Services organizations use Aha! Roadmaps to plan and deliver complex offerings for their clients. Start by creating your workspace hierarchy, then connect your strategy to your planned work and track dependencies and manage risks along the way.
Use this article to tour a services workspace. We will walk through the demo workspace, called Fredwin Services (Demo). You can enable it in your own account. Use this information to start building out your own service workspace.
We created Fredwin Services (Demo) as a fictitious company, fully populated with records and data. By exploring it, you can get a sense of how Aha! Roadmaps works and how you might like to structure your own services workspace.
All Aha! Roadmaps trials are fully functional — including the ability to set up integrations. This means that you can start adding your own workspaces, releases, and features at any time (even after starting with the demo organization). You can also import your data into Aha! Roadmaps if you have your plans in another tool.
Click any of the following links to skip ahead:
Enable a demo services organization
A demo services organization is available for paid and trial accounts by navigating to Settings ⚙️ → Account → Profile and scrolling down to the section Demo data. Click Add demo for the services line item to add the demo data to your account.
Once you become comfortable with Aha! Roadmaps by using the demo workspace or creating your own demo services workspace, you can easily delete all demo data and start managing your real services work with your team. To delete the demo workspace, navigate to Settings ⚙️ → Account → Workspaces and click the Delete button that appears to the right of the workspace.
Workspace hierarchy
Let's start with an overview of the data model. You can watch this video to explore the Aha! Roadmaps data model, or keep reading to explore the services workspace data model.
Once you have added a demo services line to your account, expand the workspace hierarchy dropdown in the upper left of your screen that says Fredwin Services (Demo). This shows a two-level hierarchy — the parent company and the services line.
You can add as many levels, lines, and workspaces to your workspace hierarchy as you need. This allows you to structure your Aha! Roadmaps account to reflect the design of your organization.
The diagram below shows how records can be used in Aha! Roadmaps to create and visualize your plan. The arrows show how items are linked to one another.
Knowledge
Centralize product information — from meeting agendas to brainstorming sessions, a single customer call to an entire product development framework, the Knowledge menu brings all your documents together.
Use Documents to create the notes and whiteboards that spark ambitious ideas and track your team's progress towards success. Documents help you define team processes, train new members, collaborate in whiteboards, or any other use that comes to mind. Use the library of guided note and whiteboard templates to inspire creativity, drive consistency across teams, and establish a standard approach for documentation
Frameworks give you a central place to diagram the product development methodology that your organization uses — from setting strategy all the way through to launch. You can build your own framework, start with a scrum or SAFe® template, or even use The Aha! Framework.
Files are a repository of every file attached to a record across your Aha! account, so you can easily find them again.
Strategy
In the Strategy tab, you can capture your strategy for each level of the workspace hierarchy — beginning with your workspace and rolling all the way up to the company level. You should link your strategy to the work your team completes as well, so that every feature, schedule, or idea has a clear connection to your strategic vision and every person on your team can see that strategic connection.
You will find goals and initiatives already set in your demo workspace. Articulate value by showing how your programs will support overall business objectives. Set goals and initiatives to guide the creation of new services and enhance existing ones.
Releases
Your team's success often depends on your ability to prioritize your work, coordinate with other teams, and deliver on time. Releases in Aha! Roadmaps help you do just that.
We've created four example releases in the services workspace. Each uses a default release to show the different phases and milestones of cross-functional projects. You can set up your own release template with custom phases and milestones under Settings ⚙️ → Workspace → Releases templates.
Ideas
Better ideas lead to innovation, and innovation leads to market leadership. Every organization wants better ideas, but it's tough to actually capture them in a manageable way.
We've included a sample of ideas in the services workplace with varying statuses. Click on an idea to view the details.
Give each idea an Aha! score to visualize the relative value for your customers and effort for your team on each request.
Promote the best ideas directly to your roadmap when you're ready to start working on the offering.
You can also create an ideas portal to capture ideas from colleagues, partners, and customers.
Features
Features represent the incremental units of technical and non-technical work that carry out your strategic goals and initiatives.
Features have been linked to goals and initiatives. Each feature is scored using the Aha! scorecard which helps you weigh business value against effort. Click on a feature to see its details.
Use parking lots to organize upcoming work for offerings that are planned but not yet scheduled. You can create new parking lots by expanding the parking lot drawer and clicking Add column.
Epics are used to group features that share a common business objective. Epics are also created with an Aha! score but are turned off by default. To enable epics, go to Settings ⚙️ → Workspace → Configure. Once enabled, you can switch between viewing epics and features on the Features → Board page, and between viewing epics and releases on the Releases → Gantt page.
Roadmaps
Visual roadmaps are one of the most powerful ways to communicate where your project or service is headed. Use them to showcase upcoming features you plan on delivering, set expectations around project timelines, or ensure key stakeholders are apprised of your high-level initiatives.
Let's focus on the features roadmap for this tour. Go to Roadmaps → Features and make sure that Fredwin Services (Demo) is selected in the hierarchy dropdown. With this roadmap, you can build a client-facing roadmap that highlights critical dates. Check which features you want to highlight and uncheck the features that you do not want to show.
Analytics
Analytics let you analyze your Aha! Roadmaps data using highly customizable list tables, pivot tables, and charts.
To get started quickly, navigate to Roadmaps → Library → Overview. You will find more than 75 example reports that we created to help you get up and running. For example, select the Features folder and choose List Table: Feature status. This will generate a report that lists the sample features in the selected workspace and their status.
You can also track progress on all major Aha! Roadmaps record types using the Progress field. This will automatically calculate the percent of work completed and visualize progress on roadmaps and reports.
In addition to the example reports, the Analytics section allows you to manipulate the hundreds of data objects in Aha! Roadmaps to create your own custom roadmaps and services reports.
Presentations
An Aha! Roadmaps presentation is an intuitive way to share your roadmaps, reports, and other information from Aha! Roadmaps with your audience via secure webpage or PDF — or, for a live audience, deliver it from your browser using Presentation mode. The information shared in your presentation is directly connected to the data in your account, making it painless to keep your audience informed as updates are made.
Support
After you have gone through the demo services workspace, it is time to add one of your own!
If you get stuck (or curious!) reach out to our Customer Success team. They are all Aha! Roadmaps experts and they respond super fast.