Aha! Roadmaps | Data model overview

Learn how to structure your workspaces and workspace lines. Strategy can be set at both the workspace and workspace line levels, then linked through your roadmap to the actual work.

The Aha! Roadmaps data model does two things: It highlights the core building blocks in Aha! Roadmaps — lines, workspaces, releases, features, and ideas — and explains the relationships between them.

In this video we will focus on the product management data model. You can read about the other workspace types (each with their own data models!) here.

Click below to watch the video, or scroll down to follow along with a transcript!

Transcript

Hi, this is Claire from Aha! Today I'm going to share with you how the Aha! data model works. Understanding the different record types and how each one is related will help you determine the most effective way to organize your own data in Aha!

Here, you can see an illustration of the Aha! data model. We're using a product workspace as our example. Depending being on your workspace type or any customizations you have made to your account, the labels in your workspace may be different. Each record in Aha! represents a core building block of the application and the arrows in the illustration show how items are linked. We will look at each of these records and explain how the relationships work. Let's get started.

Workspaces

It all begins with workspaces. A workspace is a collaborative environment where a team can manage plans that share a common purpose. In Aha!, you can choose from six purpose-built workspace types — product, IT, project, services, business, and marketing. Workspaces can belong to parent lines and parent lines can belong to other parent lines. Your hierarchy is the foundation for building a red thread of strategy throughout your organization.

Create a workspace hierarchy that represents the way your products and teams are organized. You can group workspaces within parent lines, rolling products up to divisions, all the way through to your company level.

Strategy

This brings us to the next major area: strategy. You can define strategy at every level in your hierarchy connects goals and initiatives at the workspace level with goals and initiatives at the parent line level to show how your strategy will support the broader business. You can also link workspace goals and initiatives downward to actual work, including releases, features, and ideas to show how you will deliver against your strategy.

Releases

Next, we have releases. Think of these as containers for delivering work. A release includes everything you need to complete to launch a new customer experience. You can break releases down into epics, then features, and finally requirements to capture specific details about the work.

Ideas

Finally, let's talk about ideas. Idea management is a powerful way to capture customer feedback and requests. An idea is a potential feature that is not yet prioritized on your roadmap. As you review, you can promote an idea submitted in your ideas portal directly to a feature in Aha! This establishes the link between both records, making it easy to track the status of ideas all the way through to delivery.

Hierarchy report

Once you have created links between record types, you can use the hierarchy report to visualize those relationships. Here, you can see the relationships between the workspace hierarchy and strategy — continuing through to releases and features on the far right.

The Aha! data model is incredibly flexible. Think of it as your foundation and showing that your vision is always linked throughout your roadmapping process. You can then set custom workflows and even change the terminology to match how your team works.

If you need help, use the question mark in your account. Everyone on our Customer Success team is a former product manager and Aha! expert.

Get started today with a free 30-day trial or join one of our live weekly demos. We want to help you build beautiful roadmaps and get work done.