Whole Product Development Articles

Why Platform as a Service (PaaS) Frameworks Are the Key to Better SaaS Products

Via GigaOm on No Responses

Anyone not developing software as a service (SaaS) applications atop a platform as a service (PaaS) framework is producing an inferior product. Period.

That’s the argument that Keas co-founder and former Google VP of product management Adam Bosworth made at the 5th annual GigaOm Structure Conference. According to GigaOm’s Derrick Harris, “Bosworth laid out the case for PaaS pretty clearly: It’s cheaper, it’s easier and Keas has a better product because of it.” While Bosworth said “his decision to build Keas on cloud application platform Heroku‘s PaaS offering saved the company hundreds of thousands in operational costs per year…the biggest benefit might be a better product because the company is able to focus on building the app rather than managing servers,” Harris writes.

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Testing 1, 2, 3 Questions to Ask Customers During Minimum Viable Product Testing

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Before you go any further down the path to product development your team needs to consider getting out of the building and getting critical customer feedback via minimum viable product testing as quickly as it can.

“There’s no substitute for face-to-face discovery with customers to see their reaction to the problem or the solution,” write entrepreneurs-turned-educators Steve Blank and Bob Dorf. “Do their eyes light up or glaze over?”

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How to Grow Your SaaS Company by Achieving Negative Churn

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Churn is a major drain on any SaaS company attempting to scale. Negative churn, on the other hand, can massively accelerate the company’s growth.

“As a SaaS company becomes larger, the size of the subscription base becomes large enough that any kind of churn against that base becomes a large number,” writes VC David Skok. “That loss of revenue requires more and more bookings coming from new customers just to replace the churn.”

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Ask the Experts: Common UX Challenges Facing Expansion-stage Companies

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In this second post of a three-part series (see Part I and Part III), four user experience and product design experts share solutions for UX challenges facing expansion-stage companies.

ux challenges

This week, in conjunction with a workshop OpenView is hosting on user experience process and product design, we’ve gathered a panel of four industry experts who each know a thing or two about designing successful products.

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Who’s In Charge of Overcoming Scrum Impediments

Via Agile & Business on No Responses

In a post for Agile & Business, Joe Little asks who should fix impediments, the SM or the Team? Little says getting the Team involved in impediments is important. “To me, the first thing is getting the Team better at identifying the top impediments (imagining that real change can happen), and then better at giving the SM information about how to prioritize them,” he writes. (See How to Remove 27 Sales Impediments) Little says while working to get others to complete the fix of an impediment is important, the SM should…

Working Less for Better Productivity

Via Scrum Log on No Responses

 

Image Credit: Exvo

In a post for Scrum Log, Jeff Sutherland explains the Maxwell Curve or how to get more production by working less. After running Scrum internally with teams of venture capitalists making investments, Open View Venture Partners foundeing partner Scott Maxwell created the Maxwell Curve. See Scrum Teams and the Management) “Now it is different with Scrum. In order to double our productivity we need to work less, certainly no more than 40 hours a week,” Maxwell is quoted saying. “Scrum is intense and you cannot work extra hours at that pace without…

Adopting Agility Into Project Management

Via Boris Gloger on No Responses

Image Credit: Trinity Adam

In a post for Boris Gloger, Gloger explains the idea behind the project management ‘scrum.’ “The biggest hurdle is understanding that the name alone does not ensure agility,” he writes. “Real agility is closely linked with a paradigm shift in thought.” Success with agile thinking Gloger offers up the example of designer Tom Ford, who recognized a little earlier than others what the market would want. “So he had what the market wanted, when the market recognized what it wanted. He had positioned himself in the market in such a way…

The Downside of Depending on a Platform

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In a post for his blog, Chris Dixon outlines the risks you take on when you depend on a platform for your product’s distribution. “When your product extends a platform’s functionality, one of the main risks you face is that the platform could embed your product’s key features within the platform,” he writes. Oversaturation This happens, he says, when the risk that supply of products on the platform significantly outpaces demand. (See Product Strategy: Should you be building a platform?) Barriers to discovery Dixon says the risk that the discovery methods on the…