Avoiding product pollution in a service enabled start-up

Trev de Vroome
6 min readDec 29, 2019

The world of a rapidly growing start-up is a challenging one — full of rapid change, never-ending new challenges, and conflict between strategic and tactical efforts. It is not easy managing these competing forces —requiring…

A mix of supporting established customers and innovation must be balanced¹

Finding the balance of supporting established Customers and Innovation is difficult

So the question is — what is the right balance when it comes to the role of professional services and customization of your software in a SaaS software company?

Getting intimate with your ‘Product’

Well, what is your product? Is it the piece of SaaS software you produce, or is it the professional services you provide to enable that SaaS software?

The reality is — both are products, as products can be recursive and exist within another product². Each provides independent benefits to market — satisfying the definition of a product that:

(A product is) something that is created through a process and that provides benefits to a market²

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Trev de Vroome

Information technology program and agile transformation leader, change catalyst, and educator.