Software Startups -- A Research Agenda

Software startup companies develop innovative, software-intensive products within limited time frames and with few resources, searching for sustainable and scalable business models. Software startups are quite distinct from traditional mature software companies, but also from micro-, small-, and medium-sized enterprises, introducing new challenges relevant for software engineering research. This paper's research agenda focuses on software engineering in startups, identifying, in particular, 70+ research questions in the areas of supporting startup engineering activities, startup evolution models and patterns, ecosystems and innovation hubs, human aspects in software startups, applying startup concepts in non-startup environments, and methodologies and theories for startup research. We connect and motivate this research agenda with past studies in software startup research, while pointing out possible future directions. While all authors of this research agenda have their main background in Software Engineering or Computer Science, their interest in software startups broadens the perspective to the challenges, but also to the opportunities that emerge from multi-disciplinary research. Our audience is therefore primarily software engineering researchers, even though we aim at stimulating collaborations and research that crosses disciplinary boundaries. We believe that with this research agenda we cover a wide spectrum of the software startup industry current needs

Revealing the Vicious Circle of Disengaged User Acceptance: A SaaS Provider's Perspective

User acceptance tests (UAT) are an integral part of many different software engineering methodologies. In this paper, we examine the influence of UATs on the relationship between users and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications, which are continuously delivered rather than rolled out during a one-off signoff process. Based on an exploratory qualitative field study at a multinational SaaS provider in Denmark, we show that UATs often address the wrong problem in that positive user acceptance may actually indicate a negative user experience. Hence, SaaS providers should be careful not to rest on what we term disengaged user acceptance. Instead, we outline an approach that purposefully queries users for ambivalent emotions that evoke constructive criticism, in order to facilitate a discourse that favors the continuous innovation of a SaaS system. We discuss theoretical and practical implications of our approach for the study of user engagement in testing SaaS applications

Identify Innovative Business Models: Can Innovative Business Models Enable Players to React to Ongoing or Unpredictable Trends?

Socioeconomic trends (such as makers, crowdsourcing, sharing economy, gamification) as well as technological trends (such as cloud computing, 3D printing technology, application, big data, TV on demand and the Internet of things) are changing the scenario and creating new opportunities, new businesses and, as a result, new players. The high level of uncertainty caused by the fast speed of innovation technology along with an enormous amount of information difficult to analyse and exploit are characterizing the current framework. On the other hand, businesses such as Netflix – with its 44,000 users and a long tail business model – show a new service based on TV on demand where innovation starts from the convergence between two different industries (TV and the Internet) and spreads on the need of new users. Quirky, with its innovative open business model, is manufacturing new products designed and developed by the community and finally produced with the use of 3D printing technology. While Google in a multi-sided model are giving their new glasses to different developers who build their own application on them, Kickstarter finds its business funders in the crowd, and pays them back with its future products, according to what the organization needs. Another element that adds complexity to the previous framework is the new customer. He or she is showing a social attitude in favour of transparency, openness, collaboration, and sharing. Every second more than 600 tweets are posted on Twitter and around 700 status updates are posted on Facebook. At the same time, people are receiving text messages, e-mails and skype or phone calls and simultaneously consuming TV,radio and print media. In this scenario characterized by trends where employees, funders, customers and partners do not play a stable role but work together with a sort of “platform organization” to create a product or service completely customized for different market niches, how can an organization set up an innovative business model in a defined trend? Is it possible to identify a sort of framework, able to inspire new business models, with an examination of trends? In this article we will use a mix of different approaches to inspire new business model

How to introduce Lean Startup process into a medium-sized IT vendor, namely Futurice?

Following Anderson and Tushman (1990), companies are facing exceptional competition in today’s era of ferment. Pressured by an innovation impetus, companies seek new means of doing and producing. Start-ups are seen as a model of innovation due to their potential disruptive power and are increasingly turned to as identifying promising means and processes, as presented by the Lean Startup. Though a highly popular topic in research, there is little empirical evidence that holds water in a more critical scrutiny of the applicability of Lean Startup principles, their benefits and compatibility with other, effective means to deal with the context of complexity, however fall short when facing extreme uncertainty, where high levels of design need to be incorporated. In this thesis I explore ways to introduce Lean Startup into an agile medium-sized IT vendor, namely Futurice acting as an empirical environment. Utilising co-creative methods I map the culture, define customer relationships and present project cases, in order to identify opportunities and limitations of adopting Lean Startup thinking within the specific setting of Futurice. As a solution I present three actionable steps, that are the Lean Startup Poster, an artefact to educate and enable communication, the Lean Startup Roadmap, a set of actionable steps, and the Lean Startup Testbed Proposal, an artefact-based design heuristic to vertically and horizontally integrate Lean Startup as a process into Futurice

Things.info - how to create a WEB platform representing all man-made objects and their relationships

The research question is how to create the appropriate (highly usable, rapidly scalable, modifiable by all internet users) web and mobile platform for Things.info - visualised interactive database of world’s man-made physical objects and their relationships? Thesis covers theoretical background, poses underlying assumptions and critical success factors to accomplish the task in question. Two critical success factors – early adopters and high usability - are studied experimentally. Possible early adopters are identified through qualitative interviews. User experience testing is carried out based on lean UX theory and using interactive prototype. Overall, lean startup and agile software development methods are recommended to develop the platform in question.http://tartu.ester.ee/record=b2656162~S1*es

From Minimum Viable to Maximum Lovable: Developing a User Experience Strategy Model for Software Startups

Software startups have gained attention by disrupting traditional businesses. As startups operate with scarce resources and under time pressure, efficient business value creation needs to be of the highest priority. Creating superior user experience (UX) is a means for startups to gain competitive edge that is difficult to copy. However, early product development in startups is filled with uncertainty – considering both the characteristics of the product under development and defining its target market. This is a challenge for designing UX, as both product qualities and user groups may drastically change together with the target market. However, scientific literature has not provided knowledge on ways to integrate UX creation as part of new business development (NBD) in software startups.This thesis contributes primarily to the field of human-computer interaction (HCI). Secondly, it contributes to software engineering, more specifically to human-centered software development. The goal of this doctoral research is to advance the knowledge and practices of software startups and user experience (UX) work. This is done by empirical research of the practices and needs for UX creation of the startups, and based on the gained understanding, by formulating a strategy model for including UX creation as a supporting part in establishing new software business. This compound thesis is based on six publications that result from four empirical studies with software startups. The studies were conducted over a period of two years between 2014 and 2016. The nature of the studies was qualitative and involved data collection from altogether 40 startups, mostly based in Finland but also in eight other countries.The results suggest that UX work creates value in two ways: both for users and for business development of startups. This research recognized beneficial approaches and practices for UX creation in software startups, such as light-weight UX work methods, adoption of good design solutions from successful products, and an iterative approach to product development. Studying the role of UX in early product design showed how poor UX hinders startups from gaining trustworthy feedback on their product idea, as users concentrate on deficiencies in UX. To ensure sufficient quality of UX, the Minimum Viable UX (MVUX) framework was developed to guide early design decisions in startups.The main contribution of this thesis is a UX strategy model that proposes UX strategy actions for two stages of startups lifecycle, namely validation of the product idea, and scaling for business growth. Moreover, the UX strategy model consists of UX strategy actions for UX goal setting, user involvement, and design decisions during the two phases. The UX strategy actions aim to ensure reaching minimum viable quality of UX to enable trustworthy validation of a product idea. However, for sustainable business growth and scaling, the model further aims to creating lovable UX that provides competitive advantage. The UX strategy model presents means for focusing UX creation to bringing value both to users and to the startup business

Digital Platform-Enabled Community Development: A Case Study of a Private-Public Partnership Sustainability Initiative

The significant human impact on the environment has prompted many governments to invest in sustainability initiatives across cities and communities. Moreover, although it has been suggested that information technology can aid in the development of these sustainability initiatives, there is a dearth of empirical field studies in this area. In this research-in-progress paper, we present preliminary findings from a case study of a private-public partnership (PPP) community-based sustainability initiative that is enabled by a digital platform. Preliminary analysis sheds light on the mechanisms underlying the formation of the PPP, the development of the PPP’s business model, the development of the digital platform, and ultimately the emergence of a community for sustainability. A framework for digital platform-enabled community development is posited based on the case analysis. Implications to both research and practice, as well as future research work are then discussed in concluding this paper

Advances in Supply Chain Management: Potential to Improve Forecasting Accuracy

Forecasting is a necessity almost in any operation. However, the tools of forecasting are still primitive in view of the great strides made by research and the increasing abundance of data made possible by automatic identification technologies, such as, radio frequency identification (RFID). The relationship of various parameters that may change and impact decisions are so abundant that any credible attempt to drive meaningful associations are in demand to deliver the value from acquired data. This paper proposes some modifications to adapt an advanced forecasting technique (GARCH) with the aim to develop it as a decision support tool applicable to a wide variety of operations including supply chain management. We have made an attempt to coalesce a few different ideas toward a “solutions” approach aimed to model volatility and in the process, perhaps, better manage risk. It is possible that industry, governments, corporations, businesses, security organizations, consulting firms and academics with deep knowledge in one or more fields, may spend the next few decades striving to synthesize one or more models of effective modus operandi to combine these ideas with other emerging concepts, tools, technologies and standards to collectively better understand, analyze and respond to uncertainty. However, the inclination to reject deep rooted ideas based on inconclusive results from pilot projects is a detrimental trend and begs to ask the question whether one can aspire to build an elephant using mouse as a model