SaaS Development Stages
1. Planning
The first stage of the SaaS software development life cycle is conceptualization. This is when you do your research and collect all of the project's requirements, as well as define the project's objective, result, and related goals.
Controls for these operations are often built on a mix of security, confidentiality, availability, processing integrity, and privacy principles. You must determine who your service's intended audience is. What interaction will they have with your SaaS product? You must create a service that meets the specific demands of this audience.
A company may simply integrate SaaS platforms, marketing solutions, eCommerce platforms, CRMs, and social apps that are vital to business operations by using connectors. Connectors adhere to all API regulations, approvals, and data processing settings, and once established, you may reap several SaaS application connection perks.
Even if the technology and idea are strong, choosing the wrong SaaS operating costs might be the death of the firm. Finally, you must choose the most appropriate SaaS pricing methods for your platform.
2. Design & Prototype
This is the stage of your SaaS design. Investigate how to create the software as a service and best practices for SaaS application architecture. There, for instance, you may choose between single-tenant and multi-tenant architecture.
A single instance of the program and its associated architecture is dedicated to a single client. Each customer will have their own separate database and instance of the program with the single tenancy. The term "multi-tenancy" refers to the fact that a single instance of the program and its supporting infrastructure serves numerous clients.
At this time, you should consider generating a SaaS architectural diagram to assist others to comprehend your design more readily. Along with being concerned about SaaS application security, you should also be concerned about the SaaS cloud security provided by your cloud service provider. Examine their security policies carefully to determine which service is right for you.
At the end of this step, you may begin assembling a tiny prototype to confirm that your connectors, database choices, and cloud provider all operate as expected and result in a viable prototype SaaS implementation. This is how a SaaS application is designed.
3. Building & Development
Now it's time to build your service and write some SaaS code!
Before you start writing code, make sure you have the essential components in place:
- You should be familiar with the SaaS database architecture that you want to use.
- You should identify which SaaS cloud providers you'll be using and how much they'll bill you for your anticipated consumption.
- You should have a software team set up, ideally one that specializes in SaaS development.
- And lastly, at this point in the SaaS development life cycle you should have a prototype in place.
With everything organised, your team can produce the product or service to your precise specifications and requirements. Use your preferred project management software to guarantee that the project stays on schedule and that developers follow SaaS best practices.
Creating SaaS apps may take a long time and is an ongoing effort. The time necessary to accomplish this stage is heavily dependent on the experience of your developers and whether they have a prior understanding of how to create SaaS apps.
4. Testing
Many of the key ideas of software testing apply to SaaS application testing as well. SaaS testing is a software testing procedure that involves evaluating a software application designed in a Software-as-a-Service paradigm for both functional and non-functional criteria.
SaaS testing ensures the quality of the SaaS-based application by assessing data security, integrity, performance, interoperability, and scalability. This includes testing your cloud-based architecture and ensuring you have a framework for measuring SaaS performance metrics.
The goal of cloud study is to check software for both functional and non-functional criteria utilizing cloud computing, which offers quicker accessibility as well as scalability and flexibility to save time and money on software testing.
5. Deploying
You have created and fully tested your solution at this point in the SaaS product development lifecycle. It is ready to go!
Major cloud service providers such Microsoft Azure, AWS, Alibaba Cloud, Google Cloud, IBM Cloud, and Oracle have SaaS solutions. You may easily join up for your favourite provider if you have a hot new infrastructure and system.
When it comes to developing a SaaS platform, one of the most difficult challenges is migrating current IT/application infrastructure from on-premise to cloud, or cloud to cloud. You will need to move to these cloud services, and there are several sorts of migrations to be aware of because any of them might apply to your existing situation:
- Physical-to-virtual (P2V): This means disconnecting and transferring a physical server's operating system, programs, and data to a virtual server guest hosted on a virtualized platform.
- Physical-to-cloud (P2C): This refers to the process of migrating tools and data from traditional infrastructure or on-premises data centres to the cloud.
- Virtual-to-virtual (V2V): This migration involves copying a current virtual machine operating on a virtualization platform to another virtual machine running on another virtualization platform.
- Virtual-to-cloud (V2C): This is the point at which you transition from a virtual machine to a club-based solution.
6. Maintaining
During the maintenance phase, developers look for flaws or problems in the program. If they discover one, they file a bug report. It is critical to explore opportunities for when the development cycle begins again.
When developers can swiftly discover and handle problems, it indicates that this phase is going well. Your attention should also be drawn to gathering customer input and developing ways to improve your present service. This is a must for SaaS since competitors can imitate your product and take market share.
Optimize your SaaS application development platform gradually to minimize time to ship and improve release flow. You must always seek to improve your offering.
7. Optimizing
This is the final step of the SaaS development process, and it entails upgrading and optimizing your service and SaaS application design to maintain a competitive advantage. Evaluate your present procedures and compare them to best practices for SaaS development.
You will discover that optimization may occur at several levels, including code, technology, SaaS architecture, people, knowledge, and so on. These factors may be optimized to improve the outcomes of your SaaS-based application development process and, eventually, your business.
To preserve a competitive advantage, you must continue to innovate in your own sector or business.
SaaS Development Team
After you’ve decided to build a SaaS app and your SaaS app development framework is already in order, you might find yourself in a place of uncertainty and ask yourself, “Who exactly do I need to build this app with?”. We are here to explain what talents your team needs and at what stage you should consider hiring them:
Project Manager
When it comes to day-to-day management of the project, you need a competent Project Manager. He should be quick to handle all aspects of the plan, from the schedule, finance, risk, quality, to resources.
They need to be one of the first hires and be informed of the detail on the background, context and scope of your project. appssemble supports your journey from the Consulting stage to Design and Engineering.
Business Analyst
Through data analysis, business analysts assist firms in enhancing processes, goods, services, and software. Business analysts work as a bridge to the gap between IT and the business in order to enhance productivity.
Business analysts may assist in the initial planning stage of SaaS applications by generating requirements. They can also be highly beneficial throughout the optimization process. They should be proficient at turning user feedback into improvements.
UI/UX Designer
UX (User Experience) and UI (User Interface) design are distinct components of a single user experience. A UX designer ensures that a product makes sense to the user by developing a route that flows logically from one step to another. A UI designer ensures that each page graphically conveys that path.
UI/UX designers are often hired at the design phase of the software development life cycle (SDLC). So listen to your users to uncover opportunities and turn your target market into customers and customers into fans by hiring the ones that are good for your project.
Backend Developer
The term "backend development" relates to server-side development. Databases, scripting, website architecture, and then ideally, all SaaS-based application architecture are covered. It describes the processes that take place behind the scenes when a user performs an activity on a website. It may be logging into an account or making a purchase from an online business.
Backend engineers provide code that allows browsers to interface with your data warehouse and cloud provider. Backend developers should be employed early on in the design process since they will need to be advised on the design of your backend.
Frontend Developer
A frontend developer connects the worlds of design and technology, packaging up the usefulness of the backend in an appealing way for people to engage with, web or mobile (Android and iOS).
QA Engineer
A quality assurance engineer is responsible for enhancing software development processes and preventing production faults. They develop test strategies, track defects, and find opportunities for improvement in your program.
During the SDLC testing step, you should recruit a QA engineer. Even if you are developing SaaS quickly, you should budget time and money to engage with a skilled QA engineer to identify the most susceptible sections of your service.
Apart from these, make sure you go through our advice guidebook for all startups before you start your own journey, and build something that you’re sure will be successful.
In-House, Outsourcing or Remote Development?
In-House
Within your own workplace, state, or nation, you may hire or assemble a team of developers (either as full-time employees or as contractors). Due to the time-consuming nature of interviews, onboarding processes, and coaching, having an in-house development team may necessitate extra time and money. However, it has certain distinct advantages over outsourcing and remote choices.
