Time-to-completion in software package startups

All businesses operate within an environment of time-based competition. For product development this means completion. An exploratory study of time-to-completion accelerators was conducted in twelve software package startups. Awareness of time-to-completion was contradictory: deadlines were soft, articulation was poor, and process time recall was uneven. But developers increased effort significantly during crunch periods. Although causality is difficult to verify, the most important accelerator seemed to be the core development team, an inner team with cross-functional talents. Core team size ranged from three to six members. Because of its small size and high intra-group communication, the product design and its development methodology were not formalized.<>