You have a strategy. Now you need a place to implement it. Aha! Develop and Aha! Teamwork both connect natively with Aha! Roadmaps, so your strategic plans and your day-to-day delivery live in the same system, without a traditional integration. This article will help you understand the difference between the two products, choose the right one for your team, and get set up.
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Understand the difference
Aha! Develop and Aha! Teamwork are both delivery products, designed to be the place where work actually gets done. The key difference is who they are built for.
Aha! Develop is purpose-built for software engineering teams. It supports scrum, kanban, and SAFe methodologies, with sprint planning, backlog management, velocity tracking, and burndown reports. Developers can also extend the product using JavaScript — adding custom UI elements, automating actions, and integrating with source code, CI/CD, and AI coding agent tools. If your team writes code and works in sprints, Aha! Develop is for you.
Aha! Teamwork is built for any team that needs to manage delivery work, such marketing, operations, project, or cross-functional teams. It offers sprint planning, flexible workflow boards, project-based delivery, and delivery reporting, without the engineering-specific tooling. If your team implements product strategy without living deep within the codebase, Aha! Teamwork is for you.
Both products connect to Aha! Roadmaps the same way. Once linked, records are shared between your workspace and your team, statuses stay in sync, and delivery data flows back into your roadmap, automatically.
Choose the right product for your team
If your team... |
Consider Aha! Develop |
Consider Aha! Teamwork |
|---|---|---|
Is an engineering or software development team |
X Purpose-built for development teams |
|
Is a project, marketing, ops, or cross-functional team |
X Purpose-built for project and implementation teams |
|
Needs scrum, kanban, SAFe, or sprint planning |
X |
X |
Wants throughput, velocity, and delivery reporting |
X |
X |
Works closely with product teams in Aha! Roadmaps |
X |
X |
Wants to use official Aha! extensions |
X |
X |
Needs custom-built extensions |
X Supports building and installing custom extensions |
Not sure? Reach out to our Customer Success team — they can help you evaluate which product fits your team's workflows.
What changes when you add a second product
Adding Aha! Develop or Aha! Teamwork to your Aha! Roadmaps account is not a migration. The connection is native, which means both products share the same records. Here is what that looks like in practice.
Work lives in two places, not duplicated in two places: A feature that you create in Aha! Roadmaps can be pulled into your team in Aha! Develop or Aha! Teamwork. Once pulled in, it is the same record, not a copy. Updates in either product are reflected in both. This means your roadmap stays accurate without extra effort from your team.
Team status takes precedence over workspace status: When a team updates the status of a record in Aha! Develop or Aha! Teamwork, that change can also update the record's status in Aha! Roadmaps. This is intentional — the team doing the work has the most accurate view of where a record stands. You can customize the team's status workflow, as long as statuses map to the standard workflow in your Aha! Roadmaps workspace.
Strategy stays in Aha! Roadmaps: Goals, initiatives, roadmaps, and product documentation remain in Aha! Roadmaps. The delivery products are focused on implementation, and include their own space for technical documentation. Think of Aha! Roadmaps as where you decide what to build, and Aha! Develop or Aha! Teamwork as where you build it.
Here is what lives where when you connect the two products:
Aha! Roadmaps |
Aha! Develop or Aha! Teamwork |
|
|---|---|---|
Strategy |
Goals, initiatives, and other strategic records |
|
Planning |
Releases, parking lots, roadmaps |
Backlogs, parking lots, and sprints |
Work definition |
Epics, features, and requirements |
Epics, features, and requirements, either pulled from the product workspace or created for the team's internal use |
Implementation |
Features board |
Workflow board |
Documentation |
Notes, whiteboards, knowledge bases |
Notes and whiteboards |
Reporting |
Roadmaps, analytics, dashboards |
Planning, progress, and delivery reports |
Status |
Workspace status |
Team status, with the option to map to and affect workplace status |
The most common challenge teams face is using two products to do the same work they used to do in one. To avoid this, be deliberate about where each type of work is defined, prioritized, and completed. The next section will help you draw those lines clearly.
Set up the connection
You will need to be an Aha! account administrator to configure the connection. Once the connection is in place, your team members can begin pulling work into their team and working from the workflow board.
Where to go |
What to do |
Best practice |
|---|---|---|
User menu → Settings → Account |
Confirm your account includes the Aha! Develop Advanced or Aha! Teamwork Advanced plans. Add users who need access to the new product. |
Start with a small group. You can expand access as you refine your workflow. |
|
From Aha! Roadmaps: User menu → Settings → Workspace → Aha! Develop / Aha! Teamwork |
Link your Aha! Roadmaps workspace to a team. This is what enables the native connection. Records can then be shared between both products. |
Link one workspace at a time. Verify status mapping before rolling out to more workspaces. |
|
From Aha! Teamwork or Aha! Develop: User menu → Settings → Team → Workflows |
Define the team status workflow. You can customize this for your team, as long as statuses map to the standard workflow in Aha! Roadmaps. |
Keep the workflow simple at first. You can add statuses and automations once your team is comfortable. |
|
From Aha! Teamwork or Aha! Develop: User menu → Settings → Team → Capacity planning |
Choose your estimation units (time or story points). If you work with a product team in Aha! Roadmaps, align on the same units. |
Time-based estimates (hours) are more universally understood than story points, especially for non-engineering teams. |
User menu → Settings → Account → Automation |
Review and update any automation rules that assign records or trigger on status changes. The addition of a team may affect existing rules. Automation rules are available to customers on either the Enterprise+, Aha! Develop Advanced, or Aha! Teamwork Advanced plans. |
Common useful automation: auto-assign records to a related team when a feature moves to a given status. |
You do not need to migrate any existing records. The connection works with records you create going forward — and you can backfill by pulling existing features into your team at any time.
Start working across both products
Once the connection is set up, here is a practical guide for how work should flow between Aha! Roadmaps and your delivery product.
Define work in Aha! Roadmaps: Create and prioritize features and requirements in your Aha! Roadmaps workspace first. Assign them to a release or parking lot, score them, and link them to the appropriate initiatives. This is your source of truth for what the team is working toward.
Assign work to the right team: Once you have prioritized features, assign them to the team responsible for delivery. In Aha! Roadmaps, you can assign a feature directly to a team. This is how work flows from your strategic plan into the right team's backlog. If you have multiple delivery teams connected to the same workspace, this step ensures the right work lands with the right people.
Pull work into your team: When you are ready to work on a feature, pull it from the workspace into your team. You can do this through the workflow board or during sprint planning. Assign the feature to a team member and add a time estimate if you plan to use delivery reports.
Work on the workflow board: Once work is in your team, move it through statuses on the workflow board. Requirements can have their own statuses. Use them to track granular progress within a feature. When the team updates a status, the corresponding record in Aha! Roadmaps updates automatically.
Use delivery reports: As work is completed, delivery reports in Aha! Develop or Aha! Teamwork will begin to reflect your team's velocity, throughput, and cycle time. These reports require estimates and logged effort to be most useful. Even a simple time estimate on each feature — without full time tracking — unlocks the most valuable reports.
Complete work and close the sprint or period: Mark features and requirements complete in your delivery product. The completed status will also update the feature in Aha! Roadmaps, keeping your roadmap current.
You do not need to adopt sprint ceremonies or full capacity planning to get value from a delivery product. Even working from a simple workflow board — with features pulled from the workspace and statuses updated regularly — gives you better visibility into what is in progress and what is complete.
Next steps
This article gets you started, but the connection between Aha! Roadmaps and Aha! Teamwork or Aha! Develop can be incredibly sophisticated. Choose from these resources for anything that has piqued your interest.
Managing work |
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Capacity planning |
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Scrum |
|
Kanban |
|
SAFe |
|
Automation and extensions |
If you get stuck, please reach out to our Customer Success team. Our team is made up entirely of product experts and responds fast.