Challenges Faced by Startup Companies in Software Project Management

The start-up methodology has become quite common and there are a lot of young entrepreneurs already experimenting different ideas with the new start-up companies and its been encouraged a lot too in business industries all around the world these days. There are actually no particular set of rules and standards in terms of business or processes that start-up companies are required to follow and this is one of the main reason why the start-up businesses have no guarantee of sustainability or in other words profitability initially. Most of the start-up companies around the world that follow lean start-up methodology operate in the software industry and software management is the key challenge that has been faced by the companies which can lead to long-term success or failure of the company. Project planning generally includes resource planning, time scheduling, estimation of resources and financial costs in general which are also fundamentals of software related business. Effective and successful project management is an essential requirement for any type of software related business, the company can be offering software services which are called service-based software companies or product based or project based software companies, project management is the essential tool for any of the types. The main objective of this study is to help other software start-ups. This thesis is targeting mainly the software start-up companies, therefore, the main objective of the thesis is to address and discuss the main challenges faced by software-based start-up companies related to software project management which are studied analyzed and presented by literature review and theoretical framework, and then by empirical data gathered from two case companies the challenges have been classified into 3 major groups as 1) operational, 2) internal and 3) external challenges. In the end, the potential solutions and proposals that are needed to overcome these challenges based on the empirical data has been discussed and also options for future research related to this topic have been provided