Aha! is the complete product tool we were looking for

Michael Silverman

VP, Product

We had a problem

As a result of Pepperjam’s rapid growth and aggressive acquisition strategy, the product team needed a consistent framework and toolset for integrating disparate product roadmaps and backlogs. In addition, Pepperjam has several distinct and distributed engineering and product teams that all must work in tandem to deliver error-free products on time. However, different teams had radically different workflows and software solutions, none of which shared similar best practices for shipping software.

Aha! as a solution

Pepperjam derives significant benefits from Aha due to its “by default” incorporation of industry standard best practices.

More specifically, the ability to assign tasks to other members of the product team, as well as comment and "watch" certain features/releases makes communication much more concise — particularly across teams and time zones..

Aha! is one of the few pieces of software I have ever used that incorporates industry best practices at the core of its functionality.

Our product portfolio is composed of a number of different products, all at different lifecycle stages. Aha! offers coordination of multiple releases with the roll-up release and roadmap features. We use the Aha! integration with Jira — it is a great solution for communicating releases quickly and concisely with the engineering team.

For the instances where we need custom functionality or data tracking, customized fields have been extremely useful to adjust Aha! to our organization's needs. We don't have to adapt to a certain vernacular, but are able to keep known process language intact.

Life is good

Roadmaps in Aha! help us identify when resources will be overloaded or too many releases overlap, allowing the product team to be more proactive versus reactive.

Aha! is a sleek and intuitive piece of software that helps our product team stay organized and communicate seamlessly with our engineers.

The team uses scorecards to assign priority to a feature based on important criteria such as revenue increases, task efficiency, or development time. This makes it possible for the team to shift focus as needed based on overall company goals — and to instantly prioritize features that hit certain scorecard thresholds.

The Aha! ideas portal allows stakeholders to submit suggestions for improvement at any time, which is extremely valuable for the product team to be able to review and implement.