Prototyping Practices in Software Startups: Initial Case Study Results

Software startups use prototyping to develop and test business ideas and to validate market viability. While prototyping is emphasized in agile methods, there is little research on how startups can best utilise scarce resources to effectively use prototypes in their dynamic business context. We performed a case study of four startups and investigated how startups currently use prototyping to elicit, validate and communicate requirements through semi-structured interviews. Our initial results indicate that prototyping is a commonly applied practice that is implicitly required to obtain funding for early stage startups, that software engineering competence is required to produce interactive and fully functioning prototypes, and that it is a challenge to balance prototype scope against expected gains.