SaaS Handbook
Managing and operating software as a service for small teams, with live examples on GitHub
Preface
This book is about what happens around the code of a SaaS: how the work is organized, how a change reaches production, and how the system is kept running, secure, and evolving. It is written for small teams, from one to eight people, who want method without bureaucracy.
Most good material on the subject was written with large companies in mind. This book takes a different approach: the minimum that works, with examples you can open and copy.
Who it is for
- People building a SaaS alone who feel that all the management lives in their head.
- People about to bring in their first collaborator who want that person to get started without asking about every step.
- People leading a small team who want a shared vocabulary for talking about process.
- Software engineering students who want to see how the practices connect day to day.
The book’s case: Farol
The examples use Farol, a fictional personal-finance SaaS. It brings together accounts from several institutions, produces reports, and helps users plan. The backend is Django, the frontend is React with Vite and TypeScript, and bank data arrives through an aggregator. None of it exists: Farol is invented so the examples can be concrete without exposing any real system (ADR 0004).
This repository is the example
The book uses everything it teaches. Throughout the chapters, boxes like this one point to the live example:
The book has a board in GitHub Projects, PR and issue templates, a workflow that publishes the book, and decisions recorded as ADRs.
And boxes like this one suggest a short exercise to apply to your own project:
Pick one of your projects and write down, in one sentence, which of these areas worries you most today: work, code, delivery, operations, security, documentation, or people. Start reading with the matching part.
How to read it
Part I — Management is about organizing work and knowledge. Part II — Delivery covers the path of a change to production. Part III — Operations is about keeping the system running. The appendices hold ready-to-use templates, a phased rollout plan, a reading path, and a glossary.
On your first read, go in order. After that, use each chapter as a reference.
How to contribute
Disagreements and suggestions from people who live this every day are welcome. Use Discussions to talk, issues for specific fixes, and PRs to propose text. The contributing guide explains the flow, which is the same one described in Chapter 7.
There is also a Portuguese edition of this book.