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{{Paper
|id=Vol-1095/paper_06
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|title=Workshop Notes: From Start-up to SaaS Conglomerate: Life Cycles of Software Products, IW-LCSP 2013
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1095/paper_06.pdf
|volume=Vol-1095
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/icsob/MakilaW13
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==Workshop Notes: From Start-up to SaaS Conglomerate: Life Cycles of Software Products, IW-LCSP 2013==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1095/paper_06.pdf
Workshop Notes:
From Start-up to SaaS Conglomerate: Life Cycles of
Software Products, IW-LCSP 2013
Tuomas Mäkilä and Krzysztof Wnuk
University of Turku, 20014 Turku, Finland
tuomas.makila@utu.fi
University of Lund, P.O. Box 118, 221 00 Lund, Sweden
krzysztof.wnuk@cs.lth.se
Abstract. The first international workshop From Start-up to SaaS Conglomer-
ate: Life Cycles of Software Products, IW-LCSP 2013 was held in June 11th
2013 at Potsdam, Germany. In the workshop five papers were presented with
topics varying from product management in ecosystems and challenges in em-
pirical requirements engineering research to start-up methods, incubators and
accelerators. In these workshop notes the key findings of the presentations and
lessons learned from workshop discussions are presented.
Keywords: start-ups, ecosystems, requirement engineering, game development
1 Introduction
From Start-up to SaaS Conglomerate: Life Cycles of Software Products International
Workshop (IW-LCSP 2013) was held in June 11th 2013 at Potsdam, Germany. The
workshop was hosted by the 4th International Conference on Software Business (IC-
SOB 2013).
A rationale behind the workshop was to provide a forum for researchers to present
novel approaches and case studies, which they needed peer feedback on. The focus of
the workshop was on emerging topics on the interface of the software engineering and
business. These topics included software product lifecycles, especially building eco-
nomically sustainable software, and software start-ups. Special interest of the work-
shop was to discuss the research approaches and how the results of the empirical
research would benefit the software industry. Out of eight submissions, five papers
were presented in the workshop.
2 Presentations
As mentioned, the workshop had five presentations. Timeframe for each presentation
was 15–20 minutes followed by about 10 minutes discussion. After all presentations
Proceedings of IW-LCSP 2013 65
an discussion session was held, where the presenters and the audience could exchange
thoughts on the workshop topics. The workshop and the followed discussion session
were facilitated by Krzysztof Wnuk and Tuomas Mäkilä. The key points for each
presentation are analyzed in this section.
Software Ecosystems: From Software Product Management to Software Platform
Management (2013) was presented by Slinger Jansen. Jansen introduced an addition
to the existing Software Product Management model (SPM), where the effects the
related of ecosystems is taken into consideration during the product development
lifecycle. The model was developed based on the interviews of Dutch product manag-
ers. The paper triggered an interesting discussion regarding the interplay between
software product management and ecosystems, and regarding the possible extensions
in the software product management body of knowledge.
Lean Product Development in Early Stage Startups (2013) was presented by Jens
Björk and Jens Ljungblad. The presenters had participated an experiment where a
team of students developed several start-up ideas in parallel. The main principle was
that the team would focus on the most prominent idea and would prepare to change
the idea under development based on the feedback. A model for executing this kind of
parallel approach was also presented. The model was based on the lean start-up meth-
odology but was enhanced with the parallel business development aspects. The paper
ignited discussion about how many possible solutions can a software start-up afford
within limited resources.
Requirements Engineering as a Surrogate for Business Case Analysis in a Mobile
Applications Startup Context (2013) was presented by Krzysztof Wnuk. He went
through a case study where an incubator was held for technically oriented mobile
applications developers. A model for gathering user requirements and taking business
aspects of the applications using both business analysis and requirements engineering
principles was presented. Wnuk argumented that the requirements engineering ap-
proach had basically the same goal as the business analysis approach, but would be
easily adopted by technology people because of previously familiar terms and vo-
cabulary.
Game Development Accelerator – Initial Design and Research Approach (2013)
was presented by Tuomas Mäkilä. Mäkilä showed a plan for a research design, where
a game development accelerator will be iteratively developed by actually running the
accelerator and analyzing the results using scientific techniques. The accelerator
would be based on the lean start-up methodology, which has to be adapted to suite the
needs of the first time commercial game developers. Workshop participant lively
discussed the differences of game development and traditional software development,
and its implications on applying game development accelerator in practice.
Research on “Non-Issues” – Difficulties of Empirical Research on the Require-
ments Engineering & Management Process at the Client’s Site (2013) presented by
Rüdiger Weißbach. He briefly introduced a research setting where the relevance of
the requirements engineering for the business functions of companies was investigat-
ed. However, the main contribution of the presentation was to analyze the reasons
behind the low interest to participate the research interviews. Image of irrelevant
research topic and lack of interest usually lead to the denial of the interview request,
Proceedings of IW-LCSP 2013 66
while own research background and hands-on experience on the research topic lead to
participation. The presentation created discussion about re-using classical business
pitch techniques when getting industry involved.
3 Lessons Learned
The discussion between and after the presentations was lively. Especially the present-
ers and professors Pasi Tyrväinen, Tiziana Margaria and Jan Bosch participated
actively to the ending discussion session. In this section lessons learned are summa-
rized from the discussions and from the workshop presentations in general.
The challenge of successful vertical integration while extending software product
management by software ecosystem concepts was extensively discussed during the
ending session of the workshop. Furthermore, many of the presentations discussed
about requirements engineering in a one way or another. Also, the lean start-up meth-
odology, mentioned in several presentations, is based on understanding the core re-
quirements and needs of the start-up’s target customers. It can be said that one com-
mon factor of the presentations was to find ways to understand external actors like
users and ecosystem partners better during the product development life cycle.
Another common factor between presentations was close relationship to the soft-
ware industry. The presented research endeavors were inspired by software industry
needs, were done near or with software industry and, hopefully, are relevant to soft-
ware industry.
In general, the workshop was successful and the presentations were solid. During
the discussion it became apparent that more research is needed on the organization of
software start-ups and on the application of the requirements engineering techniques
in modern software development and business context.
Workshop Papers
Jansen, S., Peeters, S., Brinkkemper, S.: Software Ecosystems: From Software Product Man-
agement to Software Platform Management. Proceedings of IW-LSCP 2013. CEUR-WS.org
(2013)
Björk, J., Ljungblad, J., Bosch, J..: Lean Product Development in Early Stage Startups. Pro-
ceedings of IW-LSCP 2013. CEUR-WS.org (2013)
Callele, D., Boyer, A., Brown, K., Wnuk, K., Penzestadler, B.: Requirements Engineering as a
Surrogate for Business Case Analysis in a Mobile Applications Startup Context. Proceed-
ings of IW-LSCP 2013. CEUR-WS.org (2013)
Järvi, A., Mäkilä, T., Hyrynsalmi, S.: Game Development Accelerator – Initial Design and
Research Approach. Proceedings of IW-LSCP 2013. CEUR-WS.org (2013)
Weißbach, R.: Research on “Non-Issues” – Difficulties of Empirical Research on the Require-
ments Engineering & Management Process at the Client’s Site. Some Notes from an Explor-
ative Study. Proceedings of IW-LSCP 2013. CEUR-WS.org (2013)
Proceedings of IW-LCSP 2013 67