Micro SaaS is a Compelling Strategy for Platforms and Platform Teams

I really like the Micro-SaaS product archetype, and it might be the perfect template for our internal platforms and platform teams.

If you’re not yet familiar with the concept of a Micro-SaaS, think “small product within a niche market”. It is effectively dealing in specifics, doing one thing really well with a very close, often personal relationship with the customer. Micro-SaaS are often bootstrapped so a common goal is to provide a solution with the minimal amount of overhead and resources required to deliver the product, maximizing efficiency wherever possible. This means building products with small teams, narrow/deliberate scope, minimal waste, etc.

Sounds good so far, right?!

Rather than trying to grow a product by adding features some of your customers may not need, you would alternatively provide a different product offering altogether - likely from a different team or even new company depending on the focus shift required. Every product may not fit the mold of a Micro SaaS, but I think the type of deliberate focus required is what more products should attempt to emulate - specifically within enterprise platform teams.

So where does a Micro-SaaS become "something more"? That may be a blurry line, but product complexity and scale has a lot to do with it.

I think Google started as something like a Micro-SaaS with a simple, niche product feature set - a user types a term into a search box and a list of websites are returned. It has obviously grown to something much more, but Google began as a very simple product as far as its users and scope were concerned.

Having a strict definition isn't as important as looking at the components that make these products successful. I see this as a template that internal enterprise products could easily adopt - Find one problem or process to automate or improve, and do it well. This is well suited to existing platform teams building internal developer platforms, enterprise tools, shared services, etc.

When we want to see our internal platform teams build things their customers need, we want them to have a true product mindset.?This is how I think they should be defining the products we're building - with minimal scope, deliberate value, and operating as efficiently as possible.

Many teams are new to product thinking and I believe providing them with a reference archetype helps frame their offering and customer-centric focus required to deliver compelling products. To this point, we've had some great references recently like the Thinnest Viable Platform (TVP) from Team Topologies that have helped us keep the goals of our platforms within reach, refocusing the platform as a product.

I gave a talk at DevOpsDays Dallas earlier this year (shared below) on why platforms must be "small" to be successful. I hadn't heard of the Micro-SaaS term prior to that talk, but I think the approach is a great description of how we should approach building internal platforms. I'll definitely be using this as an example going forward.

What do you think? How does the Micro-SaaS term resonate as a template for the type of products we want our platform teams building?

If you’re leading platform or product teams, it’s worth a deep dive to learn more about the pattern. I’d love to hear what you think and discuss it further!