Managing Complexity: How to Keep a SaaS Product Simple as It Scales

Introduction

In the SaaS world, success often brings an unintended side effect: complexity. As user bases grow and feature lists expand, products can become unwieldy if left unchecked. I’ve experienced this firsthand throughout my career managing high-scaling products – most notably during the journey of scaling Kleos, a cloud-based practice management software used by over 30,000 lawyers across Europe (Kleos, leading cloud-based practice management software in Europe developed by Wolters Kluwer | Wolters Kluwer). In scaling Kleos and other SaaS platforms, I learned how easy it is for a once-simple solution to sprawl into a complex tangle. This article shares lessons from that journey, offering strategies to keep a SaaS product simple even as it scales. It’s written for Product Managers and Executives who want to balance rapid growth with intentional simplicity across user experience, architecture, processes, and organization. We’ll explore why complexity naturally emerges, why simplicity must be deliberately maintained, and practical techniques (like the RICE framework, Productboard roadmapping, and Pendo analytics) to manage complexity.

Complexity Grows as Your SaaS Scales

Complexity is the inevitable byproduct of growth. As a SaaS product gains traction, new customer requests pour in, the sales team pushes for more features, and the engineering stack evolves to handle more load. Over time, a product that started lean can accumulate layers of features and tech bloat. In fact, industry research found that on average only 12% of features generate 80% of usage, while a whopping 80% of features are rarely or never used (). This means many products are carrying a lot of “dead weight” – features built at some point to satisfy a niche need or loud stakeholder, but which ultimately add complexity without much benefit.

From my experience with Kleos, I saw how serving multiple markets can accelerate complexity. As we expanded the product to new countries, each legal jurisdiction had its own must-have requirements. It wasn’t long before our once-streamlined app had different modules, settings, and workflows for each locale. The user experience (UX) risked becoming cluttered, and maintaining the codebase became harder with each specialization. We had to step back and realize: complexity was creeping in, and it could undermine our success if not managed.

The dangers of unchecked complexity are very real. A complex product can confuse and frustrate users, hurting adoption and retention (The Paradox of Simplicity and The Challenge of SaaS Feature Creep | Scenic West Design) (The Paradox of Simplicity and The Challenge of SaaS Feature Creep | Scenic West Design). It can slow down development as engineers grapple with tangled code and legacy systems. It can even bog down decision-making – with so many features and stakeholders, how do you choose what to build or improve next? Feature creep often starts with good intentions (“let’s just add this one option for that client…”), but over time those additions compound into a bloated offering (The Paradox of Simplicity and The Challenge of SaaS Feature Creep | Scenic West Design). As one design agency put it, “SaaS teams can get so caught up in adding to their product or addressing one-off requests that they end up with unnecessary complexity” (The Paradox of Simplicity and The Challenge of SaaS Feature Creep | Scenic West Design), leading to higher support costs and user churn. In short, scaling without a plan for simplicity can be a recipe for customer frustration and stalled growth.

The paradox of simplicity is that keeping things simple is actually hard work. It’s much easier to keep bolting on new features than to restrain yourself and refine what you have. Yet, that restraint is exactly what separates great products. Apple is famous for this discipline – the company “thinks as hard about what not to include in their product as what to include,” a principle that has kept their offerings intuitive and elegant (How to effectively sunset a feature from your product | Pendo Blog). In the B2B SaaS arena, think of tools like Jira, HubSpot or Slack: they are feature-rich under the hood to handle complex use cases, but they strive to present a simple, coherent experience to users (The Paradox of Simplicity and The Challenge of SaaS Feature Creep | Scenic West Design). Achieving that “simplexity” (simple front-end, complex back-end) requires intentional effort. In the next sections, we’ll cover how you can fight back against complexity by proactively designing for simplicity in your product’s UX, technical architecture, and team processes.

Designing for Intentional Simplicity

Simplicity doesn’t happen by accident; it requires intentional design decisions at every stage of scaling. Here are some dimensions where we focused on keeping things simple while Kleos and other products grew:

• User Experience: The UI must remain intuitive even as features multiply. This meant investing in good UX design and avoiding clutter. We regularly audited our interface to consolidate or hide advanced options. For example, when we added a new billing module to Kleos, we kept it tucked under an existing Finance section rather than top-level navigation, so that day-to-day users (e.g. lawyers focused on cases) weren’t overwhelmed by accounting features. As a rule of thumb, if a new feature doesn’t significantly improve a core use case for a broad set of users, think twice about exposing it prominently. As one UX strategist notes, you should “avoid adding features that do not add value to the user experience or that stray from your original product vision” (The Paradox of Simplicity and The Challenge of SaaS Feature Creep | Scenic West Design). In practice, this may mean saying “no” to many feature ideas or at least deferring them until you’re sure they’re truly needed.

• Architecture and Tech Stack: Under the hood, simplicity is about maintainability and scalability. As our engineering team grew, we faced decisions like whether to break the monolith into microservices, how to manage increasing technical debt, and when to refactor old code. There’s no one-size-fits-all answer, but the guiding principle was to keep the system as modular and clear as possible. We established coding standards and documentation early, so new developers could understand the system without a huge learning curve. We also allotted time for refactoring in each release cycle – treating technical debt as its own product backlog item to prioritize. This prevented the “legacy tech” problem from crippling our pace. (One large-scale example: IHS Markit found after a decade of development their product had accumulated significant technical debt, forcing a tough choice to either keep maintaining everything or retire underutilized features to free up resources (Riding off into the (feature) sunset | How I Pendo).) The takeaway: invest in your architecture as you scale – whether that means upgrading infrastructure, cleaning up code, or simplifying integrations – so that adding new capabilities doesn’t exponentially increase complexity.

• Processes and Team Organization: When a SaaS company is small, you can get by with ad-hoc processes and tribal knowledge. But at scale, that can devolve into chaos, with stakeholders pulling the product in different directions. To keep things simple organizationally, we put in place clear product processes: regular roadmap reviews, defined criteria for accepting new feature requests, and cross-functional meetings to ensure everyone understood the product vision. We also tried to keep teams autonomous and small (think “two-pizza teams” model) to reduce communication overhead. Each squad or feature team at Kleos had a well-defined area of ownership, which meant they could make decisions faster and keep their portion of the product cohesive. When every team member knows “these are our top 3 priorities this quarter”, it prevents the frenzy of trying to do everything. Another key was managing stakeholders: as our user community and internal stakeholders (sales, support, execs) grew, we had to streamline communication. We created a single source of truth for the roadmap (more on this next) so that at any time, anyone could see what we’re focused on and why. This helped avoid the scenario of conflicting requests and “the loudest voice wins” – instead, decisions were aligned with a transparent strategy.

With these foundations of intentional simplicity laid, let’s dive into practical strategies and tools that help reinforce simplicity in a scaling SaaS product.

Strategies to Keep It Simple at Scale

1. Ruthless Prioritization with RICE

One of the most powerful weapons against feature creep is ruthless prioritization. When you have 100+ ideas on the backlog and a constant influx of stakeholder requests, you need a systematic way to decide what not to build. This is where the RICE framework comes in handy.

RICE (an acronym for Reach, Impact, Confidence, Effort) is a straightforward scoring system for evaluating product ideas, developed by the team at Intercom (Product Prioritization Frameworks | Productboard). The concept is simple: for each proposed feature or improvement, you estimate:

• Reach: How many users (or % of your user base) will it affect within a given time frame?

• Impact: How much value or benefit will it deliver to each user impacted? (Often scored on a scale, e.g. 3 = “massive impact”, 1 = “medium impact”, 0.5 = “low impact” (Product Prioritization Frameworks | Productboard).)

• Confidence: How confident are you in the above estimates? Do you have data to back them, or are they guesses? (Expressed as a percentage; e.g. 100% = high confidence, 50% = low confidence (Product Prioritization Frameworks | Productboard).)

• Effort: How much effort will it take to build? This is typically measured in “person-weeks” or “person-months” of work for your team (Product Prioritization Frameworks | Productboard).

You then calculate a RICE score = (Reach × Impact × Confidence) / Effort (Understanding the RICE Framework for Feature Prioritization). This gives a comparative numeric value that indicates “bang for the buck” – essentially, which features deliver the most value for the least effort. Features with the highest RICE scores should generally be done first.

In practice, using RICE helped our product team avoid the trap of just doing the loudest-requested or shiny new features. It introduced objectivity. For example, at one point we had to decide between building a new case analytics dashboard versus adding a niche workflow for a specific large client. The dashboard had a larger potential Reach (all users could use analytics) and high Impact (insights could save users time), whereas the custom workflow had high Effort and low Reach (only that one client would use it regularly). By scoring both, it became clear the analytics dashboard was the better move on a RICE basis. RICE doesn’t make decisions for you, but it forces the rationale into the open. It also gives you a common language to discuss trade-offs with stakeholders. Instead of saying “We just don’t feel like doing your requested feature now,” you can explain how other items will reach more users or have bigger impact – a data-informed conversation.

Of course, RICE is only as good as the inputs. It works best when you have solid data on usage and user needs (more on gathering those in a moment). But even with rough estimates, it’s a great tool to counterbalance subjective pressures. As a product leader, I’ve found that having a clear prioritization framework is essential to keep complexity in check – it empowers you to say no (or not now) to features that don’t drive your product vision or goals. By consistently applying RICE, we ensured Kleos evolved based on merit and impact, not just momentum.

2. Align Roadmaps with Strategy (and Customer Needs) using Productboard

Another key to maintaining simplicity is making sure your product roadmap has a clear strategic focus. Complexity often comes from doing too many unrelated things or succumbing to random feature requests. A well-defined roadmap, aligned with your vision and customer needs, acts as a north star and filters out extraneous developments.

In our case, we leveraged Productboard as a central hub for product planning. Productboard is a product management platform that helps teams collect customer feedback, prioritize what to build, and create a roadmap that’s tied to both user needs and business strategy. It’s designed to “help teams understand customer needs, prioritize feature development, and create clear, unified roadmaps.” (Top 11 Product Roadmap Tools for SaaS Companies i...)

How did this help keep things simple? First, we funneled all feature ideas and feedback into Productboard. This included input from our support team (“Lawyers are asking for X”), sales deals (“We need Y to close this prospect”), and usage data. By having everything in one place, we could see the big picture instead of reacting ad-hoc. Productboard allowed us to score ideas by impact and align them with product objectives. For example, if our strategic theme for the quarter was “Improve new user onboarding”, we could easily filter and favor ideas that supported that theme, and deprioritize unrelated ones.

Just as importantly, we shared the roadmap broadly via Productboard’s roadmap portal. This meant all our stakeholders – from executives to customer-facing teams and even pilot customers – could see what we were focused on and why. Each roadmap item was linked to specific insights or customer requests, so it was clear how it connected to real needs. This transparency is critical to avoid stakeholder overload. When a colleague from Sales comes with “just one more feature” on behalf of a customer, you can point them to the published roadmap and the rationale behind it. Often, we found that proactively communicating our roadmap in this way reduced the barrage of one-off requests. Everyone knew we had a plan and could trust that if something wasn’t on this quarter’s roadmap, it was because we had higher-value priorities in play.

(Top 11 Product Roadmap Tools for SaaS Companies i...) Example: A simplified product roadmap with quarterly objectives. By grouping features under clear strategic goals (e.g. “Address critical user pain points”, “Reduce time to value”), product teams can ensure every new addition serves a larger purpose. Such roadmaps keep teams aligned and prevent random feature additions.

Beyond alignment to strategy, Productboard helped keep us customer-centric. It’s easy to get lost in internal opinions as you scale (the CEO wants this, Engineering wants that), but we regularly returned to the customer feedback in Productboard. Seeing actual user pain points and requests tagged by frequency helped us avoid over-engineering things that customers weren’t even asking for. In other words, it kept us honest about building for customer value, not just for the sake of adding something. Productboard’s system of consolidating feedback ensures you “build customer-centric roadmaps informed by real user needs” (Building Product Roadmaps Around Customer Insights | Productboard) (Building Product Roadmaps Around Customer Insights | Productboard), which inherently curbs unnecessary complexity. When you solve real problems, you’re less likely to bolt on trivial features.

In summary, a focused roadmap acts as a safeguard against product complexity. It enforces trade-offs and thematic cohesion. Whether you use Productboard or another tool, make your roadmap visible and tied to strategic goals. This way, when someone asks for Feature Z that doesn’t fit, you have a framework to evaluate and (if needed) respectfully decline or defer it. Over time, this approach trains your whole organization to prioritize what matters most for users and the business, rather than chasing every idea. That means a leaner, more purposeful product.

3. Leverage Data to Trim Underused Features (Pendo and the Art of Sunsetting)

Managing complexity isn’t only about choosing what new features to build – it’s also about removing or refining what’s already there. As products grow, periodically pruning the feature set is healthy. This was another lesson from scaling SaaS products: you must be willing to sunset underused functionality to keep the overall system simple and to free up resources for more important things. The challenge is knowing what to remove and when. This is where product analytics tools like Pendo proved invaluable for us.

Pendo is a platform that provides in-app analytics and user feedback, showing you exactly how users are engaging with every part of your product. We used Pendo to track feature usage patterns in Kleos, which helped shine a light on areas of the application that were rarely touched. For instance, we had a reporting feature that we suspected wasn’t pulling its weight. Pendo confirmed that only a tiny fraction (single-digit percentage) of our active users generated reports monthly, and those who did often struggled through the workflow. Armed with that data, we made the tough call to retire the old reporting module and replaced it with a simpler, streamlined report generator that was easier to maintain. The decision was initially met with some internal resistance (“What if someone misses the old reports?”), but we communicated the data: it was barely used, and the new solution covered the primary use cases with far less complexity.

Our experience aligns with what other SaaS companies have done. For example, IHS Markit famously used Pendo data to identify which features of their platform were least used and then targeted them for retirement. “Pendo’s analytics gave the IHS Markit team a direct look into how users were engaging... [it] allowed them to gauge the volume of usage for each feature and flag the least used features as potential candidates for retirement.” (Riding off into the (feature) sunset | How I Pendo) By sunsetting those underutilized features, they were able to refocus their developers on the parts of the product that “matter most to their clients”, rather than spending effort maintaining features nobody used (Riding off into the (feature) sunset | How I Pendo). In other words, they cut out the noise to amplify the signal. This strategy paid off – it reduced technical bloat and ensured the team wasn’t getting spread thin supporting zombie features.

Sunsetting features can be tricky to execute (you have to communicate changes carefully to customers), but done right, it’s a potent way to manage long-term complexity. Some tips we learned along the way: use data to build the case (low usage stats, declining trends), find if there’s a better alternative or replacement for the feature (perhaps a new feature renders the old one obsolete), and communicate early and often. Surprisingly, users are usually fine with a feature being removed if you explain that it’s to make the overall product better and less cluttered – many actually appreciate the slimming down. After all, nobody loves software with lots of pointless buttons and pages that just collect dust.

Pendo’s own product team suggests treating feature retirement as an “innovation event” – the time you save can be spent on something more valuable (How to effectively sunset a feature from your product | Pendo Blog). Low usage is one trigger to sunset, but Pendo also helped us gather qualitative feedback (through in-app surveys) which sometimes revealed that a complex feature wasn’t needed because users had a workaround or didn’t understand it. In such cases, either improving it or cutting it was better than leaving it in a confusing state. Remember the earlier statistic: 80% of features are rarely or never used. This implies most SaaS products are carrying a lot of complexity that isn’t actually providing value (). By leveraging usage analytics from tools like Pendo, you can identify these opportunities to simplify. It takes courage to remove a feature (we as product builders can be hoarders!), but each removal can improve overall UX clarity, reduce maintenance burden, and make your product more focused.

Common Pitfalls on the Road to Scale (and How to Overcome Them)

Even with the best intentions, certain challenges will constantly test your resolve to keep things simple. Based on my experience, here are a few common pitfalls when scaling SaaS products – and some advice on dealing with them:

• Stakeholder Overload: As your product becomes central to more users and your company grows, everyone will have an opinion on what to do next – executives, sales reps, customer success, big clients, you name it. The risk is you try to make everyone happy and end up with a bloated, incoherent product. To combat this, establish a clear product vision and strategy and communicate it relentlessly. When stakeholders know the north star (e.g. “We’re the easiest-to-use legal practice management tool for small firms”), they’re more likely to frame their requests in that context. Also, use a system (like Productboard or even a shared spreadsheet) to capture all requests, but then filter them through objective criteria (like RICE or strategic fit). This creates a buffer between knee-jerk “build this now” demands and your development backlog. Educating stakeholders on your prioritization process can turn them into allies rather than sources of chaos. Finally, transparency helps – share your roadmap and reasoning. When people see a thoughtful plan, they’re less inclined to pile on “just one more thing.”

• Feature Creep: Feature creep is the classic case of adding more and more features until the product becomes too complex. It often comes from a fear of missing out or a belief that more features = more value. The truth is the opposite: a clear, well-designed set of features trumps a hodgepodge of bells and whistles. Avoiding feature creep requires discipline. Use frameworks like RICE to stay focused on high-impact additions. Keep a firm handle on scope during development (it’s easy for engineers or designers to gold-plate and keep expanding a project’s scope – resist that). Embrace the MVP mindset for new features: build the smallest version that delivers value, launch it, and learn. If someone proposes a new addition, ask “Is this solving a widespread problem and does it align with our vision?” If not, put it on the wishlist for later or politely decline. Remember, every feature you add has a recurring cost (in UX complexity, testing, maintenance), so it should earn its keep. It helps to periodically review your product and ask: “If we were starting fresh today, would we include this feature?” – if not, why is it there now?

• Scaling Team and Process Breakdown: When your team grows from 5 people in a room to 50 or 500 across offices, maintaining simplicity can be a process challenge. Misalignment between teams can lead to inconsistent functionality or duplicate efforts (one team builds something that another team already had, etc.). To avoid this, invest in internal communication and alignment mechanisms. For instance, we introduced weekly syncs between product managers of different modules to discuss what each is working on, share user feedback, and ensure we weren’t creating complexity for each other. We also defined clear areas of ownership to prevent overlaps. Another aspect is keeping the development process lean: as you add more roles (QA, DevOps, etc.), don’t let bureaucracy stifle agility. Strive for a balance where you have enough process to coordinate (e.g. use Scrum or Kanban, do grooming, etc.), but not so much that it takes a month of meetings to release a minor update. Culturally, promote the value of simplicity to your new team members – if everyone buys in, they will be vigilant in their day-to-day work to not over-complicate things. Scaling the team is inevitable, but scaling chaos is not if you are proactive.

• Legacy Technology and Debt: Any product that’s been around for a few years will have some legacy code or outdated technology components. If ignored, this can become a huge source of complexity – fragile code that requires hacks on top of hacks to add new things. It’s critical to address technical debt regularly rather than letting it accumulate. This might mean scheduling refactoring sprints, upgrading your frameworks, or even redesigning parts of the system that no longer serve the scale you’ve reached. In one of my past products, we realized our initial database schema and API design wouldn’t handle the volume of data now coming in daily. We bit the bullet and did a major overhaul one year – it was painful for a short time, but it paid off in the long run by simplifying how new features could interact with the data. Whenever possible, decouple tightly coupled systems – modularity in architecture means one team can improve a component without risking the entire application. Modernizing legacy tech can feel like a distraction from building new features, but if you don’t do it, eventually you’ll slow to a crawl and be unable to innovate. Treat your tech stack as a product too, one that needs grooming and improvement. A rule of thumb: if engineers are constantly complaining that “this part of the code is a nightmare,” don’t sweep it under the rug – fix it before it spawns further complexity.

Conclusion: Simplicity is a Continuous Journey

Scaling a SaaS product is a thrilling ride – you acquire more users, expand into new markets, and deliver more value. But with that growth comes the ever-present threat of complexity, lurking in each new feature request, each architectural quick fix, each process shortcut. The key takeaway from my experience is that keeping a product simple as it scales is a continuous journey, not a one-time choice. You have to constantly prune, prioritize, and realign.

The good news is that investing in simplicity pays dividends. By keeping the user experience intuitive, you delight customers and stand out from competitors whose products have become clunky. By maintaining a clean architecture, you empower your development teams to move faster with fewer bugs. By streamlining processes and communication, your organization can scale efficiently without descending into confusion. And by being intentional – using frameworks like RICE, tools like Productboard, and data from platforms like Pendo – you create a virtuous cycle where your product grows in capability without losing its core elegance.

In the journey of scaling Kleos, we certainly made our share of mistakes, but our commitment to “simplify wherever possible” became a guiding light. It helped us sunset features that had outlived their usefulness, turn down enticing but off-mission product ideas, and keep our team focused on what truly mattered to our users (busy lawyers who didn’t have time for a complicated app!). As you navigate your own product’s growth, embrace simplicity as a principle: continually ask how you can make things clearer, easier, and more aligned with your vision. Complexity will always naturally emerge, but with the right mindset and tools, you can tame it. Ultimately, maintaining simplicity at scale is about delivering maximum value with minimal complexity – a goal that benefits your users, your team, and your bottom line.

Keep it simple, even as you scale, and your product will thank you in the long run. 🚀

Sources: The insights and examples above draw from the author’s personal experience and are supported by research and industry case studies for accuracy and broader context. Key references include statistics on feature usage from Pendo’s 2019 Feature Adoption Repor ()】, product management best practices from Productboar (Top 11 Product Roadmap Tools for SaaS Companies i...)】, and real-world examples such as IHS Markit’s approach to feature sunsetting using Pend (Riding off into the (feature) sunset | How I Pendo)】, among others as cited throughout the article.