SaaS product management: when you are never really done
And why it's so important to assess the recurring tasks your new idea might generate elsewhere.
Welcome to RemoteThatWorks, a weekly newsletter hand-typed by the Valentina Thörner, the Empress of Remote herself. I talk about product leadership, process design, and people (and their relationships). Proudly non-AI, and proudly all-opinions-my-own. To work with me, find me on MentorCruise.
2017 Val thought that it would be an amazing idea to make her website available in Spanish and German apart from English. After all, her books were available in several languages and there were people from Argentina getting to the website.
2019 Val quietly scraped both translations after failing to maintain the pace of regularly updating the localized version at the rhythm that she published new content in the primary language.
And that’s the main difference between working on defined projects with a clear scope - and being a product person in SaaS.
Hardware (including books) is defined upfront, scoped, planned, manufactured, distributed - sequentially
Creating physical things is a very satisfying process.
You plan, you create, you manufacture, you test, you confirm, you distribute. And then you are done. You can put that book onto your shelf. You can ship that dress to your client. You can install that ceiling fan in your home.
You started out with a pretty clear idea of what the finished product would look like. Maybe you adapt the timeline and content based on the research you do in the beginning (that’s what I did with my last book back in 2019). Once you start creating/producing though - you are off to the races.
And oh wow, does it feel good when you can finally close that project because you are literally DONE!
SaaS software needs to be imagined, developed, delivered, revisited, updated - often at the same time
Software is different.
There’s actually a recurring question: What does DONE look like for this feature that we are building?
Because DONE in software doesn’t mean that the software is done. It only means that the current iteration of the software is good enough to be exposed to the public.
Software products are never finished. You have an idea, you look at data, you confirm or update your assumptions, you test options, you create, you deliver, and then you literally circle back to check the impact of your results so you can start on your next iteration.
We define DONE and how to measure it upfront, because there is no final state of DONE.
Iterative DONE also means… iterative costs to DONE.
Translating a book means paying for the translation. Once. You may have to update the design, because different languages use different amounts of words. It’s not an ongoing commitment though.
OK, maybe you’ll occasionally get questions or podcast invites in a language you aren’t quite familiar with. But you’ll be
Adding a language to your SaaS software is a different story. It’s essentially a never ending story.
You don’t just translate the software as is. You commit to maintaining the languages for every future iteration.
Every new feature now needs to be translated.
Every updated screen needs to be translated again.
Every time you change a word in the onboarding process, you need to review update all the languages.
And you may even have to offer support in those languages.
Interestingly enough, the smaller the language, the more expensive the translations. The less words you request, the more it costs to get those three words in all languages.
[That’s because there are lots of translators in tech who can do a translation to Spanish, but not a lot who can cover Croatian - hence those are more expensive. Combine this with the minimum fee or minimum number of words and and different languages can become really expensive really fast.]
So while you can translate your book into different languages just to see what happens - your SaaS software better have a really good reason for every single new language. And with reason, I mean proven market potential or paying customers.
What does DONE look like and how are you going to measure the impact
With software you can do so! many! things! You can do anything. That doesn’t mean that you should do everything. As with everything in life, it comes down to experimenting and then collecting hard data about whether your assumptions were true.
Sticking with the language result. Let’s say you added Croatian. How are you going to measure whether the language is being used? Maybe you track how many people change their interface to Croatian. Maybe you track the number of installs on phones with a Croatian number. Whatever you choose, make sure you have the data you need to assess whether your assumption was correct. Then it’s easy to course correct, iterate and continue with the next definition of DONE.
Want me to help you define what DONE looks like for your product org? The only way to work with me 1-1 is currently via MentorCruise. Or reply to this email - I’ll definitely read your reply and while I can’t promise a personal reply, your question or comment it might spark another newsletter :)