Earlier today I was talking to a successful SaaS entrepreneur and he was filling me in on some their latest initiatives. One of the things they had done that caught my attention was build an “Engineering Services” department that was staffed with software developers, but instead of working on the core application, they built small apps for customers using the product API.
Here are some benefits of an engineering services department:
- Acts as good training ground and pipeline for developers to start out and eventually move into core product engineering
- Provides a way to build product add-ons that don’t interfere with the main application roadmap
- Allows for customer development around potential new features that are originally spec’d as one-off customer apps
Personally, I like to invest resources in the core product and look to partners to provide value-added services. An engineering services department is such a complement it warrants its own place in a startup, especially once scale has been achieved.
What else? What do you think of having an engineering services department?
David Cummings on Startups 
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