Kick Some SaaS
The software leaders' guide to creating global impact
1st Edition
Published on 2. May 2023
240 pages
978-1-922764-95-9 (ISBN)
Description
Experienced SaaS adviser Stewart Marshall has seen the vast potential and massive failures of an industry that's no place for nai¿ve, unsuspecting tourists. In Kick Some SaaS he takes you on a journey from ideation to commercialisation and beyond, examining the many issues you'll face in this challenging arena and how to address them. You'll learn how to:
- Focus on the needs of your many people, putting them at the core of your business.
- Create a robust platform and manage the staggering complexity of modern technology.
- Tell the right stories to build and engage with your community.
- Build a team that not only supports you, but helps you grow and keep growing.
- Put some purpose into your organisation, making you both profitable and purpose-led in all you do.
- Engage with your community and together use your platform to make a massive global impact.
Kick Some SaaS is comprehensive and entertaining, and Stewart is true to his "translator of IT gibberish" brand, eschewing technical jargon in favour of plain English. If your dream is to Kick Some SaaS, this is the book for you.
More details
Person
Stewart Marshall is a SaaS adviser, coach, speaker and the bestselling author of Doing IT for Money: A business leader's guide to improving profit per person. He's spent more than thirty years in software creating tools and solutions used around the world by governments and thousands of businesses, including Proctor & Gamble, Kawasaki and Kellogg's. Today he's on a mission to create his own global impact, making purpose-led action an everyday activity for millions of technology users.
Content
- Cover
- Title
- Copyright
- Contents
- Foreword
- Chapter 1: All that's gone before
- Not much has happened .
- The latest and greatest way of delivering software
- The dystopian race to the bottom
- If you're looking at the technology, you're missing the point
- A translator of IT gibberish
- The IT industry and me
- A structured perspective
- What's next
- Summary
- Chapter 2: Before you start
- Failure is definitely an option
- Commercial-grade software development is expensive
- A cautionary tale
- The modern gold rush
- How big is the market?
- Mobility is ubiquitous
- Competition is fierce
- What sort of SaaS are you?
- What sort of SaaS leader are you?
- Failing is fun
- The top nine contributors to SaaS failure
- Success is definitely an option
- I learned the hard way
- Summary
- Chapter 3: Preparation, preparation, preparation
- What's the problem and whose is it?
- Defining your niche
- First steps
- Dreaming of the big time
- Keeping your clients on side
- The second S
- Where are you getting the money to pay for it all?
- Understanding and articulating your value
- Data is the new gold
- Cybersecurity
- Pulling the trigger
- Summary
- Chapter 4: Ready, set .
- One more cautionary tale
- Picking a development team
- Choosing the right tools
- The problem with programming
- Writing a specification
- The application
- Summary
- Chapter 5: Build
- Minimum viable product
- The development process
- Speed and quality
- Intellectual property
- Going international
- Artificial intelligence
- Testing
- Going live
- Summary
- Chapter 6: Going to market
- Seven common mistakes when going to market
- Value
- Pricing
- Features, features and more features
- Artificial intelligence . again
- Sell software not promiseware
- Five-star service
- Finding customers
- Summary
- Chapter 7: Ownership
- A face only a parent could love
- What's next?
- Cost of ownership
- Technical debt
- Adaptability
- Trust
- Growing and scaling
- Measuring everything
- Summary
- Chapter 8: Purpose
- Why?
- How?
- Your new purpose
- Embedding your purpose
- Summary
- Chapter 9: My end, your beginning
- Four Ps became five
- Human-centricity
