From Impossible to Done: A Modern Strategy to Engineer Awesome SaaS Products

Remy Gendron · First published June10th 2020

Today, every business is a software business. This realization implies that the transformation must now be global to the company. All aspects of conducting business must be adapted to support digitization and SaaS products. This book contemplates what is involved.The art of making software is doing great. Many improvements, both with technology and processes, continue to push us forward. There’s no simple recipe in these musings though. Instead, the following is a guide on topics you may benefit from exploring. As you’ll see, adaptability is critical. As we discuss strategies, you need to customize them to your environment.We cover:- Companies often neglect the hurdles of cultural transformation. Culture is the necessary foundation to acquire the right talent, and thereafter gain the ability to promote freedom over control.- SaaS and the Modern Software Culture rely on talent first, downplaying the importance of processes. Acquiring and keeping the right digital talent is the cornerstone of a successful SaaS strategy.- The phases of creating and evolving a SaaS digital product require a different approach to product management. You need to leverage the lower distribution and customer acquisition costs to gain real-time insights into your audience’s needs and preferences.- Technology is now a commodity as everyone can make use of it through public cloud offerings. The difficulty is in choosing the right technology for the challenge. A SaaS platform built from open-source requires picking the best components from potentially hundreds of candidates.- Execution is now the real differentiator between winners and losers. A SaaS delivery model applies enormous pressures on your IT organization. That’s why accountable DevOps teams are a great solution to the complexities of SaaS. We look into those key factors that drive engineering excellence and the context necessary for DevOps to thrive.From an understanding of your current situation, answers arise when you develop an awareness of what is possible. There is no magic bullet for change. Your transformation is your responsibility. The good news is that each step forward is a reward in itself.This work is made possible by all the great software gurus who have influenced my thinking. I have also had the pleasure of working with incredible people over the last 25 years, who were all instrumental at making me a better software engineer.Finally, I would also like to thank the astronomical number of errors, blunders, and misjudgments I committed over the years.

“From Impossible to Done” is a book that provides a comprehensive guide to engineering SaaS products. The author presents a modern strategy that combines design thinking, customer development, and agile development methodologies to help product teams create successful SaaS products.

1. Adopt a design thinking mindset to understand customer needs and build products they want.
2. Use customer development to validate product ideas and refine them.
3. Implement agile development methodologies to quickly deliver and iterate on products.
4. Focus on creating a minimum viable product (MVP) to validate product-market fit.
5. Collaborate with cross-functional teams, including engineers, designers, and customer success teams.
6. Foster a culture of continuous improvement by seeking feedback and iterating on your product.
7. Embrace experimentation and embrace failure as a learning opportunity.
8. Ensure that your product solves a real customer problem and delivers value.
9. Align your product roadmap with customer and market needs.
10. Continuously measure and track key metrics to make informed decisions about your product’s future.