Welcome to SoftStart 2017, the 1st International Workshop on Software Engineering for Startups!

Most software engineering processes have been developed to address the needs of established organizations. However, these organizations are being outnumbered by startups, characterized by small teams trying to bring a product or service to market quickly with limited resources. Startups rarely use software engineering practices–even modern, light-weight ones–beyond the bare minimum. When a startup is able to launch its product and attract clients, the need for defined business and development processes rapidly becomes acute, reflecting the growing complexity of the offering and the company. Beyond this initial phase, the relevance and applicability of central software engineering concepts emerge and evolve in a context-specific way. This workshop aims at bringing together practitioners and researchers interested in and experienced with how the startup environment affects the practice of software engineering. We are in particular encouraging participation from those who have had direct involvement with software development in startups or studied and documented their software development practices and models. Our hope is that their insights will surface unique issues and effective strategies, as well as inspire researchers to study the practice of software engineering within the startup context to help address those issues.

SoftStart 2017 will be held at the 39th International Conference on Software Engineering in beautiful Buenos Aires, Argentina, on Sunday May 21, 2017.