Requirements Engineering in Software Startups: a Grounded Theory Approach

Melegati, Jorge; Goldman, Alfredo

doi:10.1109/ice/itmc39735.2016.9026036

Cited by 18 publications

(28 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…Our results support earlier findings that requirements engineering is one of the key engineering activities in startups [10]. Moreover, our results show an association between requirements engineering practices and state of a start-up.…”

Section: Lessons Learnedsupporting

confidence: 92%

“…Several studies attempt to explore product engineering practices in start-ups. For example, Gralha et al [11] and Melegati et al [10] explore requirements engineering practices in start-ups. These studies suggest that requirements engineering is one of the key engineering process areas in start-ups, and help to explore the market opportunity and to devise a feasible solution.…”

Section: Software Engineering Practices In Start-upsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Rationale: Very little is known of what software engineering practices start-ups use and what is the motivation for using or avoiding specific practices. Earlier studies report the use of light-weight, ad-hoc practices with emphasis on requirements engineering [2], [10], [24]. However, most earlier reports use secondary data, explore only a few cases, and are based on limited understanding of engineering context in start-ups.…”

Section: Research Questionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A Progression Model of Software Engineering Goals, Challenges, and Practices in Start-Ups

Klotins

Unterkalmsteiner

Chatzipetrou

et al. 2021

IIEEE Trans. Software Eng.

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Context: Software start-ups are emerging as suppliers of innovation and software-intensive products. However, traditional software engineering practices are not evaluated in the context, nor adopted to goals and challenges of start-ups. As a result, there is insufficient support for software engineering in the start-up context. Objective: We aim to collect data related to engineering goals, challenges, and practices in start-up companies to ascertain trends and patterns characterizing engineering work in start-ups. Such data allows researchers to understand better how goals and challenges are related to practices. This understanding can then inform future studies aimed at designing solutions addressing those goals and challenges. Besides, these trends and patterns can be useful for practitioners to make more informed decisions in their engineering practice. Method: We use a case survey method to gather first-hand, in-depth experiences from a large sample of software start-ups. We use open coding and cross-case analysis to describe and identify patterns, and corroborate the findings with statistical analysis. Results: We analyze 84 start-up cases and identify 16 goals, 9 challenges, and 16 engineering practices that are common among startups. We have mapped these goals, challenges, and practices to start-up life-cycle stages (inception, stabilization, growth, and maturity). Thus, creating the progression model guiding software engineering efforts in start-ups. Conclusions: We conclude that start-ups to a large extent face the same challenges and use the same practices as established companies. However, the primary software engineering challenge in start-ups is to evolve multiple process areas at once, with a little margin for serious errors.

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Section: Lessons Learnedsupporting

confidence: 92%

Section: Software Engineering Practices In Start-upsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Research Questionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A Progression Model of Software Engineering Goals, Challenges, and Practices in Start-Ups

Klotins

Unterkalmsteiner

Chatzipetrou

et al. 2021

IIEEE Trans. Software Eng.

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“…• As already mentioned, the stage 1 of this research was presented as the paper entitled "Requirements Engineering in Software Startups" during the 2nd International Workshop on Software Startups [MG16].…”

Section: Production During This Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Number of labels and categories through rst stage analysis.By the beginning of April, a paper[MG16] was submitted to a workshop to present the results of this rst stage. In gure 4.2, the model after this rst stage is presented.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Requirements engineering in software startups: a qualitative investigation

Gonçalves¹

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Software startups face a very demanding market: they must deliver high innovative solutions in the shortest possible period of time. Resources are limited and time to reach market is short. Then, it is extremely important to gather the right requirements and that they are precise. Nevertheless, software requirements are usually not clear and startups struggle to identify what they should build. This context aects how requirements engineering activities are performed in these organizations. This work seeks to characterize the state-of-practice of requirements engineering in software startups. Using an iterative approach, seventeen interviews were conducted during three stages with founders and/or managers of dierent Brazilian software startups operating in dierent market sectors and with dierent maturity levels. Data was analyzed using grounded theory techniques such open and axial coding through continuous comparison. As a result, a conceptual model of requirements engineering state-of-practice in software startups was developed consisting of its context inuences (founders, software development manager, developers, business model, market and ecosystem) and activities description (product team; elicitation; analysis, validation and prioritization; product validation and documentation). Software development and startup development techniques are also presented and their use in the startup context is analyzed. Finally, using a bad smell analogy borrowed from software development literature, some bad practices and behaviors identied in software startups are presented and solutions to avoid them proposed.

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