Cloudy with a Chance of SaaS
Welcome to Technology + Design Thinking for Better Outcomes
Introduction
This is Cloudy with a Chance of SaaS (Software as a Service), a weekly newsletter about the intersection of Technology and Design Thinking; which when done well leads to better outcomes for all stakeholders including, developers, product managers, SaaS founders, leaders, and customers. This is not about Design for decoration. It is not about adding some sizzle at the end of the development of a product. It is about baking Design Thinking into all aspects of development and delivery. Design Thinking is about derisking your investments and ensuring better outcomes for all stakeholders. It emphasizes user empathy and real-world observations, research primarily done through qualitative methods, to uncover key insights. These insights then allow us to meet the needs of users, while at the same time limiting the blast radius for your product managers and developers.
What Makes Me Qualified
With a computer science degree as my foundation, I spent the last 3 decades as a software developer, architect, and champion of user experience. I am also a Designer, with a Master’s of Design Methods from the Institute of Design (ID) in Chicago. ID is the only school in the Western Hemisphere to only offer advanced degrees, ie no undergraduate programs at all. Prior to this program, I thought like a Designer and organically used Design methods in my career, but the Master's program progressed my understanding and broadened my scope of what is possible, thoughtful, and responsible when creating software. The program introduced me to the many methods of Design Thinking, and introduced me to thinking and delivering on software in unique ways.
Why SaaS
The creation and delivery of SaaS businesses will lead to the greatest wealth transfer in the history of the world. McKinsey & Co. and SaaSBoomi. predict the worth of India's SaaS companies at over one trillion dollars by 2030[1]. Gartner predicts that worldwide spending on SaaS solutions will be over 208 billion dollars in 2023.[2] The pandemic accelerated the adoption of SaaS and many organizations are looking to offload more and more of their computing to SaaS vendors. Worldwide IT spending is about 4.5 trillion and only growing at 3%[3], and when you combine that with Gartners SaaS growth numbers, and extrapolate it, nearly one-quarter of worldwide IT spending could be in SaaS by 2030. In other words, nearly $800 billion of net new SaaS opportunity is out there, with some very painful transitions for the incumbents.
What’s Upcoming
I plan to share a short weekly newsletter with my perspective on Design Thinking and Software development in the context of SaaS. I’ll throw in some education, entertainment, and most importantly, methods and tools you can use when creating SaaS offerings with Better Technology and Design Thinking for Better Outcomes.
If you like what you’ve read here, please conder sharing this with your network.
Jim ‘The Designatic’ Tyrrell
[1] https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/09/tech/india-software-saas-intl-hnk/index.html
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