The Aha! Framework vs. other product development methodologies
Are you wondering whether The Aha! Framework for product development is right for your team? Seeking to better understand how it stacks up against other product development methodologies?
This guide will help you understand the pros, cons, and nuances of popular product development methodologies in direct comparison to The Aha! Framework. The comparisons are presented in order of general popularity of the methodologies and the frequency with which we see product managers following these frameworks in our interactions with Aha! customers.
If you are particularly interested in a specific methodology comparison, jump ahead now to find what you need:
We think The Aha! Framework is ideal for most teams. (Not surprising, right? It is based on our decades of experience building successful products and working with product development teams across the globe.)
There are compelling aspects to every approach covered in this guide. However, they all have fundamental challenges and struggle to contend with needing to be both strategic and agile to build what customers will actually value. Because our framework takes a goal-first approach to continually deploying useful customer experiences, you can likely incorporate elements of our method into your own. Keep that in mind as you read on.
And remember that if you use Aha! software, our Customer Success team is here for you as you roll out any new product development process using the Frameworks functionality in Aha! Roadmaps. If you are not yet an Aha! user, explore the complete software suite — free for 30 days.
Why are product development methodologies important?
Before we get into the detailed comparisons, it is worth taking a moment to consider why methodologies are essential to product development and some of the reasons why they can become burdensome over time.
Every team needs an agreed-upon and repeatable process for product development. Otherwise, you can descend into chaos and stagnation at the start of each new effort — when everyone scrambles to redefine the way they work in real time. Without a way forward together, you get stuck. You want to agree on a framework for success so you can focus your energy on prioritizing the right functionality.
Most folks want to contribute meaningfully and do their best work. The unpredictability of the unknown — product development — is inherently at odds with this instinct to achieve. So we look for ways to bring order and control through added processes.
But time spent managing, expanding, and updating those processes distracts from what really matters: delivering what will bring the most value to your customers and your company. Striving to find what we refer to as the "Minimum Tolerable Process" for building a Minimum Lovable Product is at the backbone of The Aha! Framework.
We included the most essential product development activities based on our experience as product builders and aversion to processes that encourage navel-gazing, acronym soup, and time wasted in copious meetings.
As you read through the direct comparisons below, ponder what a Minimum Tolerable Process would look like for your team.
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What about homegrown methodologies?
Another consideration before we dive in? Homegrown frameworks and product development methods. Many companies formalize their own approaches, picking and choosing from other methodologies to create a unique way of working that best suits their organization, the market in which they operate, and the customers they serve. This makes good sense even if you adapted from a popular method, because every established team evolves to work in ways that are optimized for its organization.
With The Aha! Framework, we brought together the most compelling aspects of agile development with a focus on strategic imperatives and product development best practices.
The Aha! Framework easily layers onto other approaches. If you are comparing our framework to your own, you can borrow from the evaluation points we used in this guide. You might find areas of overlap and places where you want to adopt or adapt our flow to refine your own. If you are using Aha! Roadmaps, we can help you with creating a custom template that brings together the best of both worlds.
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Scrum vs. The Aha! Framework
Scrum is one of the most popular agile frameworks among product development teams today. Although rooted in software development, scrum has been adapted for many other use cases. You can find teams using scrum to manage hardware products, marketing campaigns, and even educational programs in school classrooms.
Scrum is founded on empiricism. This means that the workflow hinges upon the theory that all knowledge is derived from experience. Self-managing teams work collectively to consistently deliver value at a sustainable pace, improving the team's approach over time based on learnings from each completed sprint.
Scrum is organized around a set of theories, values, and practices. There are two defined roles:
Scrum master: The scrum master acts as a coach to the rest of the product team.
Product owner: The product owner is also part of the scrum team, but is accountable to the product. This person is considered a customer contact and is responsible for maximizing product value by defining user stories and refining the product backlog.
The rest of the scrum team has no imposed hierarchy.
There is an emphasis in scrum on empowering developers to work together against concrete deliverables. Teams are encouraged to collaborate and iterate quickly, which can be motivating for high-achieving groups. The focus on completing increments of a project and continuous learning can give folks a tangible sense of accomplishment and investment in the process.
Challenges with scrum stem from a few areas. Scrum purists would argue that trouble starts when organizations do not fully understand or adhere to the method. The scrum master is an especially important role — these folks are responsible for onboarding new teammates, identifying areas to improve, and implementing best practices and learnings.
If an organization does not invest in adequate training or hires inexperienced scrum masters, the entire team suffers. Scrum events can also balloon into multihour meetings if mismanaged, with teams spending too much time talking about the work instead of actually doing it.
Scrum addresses the development phase of product building, so there is not an emphasis on product strategy. Each sprint has a goal, but that goal is specific to what the team is delivering in that sprint — prioritized work should support an overarching strategy, but strategic alignment and roadmap planning are not part of scrum. It does not mention the concept of business strategy. But the scrum guide was updated to include "product goals" in 2020.
In the context of scrum, a product goal represents the commitment the team makes with each product backlog. There should be one product goal for each product backlog. The idea is to provide a "why" behind the work. But beyond this inclusion, there are no concrete details guiding the formation of a product goal (either in terms of structure or timing for creation).
There is also no consideration for product launches or other customer-facing materials, such as documentation. Again, the focus is on development.
The Aha! Framework takes a more holistic view. Its activities address all phases of product development — including setting strategy, capturing customer feedback, roadmap planning, stakeholder engagement, documentation, product launches, and analyzing the realized value of what was built.
Similar to scrum, teams following The Aha! Framework work in sprints to support continuous deployment. Unlike scrum, The Aha! Framework does not have prescribed formal roles (outside of existing functional roles, such as product manager or developer) or specific events that must occur. Instead, activities like reviewing work in progress and release lookbacks are incorporated into a weekly product team meeting.
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Scaled Agile Framework® vs. The Aha! Framework
Scaled Agile Framework® (SAFe®) was developed and launched in 2011 by Scaled Agile Inc. SAFe is a comprehensive set of guidelines for implementing agile and lean principles at scale. There is a set of 10 principles that guide SAFe practices, with concepts drawn from agile ethos and methods, lean product development, and systems thinking. SAFe has evolved over the years, and the latest 6.0 version was released in 2023.
There are four configurations meant to address different organizations (essential SAFe, large solution SAFe, portfolio SAFe, and full SAFe) with each configuration building upon the last:
Essential SAFe has two levels: the agile team and agile release train (ART). Agile teams in SAFE operate similarly to scrum teams. ARTs are a group of agile teams that practice synchronized planning and iteration cadence, with a shared backlog.
Large solution SAFe adds roles, events, and artifacts to essential SAFe that are necessary for delivering sophisticated applications, systems, and networks. This includes a solution train that coordinates multiple ARTs and suppliers.
Portfolio SAFe uses lean and agile budgeting principles to prioritize, fund, and plan development. Portfolios often include epics, or large initiatives that might cut across value streams and span multiple releases.
Full SAFe includes all of the above. It is the most comprehensive configuration and supports large enterprises with complex portfolios.
If this all sounds a bit complicated, that is because it is. But this level of coordination and specificity is necessary for multinational companies that manage and deliver a highly complex portfolio of products. Think about some of the best-known enterprise-level businesses — these organizations often employ more people than live in most small cities. Aligning groups of that size to deliver value at the product, portfolio, and company levels in a consistent way is no easy feat.
Many large enterprise organizations are drawn to SAFe because it promises the speed of agile with the predictability of a structured workflow that can be coordinated across many teams in complex environments. Believe it or not, one of the main pros of SAFe is that it brings added process overhead.
Huge companies can feel safe (pun very much intended) that dozens or even hundreds of teams are working off the same strategic imperatives and following the same prescribed workflow. Everyone knows their role and has a detailed map of what is expected of that role at each stage of the process. At the most basic level, that is a good thing.
However, many balk at the massive overhead that comes with SAFe (including the "standard" two-day planning interval (PI) sessions, which can last even longer). Some complain about the complexity and rigidity of SAFe. Some even refer to it as a "command and control culture," which refers to a somewhat traditional leadership model where decisions happen at the top of an organizational hierarchy and cascade down to different groups.
The idea is that with strict adherence to the organizational structure and explicit policies, you can increase efficiency. The downside is that the folks doing the work can become isolated from the impetus behind it — mired in the minutiae of the process — and might feel like cogs in a machine. It can stifle creativity, which is essential for product development.
Although SAFe promises increased productivity, context is important. Many enterprises that adopt SAFe operated with legacy workflows (e.g., waterfall) before and moved at a glacial pace because of their sheer scale. But faster with SAFe might not be faster for everyone. The complexity of this method is not typically ideal for dynamic markets that demand highly accelerated speed to market.
Similar to SAFe, The Aha! Framework can be helpful for enterprise organizations that have portfolios of many products with coordinated releases. It just requires some adjustments to certain activity groups. We will cover those at a high level here. But if you are interested in using The Aha! Framework for portfolio management, reach out to our Customer Success team to help you understand how to best configure everything in your Aha! account.
Here are some of the ways you can adjust the activities within The Aha! Framework to support portfolio management:
Set strategy at the portfolio level, establishing the high-level direction for the products and solutions you offer.
After you create individual product roadmaps, create a portfolio roadmap to bring together the various release plans.
Coordinate multiple sprints so you can build and deploy functionality across your portfolio in a synchronized way.
Capture go-to-market activities across the portfolio to coordinate launches across multiple products and teams.
Stay accountable to your portfolio strategy by measuring collective value delivered and identifying improvements.
The most obvious difference between the two frameworks is that The Aha! Framework is simpler. It uses plain language (there are no trademarked terms or acronyms to learn). And it is easily understood by product teams of different backgrounds because it is aligned with the common stages of product development. Instead of the many events and meetings in SAFe, reviewing and discussing the activities in The Aha! Framework can easily be part of a weekly product team meeting.
Note that SAFe requires paid training and certifications. There are a variety of programs that you can enroll in to learn it and gain the information needed for implementation or to perform a specific role. These courses can cost anywhere from a few hundred dollars to more than $1,000 USD, and some require renewals which can be bundled into a yearly subscription price. SAFe provides a plethora of resource materials and open-access information on its website.
Aha! offers paid certifications for our software. We share The Aha! Framework and any educational materials related to it (like this guide) for free.
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Kanban vs. The Aha! Framework
Kanban is a workflow management system. It originated in the mid-20th century at Toyota. Technically, it is not a framework or a methodology — it is a system for visualizing work, maintaining transparency, and boosting productivity by only working on what is needed when team capacity allows.
Kanban is the most lightweight of the approaches outlined in this guide, which is one reason why teams of all sizes and backgrounds use it. People even use kanban to manage personal projects and events, such as book clubs or weddings. Elements of kanban (e.g., the board and cards and the concept of "pulling" work) were also adopted by early agile practitioners and remain a vital part of most agile workflows and methodologies today.
There is a difference between using a kanban board and following the kanban system, though. The nuance is subtle, because (as we already referenced) kanban is a workflow management system and not a philosophical approach with associated principles and ideals.
There are broad best practices that underpin the system:
Visualizing work
Limiting work in progress
Closely managing the flow of work (not the people doing it)
Making the process explicit
Implementing feedback loops
Kanban prioritizes efficiency above all, with restrictions around when work can be started: That is, only when it is explicitly defined, actually needed, and the team has capacity to complete it. Teams are self-directed. The only "interference" with how the team works comes from the team itself, which is responsible for identifying roadblocks and spotting areas of waste or stagnation.
The focus on individual contribution to collective achievement is freeing and motivating for developers who want to get work done. There is a sense of perpetual motion. Continuous delivery is the norm, and kanban's visual nature makes everyone's contributions clear to the team. The sense of always moving forward is compelling.
Things get dicey for those same reasons. One person might drag down the overall flow of the board, either by not contributing at the same level as others, or because a work item was poorly defined and should have been broken down into multiple cards. When work-in-progress limits fall apart, teammates end up with uneven workloads. Work items might not be prioritized appropriately if teammates choose to pull in work based on what they want to do or what seems easiest to accomplish.
But realistically, few product development teams use a kanban system without additional processes and defined roles. Remember that both scrum and SAFe rely on elements of kanban for managing product backlogs and active work.
It is challenging to truly compare The Aha! Framework to kanban for the reasons outlined above. Evaluating a workflow system against a comprehensive framework for product development is not an apples-to-apples situation.
The Aha! Framework includes the concept of "pulling" work based on need and capacity. Both eschew unnecessary overhead in favor of the minimum process needed. A kanban board is not required, but Aha! software includes kanban-like functionality with a features board and parking lot for unstarted work The features board is integral to implementing and following our framework when using Aha! Roadmaps.
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Waterfall vs. The Aha! Framework
Waterfall is the oldest approach to software development and follows traditional manufacturing processes. It is a sequential model for planning, building, and delivering new products, and is centered on the importance of beginning projects with a clearly defined set of requirements. The focus is delivering projects on time and on budget.
Each phase in the waterfall methodology has specific activities that must be documented and approved before the next phase can begin. Waterfall is heavy into documentation — teams at each stage receive at least one document as an input and produce one document at the completion of that phase.
Let's address the obvious rebuttal to the inclusion of waterfall in this guide: What self-respecting product development team follows waterfall today? Well, more than you might think.
Many of the homegrown methods we mentioned earlier evolved from project-based planning methods such as waterfall and evolved into a hybrid "wagile" approach. The strict stage-gate processes of SAFe and attention paid to compliance and costs have roots in waterfall. Even some of the ways that we think about product development as a discipline stem from waterfall: defining requirements, tracking that work is built as designed, and ensuring the final product meets expectations of both stakeholders and end users.
Agile was a response to the rigidity of waterfall. The rapid pace of software development made it possible to deliver value to customers incrementally (rather than as a whole) and to quickly iterate and improve what was delivered based on actual customer feedback. The result was a sort of collaboration between product builder and user — one that is very different from the rigorous upfront planning, copious documentation, minimal customer involvement, and high opportunity cost of waiting to deliver what comes with conventional waterfall.
Yet many companies still follow a sequential model, for a variety of reasons. Manufacturing or hardware products that require specific construction may employ waterfall to increase efficiency and ensure that products are built safely and accurately. And waterfall is still used in industries with high levels of governance or regulatory compliance because the linear process gives certainty that those requirements are met before work continues.
The larger the enterprise and its portfolio of products, the more likely you are to see waterfall practices in place. This might rile agile aficionados. But the reality is that multinational companies with complex offerings necessitate coordinated planning and regimented processes — one reason why SAFe has become so popular with large organizations.
The Aha! Framework (like others) incorporates some elements of waterfall. It is grounded in upfront strategic planning and includes a sequential set of activities oriented around the stages of product development. However, though some of those activities happen at set intervals, most happen concurrently to support continuous delivery.
Ultimately there is no one "right" way for product development teams to work. Methodologies and frameworks offer repeatable structures that teams can follow — but developing successful products hinges on much more than workflow. With a deeper understanding of how different product methodologies compare, you can evaluate your team's competencies and choose a method that provides the right balance between process overhead and freedom to innovate.
