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Aha! Business Model Builder — Create the perfect strategy for your product roadmap
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Serge Doubinski
I've been using a spreadsheet for my roadmaps for years and sharing the template on my iheartpm.com blog has been the most popular article for a couple years now. With that, I've been searching for a solid product to replace the spreadsheet and after using Aha! for a couple months I can say that my search is over. After taking a bit of time to set things up, Aha! is comprehensive enough to accommodate anything from a startup project to a large company with multiple product lines. The team is doing a great job with the updates and I'm looking forward to all the future enhancements. Highly recommended!
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@convergeonserge We used those crazy spreadsheets for a long time as well. From startups to large companies -- we loved those spreadsheets and their pivot tables. And then we had a crazy thought. Why are we making the most important decisions in the company -- strategy and roadmaps -- and using the least sophisticated tools? Thanks for sharing your story, it is close to home for us. It's also why we only hire former product managers to work directly with really smart customers like you.
@pgopalan Thanks Prabhakar! Would love to hear your feedback after you have had a chance to try it out this morning.
@pgopalan Thanks. It was a huge team effort to pull together 4 key tools to help teams: set a vision, perfect a business model, define personas (and tie them directly to features), and track competitors into one section of Aha! But you know how we feel about the importance of strategy :-)
We've introduced Aha.io more than a year ago at Blue Yonder and two things continue to amaze me: 1) how easy roadmap planning discussions have become once everyone is on the same page (Aha also allowed us to move to a monthly planning cycle for a bi-monthly release cycle) 2) the speed at which the Aha team continues to roll out new, meaningful features.
@trieloff You are too kind. We feel fortunate to have created Aha! and launched it in 2013 when it was clear that there had to be a better way than Excel + bug system to create a strategy and roadmap. We are grateful to serve terrific customers like you.
Fantastic new updates. I brought Aha! into our organization a few months ago and it's been incredible. Can't say enough about the responsiveness of Brian and his team and their ability to continuously add great new features.
@jasonmhanna Thanks Jason. The team has grown really quickly over the last year and now serves over 20,000 users, so it is hardly about the founders anymore :-) Introducing this Business Model Builder and all of the new strategy functionality was a big effort and credit must go to the entire team. We are fortunate to work with an amazing group of people (who are distributed across the US, btw).
I really love the updates. I feel like tracking the business model, competitors, personas, and all of the really important stuff tends to happen inside a bunch of different heads throughout the business. Rarely is it ever put into a centralized method of tracking so that it can be enacted. This is like SCRUM meets real business process. Keep up the great work guys!
@startupjoshua Thanks Josh. Yes, you make an insightful point. Managing top-down and bottom-up at the same time is hard. But, that's what great product managers do. And a meaningful product management tool must do both -- and be as sophisticated as the customers who use it.
This sounds similar to Steve Blanks startup worksheet.
Looks cool! You can never have to many tools:-)
@dredurr Thanks. It's a bit different as it is a complete strategy and roadmapping SaaS service for product managers and company builders. You can see everything that we offer at www.aha.io
@prabhakar_u Thanks for the shout out. Let us know what you think when you use the new business model builder. Best.
As someone who works on a team developing and launching digital products, we've yet to find a tool suitable for devs, designers, and marketers to collaborate on product roadmaps. Today is the first time I've learned about aha.io but at first glance I'm extremely excited and anxious to try it out. Nice work, Aha team!
@spncr2 Thanks Spencer. We use Aha! for our marketing as well and it has been a game-changer in terms of collaboration and productivity with other cross-functional teams. If you would like a demo send a quick email to support@aha.io and we'd be happy to help you get started.
Definitely more product roadmap & dev than "business model builder" as the title would suggest. Looks cool but it's a bit overkill for us non-dev types.
@webfugitive There is actually an entire section devoted to setting strategy and it includes: a business model builder, vision screens, persona profiles, competitor profiles and a chart to plot them on, goals, and initiatives. You are right that the goals and initiatives tie to a complete set of roadmapping tools as well for creating sprints and defining stories. We have tried to cover everything a product management team needs to build a great product and share their plans with customers and the rest of the organization. We serve a broad and diverse set of customers. Thanks for the comment.