Innovation Assessment Framework in Software Development Projects for Software Startups

Abstract

In today’s highly competitive business environment, it is essential for software startups to continuously develop innovative software projects. To help startup organizations to achieve this goal, a better understanding and awareness about innovation which can be achieved through innovation assessment is required. This study develop innovation assessment framework of software startups for development of innovative software projects through idea development process. In this study, a systematic literature review followed by questionnaire and face-to-face interviews were conducted. The questionnaire targeted software industry practitioners with different roles and firm sizes. A total of 42 completed and usable responses from 5 software startup firms were collected. A total of five face-to-face semi-structured interviews were conducted with industry practitioners from each software startup which have administrative and software practitioner roles. A comprehensive definition, challenges and solutions of innovation was identified which may be used in software startups. A conceptual innovation assessment framework was developed from process viewpoint. The viewpoints for assessment of innovation based on inputs, processes and outputs were categorized. The framework was further refined after feedback from software industry experts through interviews. Innovation assessment is not a common practice in startups; the challenges are lack of uniform definition, lack of awareness, lack of guidelines and framework, lack of innovation culture, lack of innovation strategy, lack of strong leadership, lack of competency, lack of proper process and resource constraint to assess innovation. The conceptual framework developed in this study is one step towards identifying key process assessments of innovation to understand the innovation concept in startups during development of innovative software projects.