Master's lecture in Software Engineering - Elvar Helgason
The lecture will be streamed: https://zoom.us/s/62812944531
Master's student: Elvar Helgason
Title: Software Engineering Practices in Early Stages of Icelandic Software Startups
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Faculty: Faculty of Industrial Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science
Advisors: Helmut Neukirchen and Matthias Book, both Professors at the Faculty of Industrial Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science
Examiner: Mohammad Hamdaqa, Assistant Professor at Reykjavík University
Abstract
Founding a startup is a risky endeavor. A majority of startups don't survive the first five years. Ad-hoc work processes and procedures implemented startups' formation support agility and the rapid delivery needed for startups to survive. Loosely defined processes can lead to a build up of technical debt and are a factor in the high failure rate. Proven methodologies exist for medium sized and larger software firms, but a lack of research into effective methodologies has been identified for very small software firms and software startups in particular.
The field of research on engineering practices specific to software startups is fairly young and an important first step is establishing how work is currently performed in software startups as a reference point for further research.
Based on methodology from prior research into software development processes in startups and very small companies by Mary-Luz Sánchez-Gordón and Rory V. O'Connor, we interview a set of Icelandic software startup founders and identify work practices implemented during development of a prototype of each startups core product through grounded theory analysis.
Our findings report of heterogeneity in process practices between startups, matching the \emph{process tailoring} model proposed by Coleman and O'Connor. We identified and further discussed seven practices in terms of other recent and comparable research. The practices and discussion should support the software startup engineering field in forming this aforementioned ground state reference point. The impact of the practices identified on the success rate of startups could be analyzed and act as a comparison for future research in software engineering for software startups.