Back from the dead
Introduction
Welcome back to my journey on how to build a SaaS application. If you missed the last post, where I described my first steps, make sure to check it out.
First of all I need to apologize. I got pretty sick at the end of last week and was not able to write a blog post because of that. But that’s how it is sometimes: life just gets in the way. Since I was just lying in bed the whole week I was capable of accomplishing exactly: nothing at all! So for the review part, I will focus on the last week.
Retrospective
As I already mentioned in my last post I expected that for the second week I will not be able to finish a lot. I had a few personal appointments and needed to get other things done. But let’s check out the goals I set last time. (13.01.20 – 19.1.20)
- ☐ Finish the User Interface for the pairing sessions
- ☑ Mark user as team leader
- ☑ Login as team leader
- ☑ Only show things in the User Interface that belong to the permissions of the logged in user.
I knew that finishing the user interface for the pairing sessions will be the most time consuming part, so I left it for last. To be honest, I did not work a single second on this. But I am still glad, that I could finish all other points. So with this in mind I will make sure to finish the user interface in the upcoming week.
Some additional insights
Even though I was not able to physically work on my project I was still able to think about it and found out something very interesting. The Settings page where the Team Leader is able to set the duration of a sprint and such is absolutely not necessary. When I thought about this I still had the Goals in mind where you need to calculate some mean values using, e.g. the sprint duration. But since I cut the Goals for the Minimal Viable Product, I am also able to cut the Settings page.
First serious doubts
While pondering about the project I got overwhelmed with serious doubts about weather this product is something any developer will use. Maybe this was the fever talking, but to be honest, this thought occurred a couple of times now. When I started this project I was totally convinced that many developers are actually using Pair Programming as a common practice. But as of now, I have some serious doubts. Even though having doubts is part of the process, I need to do more research on this topic. My initial “research” was that I was in a need for some sort of software or platform where my team could put their sessions. And there was none. So I got very excited very quickly and thought I found a gold mine.
So in order to tackle my doubts I will do two things:
- Finish the MVP and deploy it at work to get first feedback. Maybe give it to a couple of ex coworkers to use at their companies and get some feedback from them too.
- Do more research. Call up some companies who practice Pair Programming and get their opinion whether or not this is something they would like to use. Maybe showcase some demos. I have a couple of options here which I will elaborate in more detail once I know that there is a need for my product.
Even if the market has absolutely no use for my product I still count the whole process as a huge success! Firstly, I have learned a lot about self discipline, time management and focus. Besides improving my coding skills I enhanced my planning skills as well. Deciding whether or not to implement a feature or leave it out of the MVP was a crucial experience for me. Last but not least, even if no one in the world wants to pay money for my product, I can still open source it and use it for my résumé.
Next weeks goals (27.01.20 – 02.2.20)
- Finish the User Interface for the pairing sessions
- Page for changing the password
- Code cleanups / Refactorings
- Bugfixing
I think after I finish this, the very first feature complete version will be done and I am able to use it at work. It will be ugly and probably not completely bug free. But we as a team have something we can start working with. With this I am able to collect some valuable feedback from “real customers” while trying to figure out if this product is actually something programmers will use. Sounds like a plan to me!
If you like to never miss out, make sure to check out my Twitter @langhorstthomas.