The Stoic’s Cube for SaaS Product Development
Like humans, a software product is an evolving organism. The team embodies the product and efficient Operations ensure sound health provided you have access to good quality air vis-à-vis Finance. A SaaS model like a personalised shelter enables continuous and focused improvement when compared with a rented one 😉 . At the same time, it also experiences the same ordeals like any other human being.
Stoicism can play a positive role in ensuring a stable SaaS product development path. The below proposal is my humble attempt to describe it.
So how does it help eventually?
- Less management, better collaboration
- Helps create a customer-centric team
- Enables the team to be in sync with the vision of the product
- Enables the team to visualise and understand the product from the customer’s perspective before implementation
- Less time is spent on triaging and prioritising tasks as the team is liaising on a single vision
We often choose to interact based on one’s personality. Similarly, a lead decides to consider your service based on your product’s personality. Teams must therefore, be made aware of this perspective. Making product development take the exact same path as a customer’s evaluation process brings more clarity to the table.
Let’s walk-through the path to build a product’s personality
- The lead reads your marketing material — ads, blog, landing pages, etc.
“If a man knows not which port he sails, no wind is favorable.” — Seneca
The first impression is the lens through which the user will evaluate the rest of the product. Product development must start with the same document with notes about the target customer. If a team knows not her customer, no channel, technology, design, etc is favourable. For example, write a blog about your product launch and share it internally with your team and other stakeholders.
2. She then checks out your product features and does a comparative analysis with her existing or competitor solutions.
“That’s fine, but fully consider what you’re getting yourself into. What does such a desire entail? What needs to happen first? Then what? What will be required of you? And what else follows from that? Is this whole course of action really beneficial to you? — Epictetus
Post the first impression, she would look at the features page to further assess your product for her needs. The next step therefore, would be to create this page so that your team can comprehend the solution. Document each feature or function in a way that it explains why and how it solves the customer’s need. Include the revenue model and a comparative analysis of existing solutions in the market to provide readers with more insights.
3. She would expect you to clear her doubts and support her throughout the evaluation process especially during the trial period.
“In your actions, don’t procrastinate. In your conversations, don’t confuse. In your thoughts, don’t wander. In your soul, don’t be passive or aggressive. In your life, don’t be all about business.” — Marcus Aurelius
After all, she is another human like yourself. For them, the product is just another tool in their kit to achieve their goals. They don’t have time to delve into the details as they aren’t initially passionate about it. Therefore, document the entire user experience starting from user engagement to on-boarding to usage in terms of UI, VD, tours, feature wiki and FAQ. This way, the team is better prepared to respond to user queries and avoid unnecessary distractions while implementing any feature. If the team shares a cordial relationship with the user, she might even share some interesting and radical ways to use the product. This helps the team to further refine the experience and build a better community.
4. Once she is engaged in the product, technology holds the baton to win the race.
“Just as certain capacities are required for success in a particular area, so too are certain sacrifices required. … If true wisdom is your object and you are sincere, you will have work to do on yourself. You will have to overcome many unhealthy cravings and knee-jerk reactions.” — Epictetus
Technology is the channel through which the solution is delivered to the customer. Document the technology specification and describe in detail the choices made as this will help the team relate the functional spec to the architecture. It is equally important that the focus remains on the product and not on the channel. Nothing is worse than a team with a diluted focus.
So how do we ensure stability?
“Some things are within our control, and some things are not. It is only after you have faced up to this fundamental rule and learned to distinguish between what you can and can’t control that inner tranquility and outer effectiveness become possible.” — Epictetus
A SaaS product may still be scrapped because of budgetary constraints or may get paralysed as a result of attrition or may get delayed as a result of your team’s inefficiency or something else. Embrace finance and operations with more caution and preparation as they are more likely to be outside your control. Tweak the product’s personality backwards i.e steps 4 to 1 till it is adjusted for these uncontrollable elements. Once done, review it again from 1 to 4 till you reach satisfactory coherence. The final outcome is your MVP (Minimum Viable Product) spec sheet.
Let’s visualise..
“Nothing, to my way of thinking, is a better proof of a well ordered mind than a man’s ability to stop just where he is and pass some time in his own company.” — Seneca
The Cube is a simple mental model or a framework to visualise the SaaS product’s personality.
A user is always introduced to the front face which is Marketing. Once introduced, she rotates(clockwise) to the next face i.e the Product for its features and utility to solve her needs. And then she rotates(clockwise) again to the next face i.e Support wherein she expects answers. Once done, she is assured of a consistent experience through the next face i.e Technology . All this time, she was indirectly interfacing with the axis i.e Operations and Finance.
Let’s apply…
“Don’t explain your philosophy. Embody it.” — Epictetus
Exactly 2 years ago, I left the corporate world to venture into solution consulting. Got an opportunity to help launch the first popular app in the otherwise conservative pharmaceutical market. The job was to architect a B2B solution in India for automating the supply chain of a pharmaceutical company based out of Mumbai. I took this opportunity to apply this knowledge to create the product’s personality before commencing implementation. It enabled us to roll out the app with just 2 remote developers(who were new to Android as well as serverless) in minimal time with minimal costs. It scaled to ~10K users effortlessly in the first phase.
What’s next? Well…
“Make for yourself a definition or description of the thing which is presented to you, so as to see distinctly what kind of a thing it is in its substance, in its nudity, in its complete entirety, and tell yourself its proper name, and the names of the things of which it has been compounded, and into which it will be resolved. For nothing is so productive of elevation of mind as to be able to examine methodically and truly every object that is presented to you in life, and always to look at things so as to see at the same time what kind of universe this is, and what kind of use everything performs in it, and what value everything has with reference to the whole.” — Marcus Aurelius
Documentation is the most crucial aspect that makes the framework tick. My next exercise is to codify the process and tools to make the documents comprehensible for a larger audience.
Any suggestions on improving the framework is welcome.
PS: “Working Backwards” is a process created by Amazon which coincidentally resonates with the Cube.
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