How we reduced product management overhead using Aha!

Mossy O’Mahony

VP of Product and Marketing

We had a problem

Our product team could not manage our workflow as effectively as needed. We were using too many disparate systems to capture input across our product team and organization. This often resulted in lost, incomplete, or misdirected information. We tried to rectify this by using Jira to manage our product planning. Although Jira is a top development tool, it is not built to support the product planning workflow. Jira is great for the “how” of product management.

But we needed a tool to come before it and manage the “why,” “when,” and “what” of product planning. Without this solution, we struggled to plan and execute our product roadmap and releases on time. As a result, getting stakeholder/executive buy-in for projects was a real struggle. Since our product team had little visibility, we struggled to convey the big picture to stakeholders. We knew we needed a better way to show and communicate where our team was going — and how our work would achieve business objectives.

Aha! as a solution

Aha! empowers us to manage the entire PM process in one place where we can centralize input across our organization. The roadmap planning features are especially helpful. They offer clear visibility into our work, such as which features we are prioritizing. Aha! is also excellent at helping us explain the “why” of what we do. When certain features are prioritized, we can connect them to high-level goals and objectives. We can also score their estimated impact based on the metrics that matter most for our business. This helps us explain which features will add the most value to our customers, product, and organization.

Aha! is designed specifically for product managers, which is a huge breath of fresh air. It suits our PM processes and improves our product planning from end to end.

Then, we can take as many views within Aha! as needed and add them to notebooks. We use these notebooks to share our progress with stakeholders. They paint a clear picture of where we are going and how our work will impact the big picture. That is precisely what stakeholders want to see — and it makes our product team’s work so much more seamless.

Life is good

So many aspects of our product planning have improved with Aha! Our end-to-end management of the whole PM process is a million times better. This ease is reflected in our improved product roadmaps.

Most importantly, our product team is more united than ever before. Now that we all use the same tool built to support our workflow we have a lot more clarity about where we are going – and why.

Now that we have a tool to help us plan and prioritize what goes on our roadmaps, the final results show a much more cohesive picture of our work. The result is more buy-in from stakeholders and senior leadership.