Misalignment of Stakeholder Objectives In Software start-ups: A Qualitative research based on Software start-ups in India

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Master of Science in Software Engineering June 2020

Misalignment of Stakeholder Objectives In Software start-ups

A Qualitative research based on Software start-ups in India

Naveen Kumar Gopagoni Sri Ranganath Reddy Sabbella

Faculty of Computing, Blekinge Institute of Technology, 371 79 Karlskrona, Sweden

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This thesis is submitted to the Faculty of Computing at Blekinge Institute of Technology in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Software Engineering.

The thesis is equivalent to 20 weeks of full time studies.

The authors declare that they are the sole authors of this thesis and that they have not used any sources other than those listed in the bibliography and identified as references. They further declare that they have not submitted this thesis at any other institution to obtain a degree.

Contact Information:

Author(s):

Naveen Kumar Gopagoni E-mail: nagp18@student.bth.se Sri Ranganath Reddy Sabbella E-mail: srsa18@student.bth.se

University advisor:

Dr. Krzystof Wnuk

Department of Software Engineering

Faculty of Computing Internet : www.bth.se

Blekinge Institute of Technology Phone : +46 455 38 50 00 SE–371 79 Karlskrona, Sweden Fax : +46 455 38 50 57

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Abstract

Context: Misalignment of stakeholder objectives generally takes place in any of the software company irrespective of the small, middle, large scale companies if the misalignment takes place then the goal the project doesn’t reach and the objective changes. These misalignment’s lead to project failure. Failures of the project in start-ups company some times lead to the shutdown of a company permanently.

Minimizing the misalignment in a company means to avoid the risk. Mostly it is more critical for the software start-ups.

Objectives: The main aim of our research is to know the factors responsible for the misalignment of the stakeholder objectives in software start-ups along with the significant challenges and possible solutions.

Methods: In this qualitative research, we conducted the semi-structured interviews from the twelve start-up companies and collected the data for the research questions.

The collected information is then thematically analyzed. We referred to many articles from the google scholar to find the significant challenges responsible for the misalignment of the stakeholder objectives.

Results: The main findings in our research are as follows RQ1 external sponsor with his focus on return on investment discussed by the ten out of twelve software start-ups. In the twelve companies, ten companies are dependent on the external sponsor. Human factor and the requirements prioritization are the factors discussed by the six and five interviewees of the start-up companies. The remote working, last- minute change of requirements, deadlines are discussed by two interviewees. The one interviewee discusses the technology factor. In the findings from RQ2, we observed that the challenges related to the humans, return on investment, the external sponsor is more dominant compared to others factors like technology factor, deadlines, remote working, a last-minute change of requirements. In the findings of RQ3, about the possible solutions for the challenges with the misalignment of stakeholder objectives.

Conclusions: The results of this study may help the furthers researchers who can research on the misalignment of the stakeholder objectives in software start-ups.

These solutions may help the software industry people to minimise the general challenges in future in a better way. This results also may use for the people who want to start a software start-up so that they can know the factors, challenges, solutions of the misalignment of the stakeholder objectives in software start-ups.

Keywords: Misalignment, Stakeholders, Objectives, Software, start-ups.

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Acknowledgments

I will show my full gratitude towards my parents Shri. Narsimhulu Gopagoni, Smt.

Manjula Gopagoni. They encouraged me in every stage of the journey to masters.

My sister Miss Niharika boosted me in every step of my life by giving the motivation to complete the masters successfully. Most importantly, my sincere gratitude towards our supervisor Dr Krzysztof Wnuk who guided, helped, encouraged while working with the thesis.

—"Naveen Kumar Gopagoni"

I’m thankful to the people who inspired and motivated me during the journey of Master’s degree program.

I want to express my heartfelt gratitude towards my parents Shri. Veera Venkata Surya Chandra Bala Mohana Krishna Satyanarayana Reddy Sabbella and Smt. Bhu- vaneswari Aruna Kumari Sabbella, for not only believing me and supporting me in every walk of my life. I’m thankful to my brother Lakshmi Narayana Reddy Sabbella, cousins, relatives and friends for their love and support. I am so glad for having you as a part of my life.

I sincerely, can’t express my love towards your support and uplifting my confidence during my education “Guruji”.

"Dr. Krzysztof Wnuk" Thank you for being so encouraging and doing everything you can to keep us motivated and supported throughout our thesis. I am glad you are part of my education.

—"Sri Ranganath Reddy Sabbella"

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List of Figures

3.1 Research Method . . . 13

3.2 Snowballing . . . 14

3.3 Sequential steps in Interview Study . . . 20

3.4 Color Coding . . . 21

5.1 Challenges with human factor . . . 45

A.1 Interviewee Questionnaires . . . 57

A.2 Interviewee Questionnaires . . . 58

B.1 Literature review on papers that selected . . . 59

B.2 Conclusions from Literature Review . . . 60

B.3 Conclusions from Literature Review . . . 60

C.1 Color Coding . . . 61

C.2 Color Coding for Interviewee 1 . . . 62

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List of Tables

3.1 Summary of snowballing procedure . . . 17

4.1 Misalignment Challenges identified in Literature Review . . . 26

4.2 Demographic of Interviewees . . . 28

4.3 Type of Market . . . 28

4.4 Factors responsible for Misalignment . . . 33

4.5 Analysis of Misalignment Factors . . . 34

4.6 Thematic analysis of Misalignment of Challenges . . . 37

4.7 Thematic analysis of Solutions for Misalignment . . . 41

5.1 Challenges with factors of misalignment . . . 47

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List of Abbreviations

BA Business Analyst CEO Chief Executive Officer

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Chapter 1 Introduction

1.1 Overview

In recent years, software start-ups are evolving rapidly due to the evolution of technology in the field of Software Engineering for fulfilling the goals of the customer and the development of the product based on market-driven and several other methods.

Millions of people in the world use many successful products developed by start-ups such as Uber, WhatsApp, Instagram, etc. Although there are many success stories from software start-ups, most of them are getting extinguished within the two years from the establishment of the organization. The characteristics of time-pressure, the uncertainty of the environment, operating in a confused state, start-ups face intense pressure from the market which exposed to tense rivalry [20] [10]. As to achieve success, start-ups need to adapt the product according to the demands of the market by having controlled limited resources [16] [20] [10]. From prospective engineering development of a product in software start-ups is challenging task varies with the change of software processes in a perspective methodology [51] [9] [20] [16] [35]. start-ups benefit from modern software technologies which allow them to develop and release software quickly [23] [51] [9] [20]. However, the term software start-ups refer to the organisations that are concentrating on innovative products with less or no operating experience with the competitive scalable market [20] [23].

Generally, start-ups depend on the external sponsors to fund the development of the product, and the goals of the sponsor may change with time [27]. Some of the characteristics that start-ups are facing in this competitive world, such as lack of resources, time pressure, innovations, rapid evolution, experience, etc. for the development of a product [44]. Time pressure is also prominent in start-ups as they face pressure from the external sponsors, deadlines of the product, contracts due to lack of resources [1] [44]. Innovation is another characteristic of a software start-up in which business, process, incremental models, are practised as they focus on improving the known features of these models. Software start-ups are lack of radical and disruptive models as these need more investment along with time is essential for creating new business models with the replacement of existing models.

Due to this start-ups focus only on the above three models but not disruptive and radical innovation models, the reason behind this is due to lack of resources [29].

start-ups are temporary organizations continually looking for business models that are repeatable and scalable [46] [29]. The process varies in software start-ups and established companies. As these established companies have their mature process, partners, a lot more while compared to start-ups lack in these aspects [46].

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2 Chapter 1. Introduction The contextual features like rapid evolution and thinner margin of errors de- pended on the stakeholder objectives, and these objectives place a prominent role for a start-up to evolve as a scale-up organization [46]. Rapid evolution in a well- established organization is constant when compared to start-ups, although some changes occur, those supported by some of the aspects like infrastructure, processes [32]. So, rapid evolution in different perspectives is observed only in start-ups organizations which make the difference between well established and start-ups [27]

[32]. Due to the small size and dependency on the external sponsor, start-ups need to maintain a thinner margin of errors. The failure of the product has a significant impact on the software start-up. In start-ups, the failure of a product to the customer usually means the immediate collapse of the company [27]. The objectives may vary with different stakeholders, as each stakeholder perspective is different from one other. So there is a need to understand each stakeholder objectives and balance the user criteria with stakeholder objectives and prioritize the goals. Prioritization of objectives should be in such a way that to attract the users to maximum extent with a thin margin of error [27]. But misalignment of stakeholder objectives takes place in multiple ways in software start-ups. Depending on different contextual features, with the influence of various factors, with other factors, the misalignment of stakeholder objectives take place.

1.1.1 Research Problem

The misalignment of stakeholder objectives are identified from the previous research [32] as this is the challenge in software start-ups. In software start-ups, there may be stakeholder like an external investor with his goals. Another stakeholder like product owner, may have a different goal which doesn’t match with the goals of an external investor. Internal team stakeholders like the developer, requirements analyst etc. need to maintain the need to balance the goals of all the stakeholders like the customer, users, community, government etc. This is one of the effects for the misalignment of stakeholder objectives. As to know the different factors responsible for the misalignment of stakeholder objectives, challenges and solutions to mitigate these challenges is our research. We collected the data collected by conducting the semi-structured interviews from the internal stakeholders (Project manager, requirements analyst, requirements engineer, CEO, developers, business analyst) of software start-ups. Before the implementation of the semi-structured interviews, we conducted the literature review to know challenges in general.

1.1.2 Scope of the thesis

In our qualitative research, we aim to investigate the factors responsible for the misalignment of stakeholder objectives in software start-ups. Also, the significant challenges faced by the software start-ups with misalignment and possible solutions to mitigate these challenges are our objectives in this research so that these solutions may be useful for the start-up companies in a better way in future. As part of data collection in our empirical research study, we conducted the interviews in twelve different software start-up companies in India. We choose the Indian start-up companies for conducting interviews because it is our motherland. Also, India consists

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1.1. Overview 3 of many information technology hubs.

1.1.3 Structure of the thesis

The outline of our thesis as follows in the Chapter-1 it consists of the overview, research problem, scope, outline of our thesis. Chapter-2 deals with the background and related work which consists of the discussion from the related papers. Chapter- 3 consists of the aim, objectives, research questions, research methods and validity threads. Chapter-4 consists of the results and analysis of the results. Chapter-5 deals with discussions to the interview questions. Chapter-6 discusses the conclusion and future work of our thesis.

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Chapter 2 Background & Related Work

2.1 Background

2.1.1 Start-ups

Start-ups can develop innovative products, increase economic development, employ- ment opportunities and create a new market [30]. Entrepreneurship creates a new venture to contribute to economic growth and development of innovative products under limited resources with highly competitive competitors [45]. In the start-up’s environment is dynamic, unstable, chaotic, fast failure and learn fast to acquire market interest for sustainable growth. Overall, 60% of start-ups don’t survive in the first five years, and 75% of start-ups failed, which are funded by a venture capitalist[19].

Moreover, 90% of start-ups fail due to self-destruction instead of competition [21].

Generally, start-ups are under pressure to develop a solution for a real problem, which continuously improve the answer to the problem in the market. In the context of start-ups, the customers change the requirements and developers may get too used to it from day one [19]. There is intense pressure from the investors, customers, competitors and sometimes in decision making which leads to concentrate on the maximum return on investment for investors and to have a lack of trust for customers and minimal focusing on the development of a product [21] [5].

The world got a lot of interest while some of the start-up companies emerged as a successful start-up like Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter etc.

which made to concentrate on understanding what constitutes to evolve as a start-up [24] [5] [10] . The collaboration in a start-up is made easy as it consists of a small developing team; decisions made fast, less paperwork, less structured, rapid evolution are some of the main characteristics [19]. Studies shown that use of Agile and Lean methodologies increases the chance to achieve success in start-ups [43].

2.1.2 Who are the Stakeholders?

"In everyday life, a stakeholder is a person or group that has an interest or share in a business or enterprise (originally, it meant the holder of the bets in a game)" [22].

The first definition for stakeholder is appeared at in the year 1993 [34] as “all those who have a stake in the change being considered, those who stand to gain from it, and those who stand to lose" [40]. Later it was modified as “A stakeholder is a person or organization who influences a system’s requirements or who is impacted by that system” [22].

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6 Chapter 2. Background & Related Work There are several types of stakeholders, and they are divided into Internal Stake- holder and External Stakeholder. Internal Stakeholders consists of Project Manager, Project Team, Company, Sponsor etc. which are directly involved for the product whereas External Stakeholders are those vendors have an interest in the outcome of the product they are Community, Government, Customers, Shareholders, etc [4]. In our research, we interviewed only the internal stakeholders for our data collection from different software start-ups. The internal stakeholder involved in our research is business analyst, chief executive officer, requirements analyst, developer, project manager. Some of the definitions of the internal stakeholders are as follows

Project Manager: The one responsible for the project in which controls, monitors, manages the activities in production [4].

Project Team: The actual team works under the project manager for the successful completion of the project [4].

Company: Organization in which the entire project is handled, and its employees are responsible for the development of the project [4].

2.1.3 Stakeholder Objectives

The complexity in software start-ups is due to the rapid evolution and conflicts between the stakeholder objectives. In software start-ups, investors could be from outside, and the goals of the externals investors are misaligned with project teams.

Different stakeholder has different objectives during product development. Regarding the external investors, they aim to increase the return on investment [27]. Start-up company aim to excel with competitive technology. Software engineers need to balance the objectives of all the stakeholder’s groups in those of start-ups itself, shareholders, customers. Integrating multiple stakeholder involvement in the new product development not only creates additional information but also leads to changes in the new product development process [15].

2.1.4 Understanding of Misalignment

This is one of the key factors in the success of an organization. Misalignment occurs when the expected natural outcome somewhat changes with the real result [36].

Lack of alignment which refers to study on misalignment. In IT sector, alignment is fragmented to achieve alignment, and it is important to “focus on specific component of alignment rather than overall alignment" [14].

Machiridza [36] explained the general types of misalignment that occurs in the software.

External misalignment: This section consists of four aspects namely customer requirements, standards and guidelines, regulatory requirements and third-party software.

1. Customer requirements: For Business Analyst (BA), customer satisfaction is more important and still has to maintain the quality and integrity of software.

BA needs to keep a good relationship with the customer and demonstrate the needs and preferences of the customer to developers. All the needs of the customer cannot be integrated due to the security vulnerabilities which they are not concerned [36].

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2.2. Related Work 7 2. Standards and guidelines: Standards and guidelines are a form misalignment occur in the software when does it vary from current workflow. Fur- thermore, the use of guidelines and standards implies some form of follow-up procedure, which may be difficult in the case of an organization using agile methods as agile methods adopt an informal working approach [47] [36].

3. Regulatory misalignment: The data analyst should be aware of the com- plexities and regulations led by government. The software or application developed by an organization has customers from different countries, one team or member from the organization should get aware of these rules and policies according to the country. This regulatory misalignment includes the privacy of the individual, which need to be a bit more careful [36].

4. Third-party misalignment: The use of third-party software can bring several changes and challenges into the software development life-cycle. This third- part software has issued over lack of control which includes control of source code. This third-party software can create issues with integrating with the existing code when the changes are made for any new features [36].

Role misalignment: In software development, the co-ordination of work progress is determined by a split role in the team. Role misalignment occurs when the job role of one person is carried out by others. In an Agile team, the work division and work role are easily distinguishable. Role Misalignment generally occurs at medium and large scale organizations those who adopt using scrum environment. Because, of augmented team collaboration, need to understand tasks performed by other roles.

This will help to identify where they can fit on the team and collaborate with other members to integrate the different roles [36].

The requirements gathered by the BA not by developer, which can result in errors. The developer can only explain the requirements that are developed rather than from requirement documentation. This can be avoided if they can collectively work together [36].

Skills misalignment: It occurs when the expected capability level of role doesn’t regulate with their ability of performance. Skill misalignment results in improper responsibilities, idle time and errors. It also depends on the selection of candidates during the job role [36].

Requirements misalignment: In requirement engineering consists of requirements of functional and non-functional, during software development, either functional or non-functional requirements given equal priority. Less priority is given to non-functional requirements after the design stage of software development [41].

Some studies also present that wrong selection of requirement prioritization tech- niques are also responsible for misalignment [36].

2.2 Related Work

From Tripathi et al.[52] paper, the researchers identified the state-of-art of requirements prioritization in software start-ups. The author conducted a multi-vocal literature review to identify grey literature and scientific. A case survey research method

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8 Chapter 2. Background & Related Work was performed for the employees in software start-ups to know the requirements source for the software start-ups. Method of elicitation method followed by the start-ups, documentation procedure followed for requirements in start-ups, in what way do the software start-ups validate the requirements. Concluded that the research of this area is still in the early stages and suggested that more research is to be done further. But didn’t discussed the misalignment of internal stakeholder objectives.

Klotins et al.[31] objective of this paper is to identify the practices, challenges, engineering goals in software start-up organizations. The researcher conducted a case survey from different start-up companies to get a broader perspective. Researcher identified a total of 16 engineering practices, nine challenges, sixteen goals from the analysis of 84 start-up companies. Finally, the conclusion states that the methods and challenges in software start-ups are almost similar to well-established companies.

Author concluded that the primary problem in software start-ups is rapid evolution and thin margin of error.

Melegati et al.[39] identified how the requirements engineering is currently practised in software start-ups by conducting the interviews with the 17 software start-up companies. The researcher designed a model to show that the start-ups do not follow particularly one process. Still, instead, they select one custom process, which will change the whole development of the company, join together the different practices from the set of all the influences. The overall conclusion requirements engineering practices in software start-ups are same as of agile teams, but there may be a difference in some steps due to lack of customer presence.

Driessen et al.[15] states that the multiple stakeholder involvement in the new product development not only creates additional information but also leads to changes in the new product development process.

Paternoster et al.[27] indicates that the complexity in software start-ups is due to the rapid evolution and conflicts between the stakeholder objectives.

Crowne [11] in this research described that many of the software start-ups are failing to give return on investment to external investors, employees, founder. The reason behind the failure may be from the delivery, sales, marketing are found from this research, stated that there are fewer failures in product development. In which situations of product development will lead to company failures are described briefly with the help of the model. The model describes three stages from the start-up to maturity, which are start-up, stabilization, growth. Described the symptoms and issues which are occurring in different stages, causing failures. But didn’t discuss the misalignment of internal stakeholder objectives.

M.Machiridza [36] conducted a single case study and employed grounded theory methodology to understand the challenges of misalignments of different roles in integrating security into mobile banking application. The identified different types of misalignment are external entities, role, skills, system requirements. For each of different types of misalignment are explained, Agile methods compare with a complex adaptive system which that Information Systems can benefit using this complex adaptive system for better understanding issues of misalignment. The researcher also identified a need to address misalignment issues before starting a project. This research is similar to our work but it only includes the security in mobile banking in-depth investigation is required for general analysis of misalignment of objectives.

Mbekela et al.[38]identifies the misalignment between the developer and tester

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2.2. Related Work 9 in the organizations. For this research uses literature review as a research method to determine the misalignment. This research also states that more research is on managing the problem and preventing it but not alleviating it. This research wholly bases on agile development teams. This lacks in the stakeholder goals and its alignment. The future study is to analyses the more problems in the misalignment of the organizations.

Hyrynsalmi et al.[26] [32] from further of this research paper, it states that the misalignment of stakeholders may take place due to the external investors in software start-ups. As investors of the software start-up companies could be from the different organization and goals of the external investor may not match the goals of the start- up’s organization. Start-up company may aim to pioneer the organization with innovative technology. The external investor may aim at the return on investment.

Software engineers need to balance the goals of all the stakeholders like government, community, users, customers etc. It is one of the consequence of misalignment of stakeholder objective. So, there will be many consequences behind it. By taking this as the research gap, we are interested to know the consequences behind the misalignment of stakeholder objectives along like the effects, challenges and possible solutions to mitigate these challenges. This research results will promise the start-ups from the challenges behind the misalignment of stakeholder objectives by providing suitable solutions.

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Chapter 3 Method

3.1 Aim and Objectives

This section describes the aim and objectives of the research gap.

Aim: Our research aims to know the factors responsible for the misalignment of stakeholder objectives in software start-ups, major challenges and solutions to mitigate these challenges. We selected semi-structured interviews as the data collection method to extract data from stakeholders (project manager, developer, team members, requirements analyst, chief executive officer, business analyst) of start-up companies. We conducted the literature review to know the challenges in general from the software company to get the necessary knowledge to conduct interviews.

Objectives:

• O1: To identify the factors responsible for the misalignment of stakeholder objectives in software start-ups.

• O2: To identify the major challenges with the misalignment of stakeholder objectives in software start-ups.

• O3: To identify the possible solution to mitigate these major challenges with the misalignment of stakeholder objectives in software start-ups.

3.2 Research Questions

The following are the research questions for the research gap.

RQ1: What are the factors responsible for the misalignment of stakeholders objectives in software start-ups?

Motivation: The motivation to select RQ1 is to know the factors responsible for the misalignment of stakeholder objectives in software start-ups. Also, the answer to this question will become base to answer the RQ2.

RQ2: What are the major challenges with the misalignment of stakeholder objectives in software start-ups?

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12 Chapter 3. Method

Motivation: The motivation behind selecting this research question is to know the major challenges with the misalignment of stakeholder objectives in software start- ups from the stakeholders (product manager, team leader, team members, requirements analysts, requirements engineers, chief executive officer, business analyst).

The answer to the RQ2 become base to answer RQ3.

RQ3: What is a possible solution to mitigate the major challenges with the misalignment of stakeholder objectives in software start-ups?

Motivation: Motivation behind selecting this research question is to identify the possible solution to mitigate the challenges with the misalignment of stakeholder objectives.

3.3 Research Methods

Our empirical study is carried out by qualitative research approach. To explore the area of interest, it will be useful, and understanding of the phenomenon is improved for the aim with the qualitative research. Qualitative research will be suitable for our study because we collect the data by conducting semi-structured interviews in-depth and analyze the collected data by thematic analysis. The overall aim not about achieving the information in breadth [3] but in-depth in an inductive manner [17].

As our research, nature is exploratory with in-depth information is to be collected from the software start-ups about the factors responsible for the misalignment of the stakeholder’s objectives. Besides the factors, the significant challenges and possible solutions are also to be collected.

Several elements in the research need to be considered before selecting the research method like the scope of the study, the nature of the research questions, the experience of the researcher etc. According to the Wohlin et al. research paper mentioned some of the research methods like experimentation, action research, case study, grounded theory, ethnography. We examined the applicability of all these research methods for our study carefully.

At last, we selected the interview study and literature review using Snowballing as research methods for our research. The literature review is conducted to gain knowledge about the significant challenges with misalignment of stakeholder objectives. The semi-structured interviews are conducted to answer the research questions to the factors responsible for the misalignment of the stakeholder objectives in a software start-up. Also, the significant challenges with misalignment and the possible solutions to mitigate these challenges are collected from the interviews. In figure 3.1 represents the procedure of our research.

The reason behind rejecting the survey research method is that the response rate of surveys is less compared to that of interviews. We can not ask more open-ended questions in surveys, and we can not know in-depth information through surveys.

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3.3. Research Methods 13

Figure 3.1: Research Method

3.3.1 Literature Review

A study of the literature review is to identify relevant data, source of information which is essential for an academic project. Our intention was to find the maximum available papers to identify the challenges, so we selected literature review using snowballing. An efficient review is a definite awareness for advancing knowledge, which facilitates to study research and uncovers the area which is needed to explore [54].The main reason for conducting a literature review is to identify the challenges that cause misalignment of stakeholder objectives. Although literature review and systematic literature review (SLR) follows the same guidelines, our study doesn’t aim to conduct an in-depth investigation as we do in SLR by including thesis dissertations due to time constraints. The literature review provides a clear understanding of the misalignment of objectives, which helps to formulate open-ended and close-ended questions for interviews.

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14 Chapter 3. Method It was selected over a regular database search, as every new study reference find out at least one paper of previously published in similar research easily identified by Snowballing. Hence it is almost easy to locate the relevant source papers, documents.

Snowballing is used in this case to identify pertinent new articles, using a list of references, citations.

Figure 3.2: Snowballing

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3.3. Research Methods 15 3.3.1.1 Snowballing

The snowballing process consists of the start set with the inclusion and exclusion criteria. From the start set, we selected the relevant papers. These selected papers are set into iterations of forward and backward snowballing to find some more papers until the iteration stops. This iteration stops when no papers are found. By using these iterations, all the articles found, which is the easiest way and conserving time to find the papers than using traditional database search [28]. The guidelines for conducting Snowballing followed using the article [55]. In figure 3.2 represents the procedure for Snowballing.

At first, we need to identify the start set for identifying the papers. So hence we used the following inclusion and exclusion criteria are carry-out.

Inclusion Criteria

Inclusion Criteria helps us to find out the information regarding the challenges of misalignment of stakeholder goals and how these obtained from previous studies.

This inclusion criteria includes articles, journals that are relevant to our research topic which limit the papers.

• IC1: The papers that are proving information regarding misalignment in the software requirements in general or in specific.

• IC2: The papers that are proving information regarding misalignment in organizations that are in general or in specific.

• IC3: The publication period is selected from 1996 to 2020 for finding the paper, articles. The search string is modified for identifying furthermore any more relevant papers.

Exclusion Criteria

Exclusion criteria is to exclude the papers that are not relevant to the research field.

• EC1: If the paper shows only requirement engineering without any in-depth investigating regarding misalignment are not included.

• EC2: Research articles that failed to answer any of our research questions are removed.

• EC3: Some studies are relevant but not written in English and some documents are not accessible these are not included.

• EC4: Unpublished journals and conferences are not included.

Data Sources

To find sources, a well-formulated keyword directs the search strategy. We use Google Scholar finds out all papers, relevant articles. It contains data in the form of journal articles, conference papers, books and scholarly articles which needed for literature review. Google Scholar database search engine used, it can retrieve all relevant papers which are up to date and also help to narrow the search. Also, we included other databases like Scopus, IEEE Xplore of the same search string to find the papers to check whether all the relevant articles obtained.

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Start Set

The characteristics are followed in identifying the start set using the guidelines [55].

• Start set shouldn’t be too small. It depends on breadth of area being studied.

• Start set should cover different publishers, years and authors.

• Synonyms keywords are used for finding papers if their a possibility of missing papers.

• All cluster of papers are to be covered which are not referring to

At first identify the relevant papers by using suitable search string and keywords.

The search strings were “misalignment” AND “stakeholder”, “misalignment” AND

“stakeholder” AND “requirement engineering”, “misalignment” AND “stakeholder”

AND “software”, “misalignment” AND “stakeholder” AND “software” OR ‘’factors”,

“misalignment” AND “stakeholder” AND “software” OR ‘’factors” OR “challenges”.

By using the search string in Google Scholar almost 180 papers are examined by using title based and removed eventually. After analyzing all the papers, we selected 5 papers to conduct snowballing for our research.

Iterations

After selection of start set, the papers that are included in the final analysis then you can start conducting forward and backward snowballing. This inclusion can decide the research effectiveness if not a rollback to be taken for start set [55].

Backward Snowballing

To identify new papers using the references of the start set. From this, we examined the type of publication, context of reference study. If this satisfies then we proceed to include this paper for further study [55].

Forward Snowballing

In Google Scholar, forward citations are examined of each paper in the start set.

If the required information is sufficient then abstract and place of citation are studied [55].

In table 3.1 is the summary of the snowballing procedure. The iterative process ends at third phase as new papers are not found. At each iteration the repetition of papers is observed. By using inclusion and exclusion criteria all the duplicate papers are removed.

3.3.2 Qualitatively Interview Study

The interviews are a frequently used method to collect qualitative data. Interviews are carried out with a change of objectives, collecting historical data from memories of the interviewee, collecting opinions or impressions. It helps to spot terminol- ogy employed in a particular environment. These can clarify things that happened, i.e. during an observation, or to assemble the relevant information on events that don’t seem [49].The data that is obtained about a phenomenon using interviews, that cannot be obtained in quantitative measures [25]. The main reason for selecting Interview as a research method is to examine the misalignment of stakeholder

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3.3. Research Methods 17 Search Action Start Set Papers for Iteration New Selection

Selection of start set 167 5

Final start set: 5 papers selected First Iteration

Backward Snowballing 5 71 1

Forward Snowballing 5 95 1

Second Iteration

Third Iteration

Total selection of papers 8

Table 3.1: Summary of snowballing procedure

objectives in software start-ups. One of the main reason for choosing interviews is to collect the data from multiple perspectives, those having in-depth knowledge about the particular issue.

In the field of software engineering, semi-structured interviews often used for data collecting technique [25]. The reason behind using semi-structured interviews is these include open-ended and specific questions, designed not only to obtain expected information but also unpredictable information [49].

Since the topic of our research is the misalignment of stakeholder objectives in software start-ups, we deal with CEO’s, project leaders, team leaders, requirements engineer/analyst, etc. as a target population. The nature of an interview is an exploratory study; this provides a pre-study and finds out the possible causes for the problem although this study has disadvantages like it allows for right direction but inconclusive, smaller sample size, etc.

3.3.3 Data Collection

Semi-structured interviews are the source for the data collection for our research.

The questionnaire is prepared by following the guidelines of the interview guide to get answers to the research questions. As to save the interviewee time, most of the close-ended questions are asked in the invitation. The interview consists of entirely open-ended questions. The request invitation for the interviewees is sent through the email. As part of the data collections, the interviews are conducted through phone call or Skype according to the interviewee convenience as both are of less cost.

Whole data collected with the interviews is according to the interviewee perspective, and this data is analyzed using thematic analysis. Data related to the misalignment of stakeholder objectives briefly along with challenges and solutions to mitigate the challenges will be collected from the interviewee.

3.3.4 Interview Guide

The following steps are required for better understanding of the process in Interviews.

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Interview preparation

Interviews are conducted by following the essential principles of the interview guide [53]. We will avoid the distraction while conducting the interview [53]. In the invitation, we will explain the purpose of researching the interviewee along with the overview of the interview blueprint, including the total time that will take for interview. We will inform interviewee regarding the data whatever we receive from the interview everything is kept confidential and used only for research purpose [53].

Before the start of the interview, we will ask the interviewee to clarify his doubts [53].

Selection of participants

To get accurate results, selection of participants places a prominent role [53]. As to select the eligible participants for the sampling of the data is essential for the research [53]. The participants must share the information honestly without any bias from their experiences [53]. Choosing the experienced candidate will give the valuable information. It will be comfortable to get the data from the interviewee when the interviewee feels the pleasant environment, including date, time, medium of the communication [53].

Pilot testing

Before the original interview, we will implement the mock interview [53]. It will help us to correct the mistakes, weaknesses, flaws, limitations from the pilot testing [53]. From this, we will make the necessary changes and implement the research method systematically [53]. We will select the eligible candidate and having command in this research area. Ultimately at the end of pilot testing, we will come to know any flaws regarding the interview questions [53].

Interview questionnaire

We will prepare an interview questionnaire in such a way that the questions will dig deeper and extract the brief data from the experience of the interviewee from the start-up companies [53]. This will makes the interviewee share the additional information which will be helpful for our research [53]. The questionnaire we will prepare will be useful in such a way that consists of all the guidelines as follows [53]. The questionnaire we will make with correct, precise wording with open-ended questions also with neutral effect without any bias and easy to understand for the interviewee [53]. We ask the questions one by one to the interviewee [53]. We will frame the "why" questions very clearly [53]. The questionnaires for the interviewees set out in the Appendix A.

Follow-up questions

Sometimes interviewee doesn’t answer the questions [53]. Sometimes they may skip the questions [53]. Sometimes they misunderstand the questions and give reply to the misunderstood questions [53]. To handle this situation, we will create the follow-up questions instantly to collect data according to our research [53]. If the response from the interviewee is slow or late, we stay focused on the responses of the interviewee without any diversion [53].

Interviews implementation

We will execute the interviews by following the tips as follows [53]. We will take the permission from the interviewee to record the interview [53]. If interviewee accepts the recording, then we will make sure to check it is working before the start of the interview [53]. Without any disruption, questions are asked one by one to the

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3.3. Research Methods 19 interviewee [53]. Whatever the response we will get, we will maintain the neutrality without any bias or any reaction [53]. Also do not disturb the interviewee with uneven expressions to the answers given by the interviewee [53]. It leads to the mood off for the interviewee [53]. Instead, we will encourage the interviewee for the responses head and indicating that "ok and proceed" [53]. There may be a chance of distraction for the interviewee if we take notes in between and sometimes it will effect the next questions [53]. To avoid the distraction, we will make notes by listening to recordings of the interview. We will stay focused on the interviewee response without losing the command on interview even though they are time taking with lengthy answers [53].

Data interpretation

After successful completion of all the interviews, we will analyze the collected data [53]. This analysis of takes with the colour coding for the data. These are in the form of transcripts saved in the Microsoft word [53]. Finally, without any bias, we will give weights to data collected from the interviewees [53]. Finally, based on the themes, we will analyze the data by thematic analysis of different themes [53].

3.3.5 Data Sampling

Sampling is necessary to get the data from the random selection of people from the whole population [42]. There are two types of sampling of data; they are non- probabilistic and probabilistic sampling [18]. Non-probabilistic sampling is of different types. In that we will follow the convenience sampling [50]. The overall aim is to get the generalized conclusion from the sampling of the data. In our research, we select the interviewee randomly. So, it comes under non-probabilistic sampling, as due to the limited time and the money we prefered convenience non-probabilistic sampling is prefered. As our investigation of research is entirely on the software start-ups, that is why we choose this method.The reason behind not choosing other methods is due to the lack of knowledge from the practitioners of software start- up companies. We conducted twelve interviews with the interviewees of different software start-up organizations. These software start-ups interviewees are of senior- most officials in software start-us with experience for more than ten years and with positions like CEO, Business analyst, Team leaders. These twelve interviews are conducted in India only. The reason behind doing on only Indian software start-ups is due to the personal contacts from the software start-ups. In figure 3.3 represents the sequential steps in Interviewee study.

3.3.6 Data Analysis

According to the [12], this paper shows that for identifying, analyzing, to do the progress of themes of different data collection from researches is often done by thematic analysis for qualitative research. In our research we are following the thematic analysis. In the process of thematic analysis, it counts the repetition of themes.

Also, it counts the number of times the particular theme as occurred. With the thematic analysis output is obtained with the help of interpretation and explanation of themes from different studies based on the repetition. We followed five steps which are data extraction, coding the data, translation of coded data into different patterns or themes, to create the higher order themes, to observe the trustworthyness of the

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Figure 3.3: Sequential steps in Interview Study

analysis [12]. Description of each step in thematic analysis is explained below. In this way we categorised the raw data collected from interview is coded into themes [6]. In the figure 3.4 represent the color coding of the Interviewee data. The data extracted from the interviewee and the process of color coding in presented in Appendix C.

Data Extraction We collected the data from the interviewees of different start- up companies in India. We choose semi-structured interviews to acquire data from start-up companies. By following the guidelines from the interview guide, we prepared the questionnaire to get sufficient data to answer our research questions [53].

We analyzed the raw data by coding different themes.

Coding the data

In this phase of the data which is extracted is coded to differentiate the themes.

Like in our research we coded the company name, factors effecting the misalignment etc. In this phase we examined every line of interview data and colour coded by differentiating each words.

Conversion of coding to themes

We converted the coded part of the raw data into the themes by the frequency of repetition of the words. These repetition of the themes are made colour coding by identifying the similar themes to same colour.

Defining themes with their names

We gave names to the particular repetition of themes. We also coded different

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3.3. Research Methods 21 themes with different colours. Summation made to themes to know the number of times that the particular theme is repeated.

Thematic analysis Thematic analysis often prefered for the qualitative researches to analyze the data by counting the repetition of the same words into themes [12]. In our qualitative research, we analyzed the data thematically by selecting the themes such as the factors, major challenges and the solutions [12].

Figure 3.4: Color Coding

3.3.6.1 Validation

Empirical research become reliable and trustworthyness with the triangulation. We considered three methods to analyse the research data for qualitative analysis [48].

Triangulation of method

Method triangulation is a method of checking the consistency of the results gen- erated from the different data collection methods. So, in our research, the results obtained from the literature review become evidence to cross-check the interview results. Triangulation method will help us to identify whether the results are relevant or fake. In our qualitative research, we cross-check the challenges obtained from the interview results to the literature review results.

Triangulation of data

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22 Chapter 3. Method In this research data is collected from the different job roles in a company like the chief executive officer, project manager, developer, requirements analysts. The reason for collecting the data from the above various stakeholders is to know the data from a broader perspective. The multiple stakeholders share the data with their experience in the research data makes it more reliable and trustworthy.

Triangulation of researchers

In this research, we are the researchers involved in the analysis of the research data from the researchers perspective. In the study of our research data, we are neutral without any bias from the beginning.

3.4 Validity threats

This section will help us to identify to what extent the results are trustworthy and reliable [48]. In this research we followed four validity threats in which they are internal validity, external validity, construct validity, conclusion validity. This section of threats to validity is implemented in every phase of research and also especially while collecting the data from the interviews.

3.4.1 External validity

This external validity threat entirely deals with the people selected from the sample group for the generalization of results. As part of the sample, we selected respondents from India only. Our results are generalized only from the data collected from the interviewees software start-ups of India. The reason behind selecting the Indian software start-ups is due to the contacts from the Indian start-ups. This is the main validity thread from the external side as selecting the sample size from India. To avoid this threat, we mentioned in the document the data interpretation, data analysis, research methods. We conducted twelve interviews from the different software start-ups with the respondents of the different job roles in a company like the chief executive officer, project manager, requirements analyst, developer. The reason for selecting different individuals is due to the results from a broader perspective.

3.4.2 Internal validity

Threats to internal validity which effects the research from internally like from researches side. These below mentioned are some of the internal threats to validity.

Literature review

In the literature review, the formulation of a search string and investigating the articles is a validity threat. The formulation of the search string should be cautious to avoid the deviation from the research. The weak wording of the search string can cause a huge problem to find the information. Therefore, to prevent the deviations from the proper research measures were taken.

After finding the relevant articles, exploring these articles should be taken care to gather the information from these articles. After analysing the information obtained from articles, papers, journals questionnaires to the interviewees are prepared.

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3.4. Validity threats 23 The supervisor reviews these questionnaires, which help to conduct interviews and gathered the required information.

Interviewee

The persons who are selected for the interview are the persons who are experienced and they are senior most persons with good knowledge in software industry.

For the interviewee we explained very briefly the open ended questions and made them to understand the questions correctly without any misunderstanding. Def- initely the selection of inexperienced persons leads to the output with the wrong results. This wrong results should be avoided with internal threat to validity by selecting the experienced and the knowledge person.

Interview questions

If the interview questions prepared are very hard or difficult to understand then it leads to misunderstanding and wrong results are obtained. To mitigate this threat we followed guidelines from the interview guide [53]. Prior to this interview questions are deeply reviewed by the supervisor and necessary changes are made by the feedback from the supervisor.

3.4.3 Construct validity

This section of construct validity deals to what extent the collected results are reliable and trustworthy for the research questions. There is chance of getting wrong results with the misunderstanding of the interviewee with the interview questionnaire. This is mitigated by doing the data analysis in parallel to the interviews. Most importantly for backup side the interview questions are sent to the interviewee after the interview is completed. So, that they respond immediately if they get any queries. After every data analysis the results are shown to the supervisor to get valuable feedback.

3.4.4 Conclusion validity

The concern with the conclusion validity threat is that wrong way of concluding results by data interpretation or data analysis leads to untrusty results. This is min- imised and mitigated by individual researcher bias and both researchers analysed deeply. Then it is shown to supervisor for the valuable changes. Wrong understanding of the interview questions by the respondents leads to wrong answers from the interviewees. This is due to lack of knowledge sometimes, lack of educations etc. As to avoid this we explained the interview questions briefly to the interviewees.

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Chapter 4 Results and Analysis

4.1 Literature Review using Snowballing

This section represents the findings of challenges with the misalignment of stakeholder objectives of our research. We begin from the overview of the paper selection and process of Snowballing in detail. The reason to chose snowballing is easy to find out the papers than the traditional database search, i.e. by using forward and backward snowballing of the start set papers, the recent papers or the papers relate to the research can be found easily.

For identification of start set, we started our research from a total of 167 papers, and after using inclusion and exclusion criteria reduced to 5 papers are selected. From these papers, by using the first iteration of forward and backward snowballing, we selected two more papers. Later from the second iteration of forward and backward snowballing, we picked one more paper. For conducting third iteration, we couldn’t find any more papers to include according to our research. Analyzing all these eight papers, the following table 4.1 represents the challenges of misalignment of stakeholder objectives identified in literature review.

Since there is no paper specifically that address on the misalignment of stakeholder objectives in software start-ups, hence these papers are analyzed carefully.

All these papers focus on the cause of misalignment, and these papers help to gain more knowledge. The obtained results from these papers are in-general misallignment challenges.

Lack of Communication

It plays a significant role in any software team. The communication among the product manager, business analyst, developer, tester etc. has a considerable impact on the product. Organizations should identify strategies that create an environment where communication, sharing of knowledge should make among the parties. In an organization, both developer and tester contribution plays a crucial role in the quality of software product, and there should be a sense of fellowship and cohesion in their work [38] [37] [56].

Poor Collaboration

Poor collaboration among the teams that carry out their tasks in software development of product can leads to failure of the project. Hence the need to collaborate with the teams is a vital strategy to an organization. While after deliverables, customer and the project manager or analyst need to collaborate about the product so that the work or path is in the right direction to avoid any deviations [38] [37] [56].

Process Non-Compliance

25

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26 Chapter 4. Results and Analysis

S.No Challenges References

1 Organizational Boundaries [2]

2 Lack of Communication [38] [37] [56]

3 Poor Collaboration [38] [37] [56]

4 Process Non-Compliance [38] [37]

5 Different Mindsets [38] [56]

6 Blaming [38] [56]

7 Lack of Accountability [37]

8 Uncertainity [33]

9 Lack of Proper Vision [56]

10 Weak traceability [8]

11 High impact of change [8] [7]

12 Imbalance relationship [13]

Table 4.1: Misalignment Challenges identified in Literature Review

The process for a project that advised by project manager can seem difficult to some of the team members and to do the follow-up which can result in lack of project, and the process needs to be simple. This can result in process non-compliance [38]

[37].

Different Mindset

Some of the words might always create the working environment hard. For example, “I don’t like the way you code”, “Your testing is useless”, “He is not fit for role”

these create the environment to battling and work progress is inefficient. This also implies to interpersonal skills, extroversion of people’s mindset in a team [38] [56].

Blaming

The level of experience can create a massive impact on blaming. Mostly the working environment can create that situation and stress [38] [56].

Lack of accountability

It includes a lack of responsibility, lack of transparency, lack of answerability which can create misunderstanding and agitate with the team. Lack of responsibility consists of the struggle to take responsibility when issues arise in the team. Lack of answerability means the mistakes made to formulate strategies for ease of previous errors [37].

Uncertainty Uncertainty which means unpredictability of both software and software engineers. It means the working software needs the changes that are required based on end-users. The software is always necessary to upgrade, and these are uncertain because of specifications are invariably incomplete [33].

Weak Traceability

Traceability represent the tracking of requirements during software product development. During requirement level concerns of design and subsequent code elements like scattering and tangling leads to weak traceability and low encapsulation [8].

High impact of change

Due to the fast-growing field of technology, the phase of development for a product needs to be improved. For even a small change in requirements can have a high impact on designing of the software product [8] [7].

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4.2. Interview Results 27 Imbalance Relationship

This is caused due to the late response to the vendors when they made any request from the organization or host company. A late response can be the product delivery as per schedule and payment after completed project deliverables [13].

Lack of Proper Vision

The CEO’s of the company need to have a vision about the project and to satisfy the needs of the customer and improve the product to attain a place in the rapid competitive world. The developed product needs to have a future improvement that needs to compare with the past released version [56] .

Organizational boundaries

When in an organization had many projects and they had many teams to manage, which consist of several layers of work division. Due to several layers of work division, the integration of the product can lead to some problems which take more time to solve it. Project manager-managed each project, make sure the deliverables are drop out at the promised schedule [2].

From the literature review, we analysed the results, as shown in table 4.1. The extraction of data from the literature review is in Appendix B. These results are studied and understood from the experiences of the authors. Some challenges that cause misalignment, which published in three articles are the same, and while exploring the remaining papers, the results are different. From these results, we understand the challenges that cause misalignment of stakeholder objectives. These results helped us to conduct interviews in a better way.

4.2 Interview Results

4.2.1 Demo-graphical Results

Results which are there below are demographic data, which show clearly the type and backgrounds of every individual involved in the interview. The interview questionnaire consists of general and research related questions. The general questions and the research related questions for the interview is prepared by following the guidelines from the interview guide. The general questions like interviewee job role, type of organization, the experience of the interviewee in a software organization, number of employees in the company will affect the research results with their background.

The above questions further categorized into the open and close-ended questions. We received the information to the general questions in via response to the invitation mail. So, that interviewee can save time during interviewee and most importantly, the details of the interviewee makes the researchers decide whether to conduct the interview or not with the candidate.

Interview S.No

Job Role Experience No.of Employ-

ees

1. CEO, Architect,

Developer 14 10+

2. CEO 8 10+

3. CEO 7 10+

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28 Chapter 4. Results and Analysis

4. CEO 9 10+

5. Developer 11 10+

6. Developer 7 10+

7. Project Manager 9 10+

8. Project Manager 9 10+

9. Business Analyst 7 10+

12. Requirements Ana-

lyst 10+ 10+

Table 4.2: Demographic of Interviewees

As our research topic is the misalignment of stakeholder objectives in software start-ups, so we are considering different stakeholders. The various stakeholders involved in the research are software developer, CEO, business analyst, project manager, requirements analyst. The table 4.2 represents the job-role, experience, number of employees in a company. The reason behind selecting all these stakeholders to get the data from all the stakeholders perspective. Time being we collected data from the twelve software start-ups. The table 4.3 represents the interviewee serial number and the organization product on type of market.

Interview S.No

Company type

1. Market driven

2. Bespoke

3. Bespoke

4. Market driven

5. Market driven

6. Market driven

7. Market driven

8. Market driven

9. Bespoke

10. Bespoke

11. Market driven

12. Market driven

Table 4.3: Type of Market

4.2.2 Interview Data

Interview data consists of the results gathered from the responses of the interviewees, the original data of the interview made into different codes by making transcripts.

The table 4.4 represents the interviewee serial number and the factors responsible for misalignment of stakeholder goals.

Interviewee-1

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4.2. Interview Results 29 Factors: "Human factor", "Technology factor".

Challenges: "Change of technology leads to a problem", "Recruiting the wrong persons", "Hiring the people not good at local language leads to misalignment". "If we’re talking about human-based, then the challenge is to find the right people for the right task. It’s like human resources challenges, human resources related challenges.

If it’s a technology-based factor-like external, then it’s difficult dependency-based challenges like you need to have a like a great competence. For example, to be a professional in the domain that you’re working on for me, it’s information security like competence experience. That’s why I’m like always invest time into rising my competence; This is the major challenge to be more like more experienced more professional more competent. So for like for human basis like an internal factor it’s uh human resource challenges and for external is a competency-based challenge".

Solution: "Human resource management", "I have also used up-work (former desk) service quite extensively, to hire specialists of any kind (specially native- speaking translators, developers, designers)", "The ability to correctly choose and manage the job/projects with remote workforce/specialists", " This strategy solution was the key-point to survive". "Hiring the right people and motivating existing personal like I would say more is to encourage existing employees to perform better. It’s complex mitigation think yeah it’s ok. It’s like the motivation of personal it’s 1st and 2nd it’s finding the right people if you have a chance to negotiate with the person like if you can quit the company because sometimes it’s not possible to motivate yeah the human-related. If we’re talking about humans that there is a Sometimes it’s quite if we’re talking about humans there is a limit so sometimes it’s quite challenging to mitigate it. Still, usually, it’s either you have two options to motivate people to change the atmosphere or help them to be better on the position to hire new people. If we’re talking about external factors and challenges to be more competitive it’s rising competence so you can make you can fix it by studying reading watching outside yeah it’s like about learning new things yet to be flexible to learn new things always to spend time on it usually it’s about time so you need to spend to allocate plan and allocate time to rise your competence yeah challenges because if you if you don’t mitigate then this factors will affect the company in a more significant extent OK with every each iteration every each year there will be a more substantial extent that influenced the company and events you will lose the game uh and hello yes for the internal it’s for internal factors it’s always like it’s the solution always like any to experiment OK so since I did. I never perform like a measurements like how this solution effective or not. I can say that i can compare different solution before external factors the only ways to be more competitive or hire more competitive... like employees to be like to do to hire to rise your overall company competence maybe to hire new I also didn’t make measurements to compare between two of this like solutions for mitigation I can say that any solution is better than having no solution yeah."

Interviewee-2

Factors: "External sponsor", "Wrong prioritization of requirements", "return on investment", "Deadline of the project".

Challenges: "High pressure from the external sponsor", "Improper prioritization of requirements", "Return on investment is the major challenge with the software start-ups with the external sponsor".

Misalignment of Stakeholder Objectives In Software start-ups: A Qualitative research based on Software start-ups in India