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I’ve debated writing this article. Do people expect me to write about Project Management? Well… developing software products does mean you need to plan a project. You need to know and control your risks. So – yeah. I guess it does fit.

I find much of what I read in the media about the “issues” involved in developing SaaS products as silly – and sometimes just plain misinformed. Is it just me or are there just too many analysts with nothing else to write about?

I’ve seen a lot of different “roadmaps” for SaaS products lately. Some of them are good guides for specific questions. Some are simply misleading or poorly focused. But only a few of us are talking about the guiding thoughts behind a realistic roadmap that are critical to success.

When I wrote the recent article “SaaS: 10 Trends for 2010″ I used the phrase “Best Case SaaS.” I realized from feedback and some thinking afterward though that many people don’t share my vision of what it is.

We recently started a project with a new client from the UK to develop a SaaS application for them using Innovation Games and found them to be very useful in developing and prioritizing product features and development plans.

I’ve noticed there are broadly two camps when it comes to developing new services for the Internet: Those entrepreneurs that feel they must do everything themselves regardless of the hurdles they face and those that want to focus on their core expertise and leverage outside services where possible.

In Part 1 of this list we covered the first five points – so if you haven’t read that already, I encourage you to go and read that first. For everyone else – here’s the remaining five points in my hit parade.

We’ve given a couple of webinars recently with our partners Apprenda (archived copy here) and OpSource focused on the key issues ISVs need to consider when developing a SaaS product. One of the areas we covered that received a lot of interest was “Platform as a Service” – PaaS and what it can bring to a SaaS product development project.

The adoption of Agile approaches in software development has grown very rapidly in recent years. I remember that a couple of years ago a lot of people in the IT world hadn’t even heard about Agile. Today, most of the development groups I talk to claim to adhere to Agile, at least to a certain extent. But the reality is that many of them are not realizing the benefits in productivity and quality that they expected.