SaaS, an acronym for Software as a Service, continues to evolve in the market today. Any project or program manager involved with software application implementation needs to be very familiar with SaaS. But any project manager on any project where there are systems involved with managing any aspect of the project will also benefit by being familiar with SaaS. In this post, I simply want to highlight a few high points that I have learned recently about the state of the SaaS evolution.
Software as a Service (SaaS) is becoming much more pervasive. However, it is doing so especially in certain markets, certain applications, and certain functionality. Specifically, Saas is especially taking off in the following:
- the small to medium organization market where businesses can take advantage of the low upfront costs to get started, the low total cost of ownership, and the avoidance of building infrastructure internally,
- the more popular applications include human resource management, customer relationship management (CRM), and a host of other smaller market applications, including project management, and
- parts of applications are migrating to SaaS delivery — an example would a specialized application within a business that would then leverage Saas-delivered communication and collaboration capabilities.
What does this mean for all of us as project managers? It means that there is a whole set of evolving capabilities out there that we can take advantage of, and that we need to think strategically about how we might employ SaaS as part of our projects. There is much to get our arms around regarding SaaS. There are many issues when it comes to marketing software and the place that SaaS might have in a product line. This would be of especially high concern to a program manager involved with the delivery of a software product line. You can find a great deal of information on a terrific and insightful free podcast simply called Software as a Service (SaaS) that is part of the McKinsey "On High Tech" podcast series available on iTunes.
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John Reiling, PMP
Project Management Training Online
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7 responses so far ↓
1 dalison // Feb 12, 2009 at 9:57 am
John, I realize that you are just touching on SaaS in a high level way but I would be interested in hearing more of your thoughts on the topic. Having been involved in SaaS deployments (and being a SaaS vendor) for a long time there are some unique challenges that PMs need to face when they try to integrate their work with a system that may not have the level of control they are used to, especially with CRM systems.
The biggest advantage of SaaS models is the reduction in IT resources needed to deploy and maintain those systems, along with the easy web access model most provide. That advantage can become a challenge for PMs because they may assume that integration will be just as easy. The reality is new integration resources need to be identified in order to help with product deployments, especially if triggers and events need to be installed in a CRM system in order to help with product deployments or ongoing support.
PMs need to ensure that they have identified and budgeted for what is often external, outsourced resources to handle product integration or that internal resources have been properly trained to handle a new way of integrating products.
–David
2 pbhanot // Feb 12, 2009 at 11:39 am
Thanks to the broad adoption and success of Salesforce.com, SaaS has become an acceptable platform for both large enterprises and SMB. At CA we created a business unit dedicated to SaaS, which is responsible for taking suitable products from our product portfolio to create a SaaS or On Demand service. It can even combine existing on-premises products and offer the combination as a pre-integrated new product.
Something of interest to pmcrunch.com readers is that we have made the fully functioning CA Clarity PPM product available as an On Demand solution. One of the most compelling features of a SaaS solution is the intimate customer relationship it creates as every user has the opportunity to provide immediate feedback and put forward requests for new features directly to the solution provider.
Testing becomes more critical than an on-premise product, because when you release the production deliverable, it becomes visible to every end-user in a single instant. I wrote an article contrasting On Demand to traditional delivery, which you can see here: http://www.ca.com/gb/news/article.aspx?cid=196599&issue=196273 The article raises further points of interest around this topic.
3 dannielo // Feb 12, 2009 at 5:22 pm
If you’d like a tool for managing your projects, you can use this application inspired by David Allen’s GTD:
http://www.Gtdagenda.com
You can use it to manage and prioritize your goals, projects and tasks, set next actions and contexts, use checklists, schedules and a calendar.
A mobile version is available too.
4 Cloud Feed » Blog Archive » Daily Cloud Feed - Feb 12, 2009 // Feb 12, 2009 at 7:45 pm
[...] Are You Considering SaaS On Your Project Or Program? [...]
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6 mwachstock // Nov 10, 2009 at 3:52 am
(Disclosure: I work for Clarizen)
I just found this post and wanted to bring up Clarizen as a leading Saas Work/Project Management Platform.
TechCrunch did a piece about Saas PM tools:
“Surveying the project management SaaS market”
http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/tech-manager/?p=2227
7 socialprojectmanagement // May 17, 2010 at 3:07 pm
I recently attended the @task User Conference in Salt Lake City and they announced, what I would consider, a revolutionary platform that uses social networking concepts to help manage projects. I really think it’s going to change the SaaS Software Project Management space. @task recently posted details about it at http://www.attask.com/stream. The presentation they gave really opened my eyes about the benefits and capabilities of using an on-demand social project management platform to create and manage projects.
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