The SaaS Stages Funnel

(Open for new titles that generate more curiosity)

Excerpt: Is your project successful? Do you even care, or do you just ship features? In this essay, the stages from idea to market are explained, and it is argued that it could help you to become more a more driven and successful senior developer.

Outline:

• Short introduction of myself, what I do, have done, and how I failed in projects

• More detailed Explanation of how I see the stages in a SaaS startup ( see picture)

• Answer to these questions:

Should a senior dev be aware of these stages? What is the role of a senior dev in a project, apart from developing? Should a senior dev just focus on development, and get the ‘what’ from their boss/PO (or should he have an opinion about the direction of which way to go, based on awareness on the stage they’re in and the technical challenge).

Some points that came out of the discussion:

• Big teams may lead to much discussion. It’s in the Dutch culture to be direct and discuss a lot. It may be better to adopt a more South American culture and just do something in a way you don’t necessarily agree with but just do it so you all have the same direction. Avoiding discussion could save time.
• It can be very motivating to understand the user better
• All knowing the bigger picture and deciding together what to do with the app is probably good for team spirit
• Smaller projects with smaller teams that are in an earlier stage should be more aware of the stages as it may change rapidly what is important. Too rapidly to get directions from your boss
• When developing a Greenfield project, it’s important to test your assumptions as early as possible. Disproving your assumptions may be tough, but it may save you a lot of time wasted going in the wrong direction.
• A common pitfall of big companies is to overdevelop and not validate early enough. As a matter of fact, most startups probably don’t validate early enough too. I don’t either. It’s hard. But it can be done. This is an extremely good book about validating early https://www.gv.com/sprint/ (before PoC). But it’s a common pattern to throw a years work of development with a big team into an idea and discover it won’t work a year later. This is a waste of money.

Conclusion: it can be good to be more aware of these stages and to see the bigger picture outside of your expertise. It will probably make you a more motivated and driven developer. Although it’s maybe not what’s expected of you, it may surprise your employer in a good way if you come up with ingenious discoveries.

Idea for another blog: Feature Ownership (Full stack + Design + PO in one with responsibility) versus Code Ownership (FE, BE, PO, Designer, Tester, Feedback, all apart, together in a team). Advantages and disadvantages.