Aha! Roadmaps | Features overview

Most product managers spend the majority of their time in Aha! Roadmaps defining features and prioritizing them based on their impact on business objectives and strategy.

This video discusses how the features area in Aha! Roadmaps works and dives into how to prioritize features using the Aha! scorecard.

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

Transcript

Hi, this is Claire from Aha! Today we're going to talk about how to organize, prioritize, and manage every detail of the important work that needs to happen so you can deliver against your strategic roadmap. Let's get started.

Aha! Roadmaps includes three basic record types for defining and breaking down work. Of course, you can always rename these records to match the terminology that your company uses.

• Epics are ideal for defining bigger efforts or themes of work. You can use epics to group features that span across several releases.

• Features represent a work item that must be completed within a given release.

• And requirements are perfect for capturing all the additional details needed to specify exactly what will be built.

You can include epics and features and releases. Releases are containers for work that help you plan exactly what will get done and when. You can also link these records to goals and initiatives. This makes it easy to see how your work relates to the bigger picture, keeping everyone focused on delivering the most value to the customer and the business.

Let's take a look at some of the ways Aha! Roadmaps helps you visualize and manage your work so you can be wildly productive.

Planning board

The planning board is one of the most popular views in Aha! Roadmaps. Depending on your workspace type, you might see this tab labeled as features or activities in your navigation.

The planning board is where teams define features, organize backlogs (which is called the parking lot here), and prepare for upcoming releases. You can drag and drop features in and out of the parking lot or move them from one release to another. Place features in priority order or rank them according to business value.

Cards are colored by status, so you can see an at-a-glance view of how work is progressing. You can also choose which releases you want to see and you can customize exactly what information you want to be visible and toggle between features and epics.

Let's go ahead and add a feature. Select which release your feature belongs to, give it a name, and enter important details such as the type, who it's assigned to, and the due date. Once created, you can open the feature drawer to fill in the rest of the details.

Let's take a look at a feature that's already built out so you can see exactly how much rich information you can capture.

• You can create custom statuses and layouts in your feature cards to match exactly how your team works.

• Add tags to quickly identify key information about each feature, then use the Aha! Score to determine how important a feature is based on value and effort. You can customize the score card metrics, scale, and weighting.

• You will want to link each feature to goals and initiatives to show how it ties to your strategy.

• You can also add as many custom fields as you need to capture information that is important to your team but not included in our Aha! Roadmaps by default.

• Tabs make it easy to organize and find important details within each record, such as requirements, comments, and to-dos. These are customizable too, so you can focus on the information that is relevant for your team's workflow.

Sometimes you need a more refined view of your work. The Details view is especially useful when you need to elaborate on plans and build out requirements. You can even create mockups directly within Aha! Roadmaps to visualize the functionality, like the mobile application you see here.

Your features are prioritized and requirements defined. Now you're ready to send your plans to engineering to be built. Powerful bi-directional integrations from Aha! Roadmaps to development tools such as Jira, Azure DevOps, and Rally make it easy to communicate your plans and track progress.

Let's take a look at three more views that you can quickly access to further visualize your planned work.

List view

Use a list view to sort and analyze features based on criteria such as the score. This is also a great way to bulk update multiple features at once, such as adding a tag or linking an initiative.

User story map

The user story map is helpful for visualizing the journey a user takes as they interact with your product. Add steps to visualize what your customer is trying to do.

Next, create epics to group the high-level activities a user needs to complete as part of each step. Then add features and place them in priority order. This way, you can see which ones are most important for delivering a complete experience.

You can also add releases to your user story map. So you can plan when you will deliver the new functionality.

Workflow board

And kanban fans will love the workflow board. You can see everything the team is progressing on and what needs to be done next in one view. What gets managed gets built. So go get busy. If you need help taming your features backlog or creating custom layouts, use the question mark in your account to get help fast.

Get started today with a free 30-day trial or join one of our live weekly demos. Our Customer Success team are all former product managers and Aha! experts. We want to help you build what matters most.