integrations with UX-type solutions such as Figma are only available through the additional development product. Our current development product is so integrated into our development activities, that it'll be very hard to move to a new system to take advantage of these additional integrations. Direct product usage integration would also be immensely valuable to add to the software to track the performance and engagement of delivered work and monitor KPIs.

Pros

Aha! has always had outstanding customer service and user experience. I have used this product for many years and have easily onboarded and mentored product managers' careers using this product. I like that we have traceability from the business strategy all the way to the requirements. It has been an invaluable tool for my team to articulate the 'why' to our IT partners.

Cons

The product can be overwhelming at first for new users, but the knowledge base and tutorials are beyond sufficient to bring folks up to speed. It would be great if the product allowed more configurable design to its presentations and roadmaps so we can migrate fully out of ppt and use presentation mode instead.

Pros

I used Aha! in my previous job as a Product Manager. When I started my own company, Aha! was the obvious choice for me to use to build our short and long term roadmaps. Aha! guides you through roadmap creation starting from your strategy, vision and business environment. The way Aha! is set up makes you think through all critical aspects of your business like the competitive landscape, and take them into account in your roadmap planning. Going through the roadmap process in Aha! ensures that we stay focused on the right things that bring us the most value.

Aha! Customer Success Team is legendary. In my 20+ years of career I've never experienced anything like it. True professionals who know what they're doing. The team responds to issues within minutes. They resolve the issues within minutes. They want you to be successful, and provide you advice and best practices to get you there. This is how customers should be treated, and Aha! is an inspiration to us in that!

Cons

I love it all! Only downside is that now I get really annoyed when contacting someother companies' customer service and my questions and requests disappear into a black hole. Aha! has shown a new standard that other companies would benefit in trying to reach!

Pros

AHA is a critical tool for managing each step in the software development lifecycle. From discovery to delivery this tool is used to keep my roadmap organized and to inform stakeholders as progress is made.

Cons

Sometimes when work is moved around the associations to things like initiatives and releases breaks. It's not that big of a deal but it would be nice if associations were maintained. Another area of improvement would be expanded tools for supporting mergers and acquisitions. When two companies using AHA merge, it would be nice to be able to map and migrate the two instances of AHA instead of having to export and import each object in the system.

Pros

Use, customisation and reporting tools are great. The integration options are powerful and simple to setup and configure.

Support are really quick at coming back to you and helpful.

The ideas portal is a great tool. Help documentation is very comprehensive.

Cons

A lot of features/pages, can be difficult to navigate for new users. Their billing team can be a bit keen at times.