{"id":2744,"date":"2018-02-13T07:05:46","date_gmt":"2018-02-13T13:05:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/?p=2744"},"modified":"2018-02-13T07:05:46","modified_gmt":"2018-02-13T13:05:46","slug":"building-a-bridge-as-your-clients-walk-across-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2744","title":{"rendered":"Building a Bridge as Your Clients Walk Across It"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There was an interesting article posted to hacker news about the nuts and bolts of a SaaS product that you might not expect (<a href=\"https:\/\/workshop.kwoosh.com\/post\/the-hidden-work-when-launching-a-saas.html\">article<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/item?id=16360890\">discussion<\/a>).\u00a0 I commented based on my experience that the early days of a SaaS product are like building a bridge while your clients are walking across it.\u00a0 You want the bridge to be far enough ahead of your clients that they won&#8217;t fall off it.\u00a0 But, not so far that if you or they want to go a different direction you&#8217;ve wasted time and materials building a useless walkway section.<\/p>\n<p>So, don&#8217;t build features your customers aren&#8217;t going to use. But do build features they are going to need. How do you know what the difference is?<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>you can ask them.\u00a0 This is the only way to start unless you are a target user of your SaaS product (in which case, ask yourself).\u00a0 Depending on the technical sophistication of your users, you may or may not get good requirements, but there&#8217;s no better way to understand their pain.\u00a0 They will speak very confidently about their pain, however they will also try to give you suggested solutions.\u00a0 Don&#8217;t take those as gospel, as they may not have thought through the ramifications of said solutions.\u00a0 Find them by looking where they congregate online (facebook groups, forums, reddit).\u00a0 Targeted email may be OK if you have a relationship.<\/li>\n<li>you can build a placeholder.\u00a0 This is a great way to see if folks want the feature, if you have some folks using your app.\u00a0 We built a placeholder for document management: &#8220;email us and we&#8217;ll upload your documents&#8221;.\u00a0 After a few emails, we knew it would be worth it to build out some way for folks to self serve.<\/li>\n<li>you can build a MVF (minimum viable feature).\u00a0 A feature does not need to spring from your mind fully tested, polished and automated.\u00a0 Sprinkle in manual steps, use emails to people instead of automation, or release only a subset of a feature.\u00a0 The goal here is again to see usage before you fully develop it.\u00a0 Another benefit is that the MVF may be all that is needed.<\/li>\n<li>you can wait until clients ask for it.\u00a0 The value of this depends on when they need what they ask for.\u00a0 If they need it when they ask for it, then it&#8217;s just another data point (&#8220;thanks for the request.\u00a0 We&#8217;ve noted it in our roadmap&#8221;).\u00a0 If they need it a week or a month after they ask for it, then you can actually build it for them.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>It actually can be quite helpful to checkpoint feature usage every so often.\u00a0 I&#8217;ve seen this done two different ways, though I&#8217;m sure there are more.\u00a0 The first is to look at the data and see what features clients are using.\u00a0 This is nice because it just takes developer time, digging through your OLTP database.\u00a0 Make sure you write down the results and the queries.\u00a0 However, this won&#8217;t work until you have some users who&#8217;ve been using your system for some period of time.\u00a0 The second is to schedule user interviews and watch your clients or prospects use your system.\u00a0 This is time intensive, but can lead to many many insights and gives you definite user empathy.<\/p>\n<p>Now, this type of development doesn&#8217;t free you from having a strategy. You need to pop your head up every three months or so and revisit the strategy and see if your business is working toward it. But if you are a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dictionary.com\/browse\/completionist\">completionist<\/a> than early stage SaaS is not for you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There was an interesting article posted to hacker news about the nuts and bolts of a SaaS product that you might not expect (article, discussion).\u00a0 I commented based on my [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2744","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-web-applications"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2744","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2744"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2744\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2745,"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2744\/revisions\/2745"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}