research-article

Patterns for Controlling Chaos in a Startup

Author:

Veli-Pekka ElorantaAuthors Info & Claims

VikingPLoP 2014: Proceedings of the 8th Nordic Conference on Pattern Languages of Programs (VikingPLoP)

April 2014

Article No.: 1, Pages 1 - 8

https://doi.org/10.1145/2676680.2676682

Published: 10 April 2014 Publication History

Get Access

Abstract

A growing trend in industrial software engineering is that new software products and information services are developed under conditions of notable uncertainty. This is especially visible in startup enterprises which aim at new kinds of products and services in rapidly changing social web, where potential customers can quickly adopt new behavior. Special characteristics of the startups are lack of resources and funds, and startups may need to change direction fast. All these affect the software engineering practices used in the startups.

Unfortunately almost 90 percent of all startups fail and goes bankrupt. There are probably indefinite numbers of reasons why startups fail. Failure might be caused by wrongly chosen software engineering practices or inconsiderate decision making. While there is no recipe for success, we argue that good practices that can help on the way to success can be identified from successful startups. In this paper, we present two patterns that startups can consider when entering the growth phase of the lifecycle.

References

[1]

Mary Poppendieck and Tom Poppendieck. 2003. Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit. Addison-Wesley Longman Publishing Co., Inc., Boston, MA, USA.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[2]

Daniel H. Pink. Drive: the surprising truth about what motivates us. 978-1594484803, 2011, Riverhead Books

Google Scholar

[3]

James O. Coplien and Neil B. Harrison. 2004, Organizational Patterns of Agile Software Development. ISBN 0131467409, Prentice-Hall, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ, USA.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[4]

Drucker P.F. (1999) Management Challenges for the 21st Century, Butterworth-Heinemann, Oxford

Google Scholar

[5]

Ohno, Taiichi (2007), Workplace Management. Translated by Jon Miller, Gemba Press, ISBN 978-0-9786387-5-7, ISBN 0-9786387-5-1

Google Scholar

[6]

Ries, Eric (2011), The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses. Crown Publishing, ISBN 978-0-307-88791-7.

Google Scholar

[7]

Blank, Steve (2012). Search versus Execute, Website, Available online: http://steveblank.com/2012/03/05/search-versus-execute/, retrieved on 9th of March, 2014.

Google Scholar

[8]

Dande, Anuradha; Eloranta, Veli-Pekka; Hadaytullah; Kovalainen, Antti-Jussi; Lehtonen Timo; Leppänen, Marko et al. Software Startup Patterns -- An Empirical Study, Tampere University of Technology, technical report 4, 2014.

Google Scholar

[9]

Coplien, J.O. and Bjørnvig, G. (2010). Lean Architecture: for Agile Software Development. Wiley. ISBN: 978-0470684207

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[10]

Valve corporation. Valve -- Handbook for New Employees. 2012. Available online: http://assets.sbnation.com/assets/1074301/Valve_Handbook_LowRes.pdf, visited 21st September, 2014

Crossref

Google Scholar

[11]

de Mello, A. The Song of the Bird, 1984. ISBN 978-0385196154, Image.

Google Scholar

Cited By

View all

Lakha BBhetwal KEisty N(2023)Analysis of Software Engineering Practices in General Software and Machine Learning Startups2023 IEEE/ACIS 21st International Conference on Software Engineering Research, Management and Applications (SERA)10.1109/SERA57763.2023.10197836(39-46)Online publication date: 23-May-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/SERA57763.2023.10197836
Morales-Trujillo MGarcía-Mireles GDumas MPfahl DApel SRusso A(2019)Evolving with patterns: a 31-month startup experience reportProceedings of the 2019 27th ACM Joint Meeting on European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering10.1145/3338906.3340447(1037-1047)Online publication date: 12-Aug-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3338906.3340447
König MUngerer CBaltes G(2018)The Semantics of Entrepreneurial Learning in New Technology-Based FirmsTechnology Entrepreneurship10.1007/978-3-319-73509-2_1(3-20)Online publication date: 2-Jan-2018
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73509-2_1
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Patterns for Controlling Chaos in a Startup
1. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Computing profession
      1. Computing organizations
2. Software and its engineering
  1. Software creation and management
    1. Collaboration in software development
      1. Programming teams

Recommendations

Towards a pattern language for software start-ups
EuroPLoP '14: Proceedings of the 19th European Conference on Pattern Languages of Programs

A growing trend in industrial software engineering is that new software products and information services are developed under conditions of notable uncertainty. This is especially visible in startup enterprises which aim at new kinds of products and ...
Read More
Two Patterns for Minimizing Human Resources in a Startup
VikingPLoP 2014: Proceedings of the 8th Nordic Conference on Pattern Languages of Programs (VikingPLoP)

In this paper, we describe two patterns that are part of a larger pattern language for software startup companies. These two particular patterns help startup companies to focus on the essential; the product itself and keeping their team intact and ...
Read More
Evolving with patterns: a 31-month startup experience report
ESEC/FSE 2019: Proceedings of the 2019 27th ACM Joint Meeting on European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering

Software startups develop innovative products under extreme conditions of uncertainty. At the same time they represent a fast-growing sector in the economy and scale up research and technological advancement. This paper describes findings after ...
Read More

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

VikingPLoP 2014: Proceedings of the 8th Nordic Conference on Pattern Languages of Programs (VikingPLoP)

April 2014

85 pages

ISBN:9781450326605

DOI:10.1145/2676680

Program Chairs:
Jari Rauhamäki
Tampere University of Technology, Finland
,
Veli-Pekka Eloranta
Tampere University of Technology, Finland

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

In-Cooperation

Hillside Europe: Hillside Europe
Tampere University of Technology

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 10 April 2014

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Research-article
Research
Refereed limited

Conference

VikingPLoP 2014

VikingPLoP 2014: 8th Nordic Conference on Pattern Languages of Programs

April 10 - 13, 2014

Vihula, Estonia

Acceptance Rates

VikingPLoP 2014 Paper Acceptance Rate 8 of 11 submissions, 73%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 8 of 11 submissions, 73%

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

4
Total Citations
View Citations
312
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)11
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)0

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

View all

Lakha BBhetwal KEisty N(2023)Analysis of Software Engineering Practices in General Software and Machine Learning Startups2023 IEEE/ACIS 21st International Conference on Software Engineering Research, Management and Applications (SERA)10.1109/SERA57763.2023.10197836(39-46)Online publication date: 23-May-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/SERA57763.2023.10197836
Morales-Trujillo MGarcía-Mireles GDumas MPfahl DApel SRusso A(2019)Evolving with patterns: a 31-month startup experience reportProceedings of the 2019 27th ACM Joint Meeting on European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering10.1145/3338906.3340447(1037-1047)Online publication date: 12-Aug-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3338906.3340447
König MUngerer CBaltes G(2018)The Semantics of Entrepreneurial Learning in New Technology-Based FirmsTechnology Entrepreneurship10.1007/978-3-319-73509-2_1(3-20)Online publication date: 2-Jan-2018
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73509-2_1
Krusche SBruegge BCamilleri IKrinkin KSeitz AWöbker CWerner CWhittle J(2017)Chaordic learningProceedings of the 39th International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering and Education Track10.1109/ICSE-SEET.2017.21(87-96)Online publication date: 20-May-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/ICSE-SEET.2017.21

View Options

Get Access

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Cited By

Index Terms

Recommendations

Towards a pattern language for software start-ups

Two Patterns for Minimizing Human Resources in a Startup

Evolving with patterns: a 31-month startup experience report

Comments

Published In

In-Cooperation

Publisher

Publication History

Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Conference

Acceptance Rates

Other Metrics

Article Metrics

Other Metrics

Cited By

Login options

Full Access

PDF

eReader

Abstract

References

Cited By

Index Terms

Recommendations

Towards a pattern language for software start-ups

Two Patterns for Minimizing Human Resources in a Startup

Evolving with patterns: a 31-month startup experience report

Comments

Information

Published In

In-Cooperation

Publisher

Publication History

Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Conference

Acceptance Rates

Contributors

Other Metrics

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

Other Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Get Access

Login options

Full Access

View options

PDF

eReader

Figures

Other

Share

Share this Publication link

Share on social media

Affiliations