The flashier the website, the worse the product
I’ve been on the internet using SaaS for 8 years, here are my tips for quickly evaluating a SaaS product
Look for actual information about how the product works. Screenshots, not buzzwords.
Abstract ideas that describe the product’s vague high-level purpose don’t count. A website with abstract ideas are in danger of saying what they aspire to be, not what they really are.
The flashier the website:
The more time and money they spent on marketing, the less on product
The more likely the product was built to sell to CTOs and CEOs at the cost of hurting developers
The more screenshots and facts:
The more proud they are of the product
The less afraid they are to show their product
Your developers said they loved the product with logos of the news organizations that reported on them?
Examples
Application Monitoring
“Sentry's application monitoring platform helps every developer
diagnose, fix, and optimize the performance of their code.” Good ✅
It tells you exactly what it does. It does not try to tell you how to fit it into your business organization. That sort of website is a sign of an organization (Sentry) that delivers a product focused on helping developers get their job done faster.
“Get tests from red to green faster
Diagnose and fix broken tests faster
Get real-time results and stack traces with local variables
Fix broken tests before the build finishes” Bad ❌
In extreme, it could indicate a product like Jira– a project and task management service–, creating problems for developers while exposing organizational data for a CEO or CTO. Jira’s own team does not use Jira to manage their own tasks. They use a group of sticky notes.
In short, to find a SaaS product that enables your technical excellence, find a product that appeals to people who have technical excellence.
Agile frameworks
When you click on each of the icons, they have airy words like. It sounds good. Lofty virtues to aspire to. Note that I picked a relatively good article of theirs:
The Architectural Runway consists of the existing code, components, and technical infrastructure needed to implement near-term features without excessive redesign and delay. Architectural Runway supports the continuous flow of value through the Continuous Delivery Pipeline, providing the necessary technical foundation for developing business initiatives and implementing new Features and/or Capabilities. The architectural runway is one of the primary tools used to implement the Framework’s Agile Architecture strategy. Since the development of new features and capabilities consumes the architectural runway, continual investment must be made to extend it by implementing Enablers. Some enablers address shortcomings with the current Solution, such as improving the performance or User Experience. Others provide foundational capabilities that will be used to support future functionality.
The only problem is, while it explains a concept to a person unfamiliar with the concept well, the article fails to help developers get their work done faster, except if it is to let CEOs leave the developers alone.
The fundamental reason SaFe is this way is because it’s probably designed to sell consulting.
Let’s take a look at LeSS. It forces you to face the music:
“Organizational Agility is constrained by Technical Agility”
“The nature of any cause-effect relationship is actually not obvious, though it is common for people to jump to conclusions such as more developers means better velocity. Adding people late in development may reduce velocity (a sub-element of “Brooks’ Law” [Brooks95]). Or, more bad programmers could really slow you down. An argument can be made that removing terrible developers can improve velocity.”
It tells the hard truth. That’s what you want out of a website.
They know what they’re doing. The article drips with truth, and it drips like it distilled my own practical experience.
Software in Teams
GitHub
A better way to work together
GitHub brings teams together to work through problems, move ideas forward, and learn from each other along the way.
This is the type of stuff marketing writes after consulting with their CEO on the vision when they have no real product.
GitLab
They give you real facts. If you work with them, you know they want to help you. Furthermore, they even cycle through the logos for their competitors in each category.
Atlassian
Free unlimited private repositories
Free for small teams under 5 and priced to scale with Standard ($3/user/mo) or Premium ($6/user/mo) plans.
Best-in-class Jira & Trello integration
Keep your projects organized by creating Bitbucket branches right from Jira issues or Trello cards. Built-in Continuous Delivery
Build, test and deploy with integrated CI/CD. Benefit from configuration as code and fast feedback loops.
GitLab: integrated solution for DevOps. Concretely tells you how it fulfills your needs.
GitHub: a development platform inspired by the way you work. Vague.
BitBucket: BitBucket is more than just Git code management. Translation: BitBucket is Git code management with extra features on top.
If they can’t concretely tell your developers how it fulfills their needs, maybe you’ve been sold BS.
Conclusion
The website is just one facet of a product. As the old saying goes, don’t judge a book by its cover. Don’t judge a product by its website, but if you do, judge it by the number of facts and concrete needs it addresses.
Organizations that truly care about their product tend to spend less time working on a website full of bling. Do the buttons have shadows and gradients? Chances are, it’s too good to be true.