A preliminary study of agility in business and production - Cases of early-stage hardware startups
This research addresses the challenge of agility for hardware startups, but it is incremental as it builds on existing agile methodologies with domain-specific considerations.
The study investigated how early-stage hardware startups achieve agility in product development, finding that while agile development is known, it is adopted limitedly, and identified tactics in strategy, personnel, artifact, and resource domains to enable agility.
[Context]Advancement in technologies, popularity of small-batch manufacturing and the recent trend of investing in hardware startups are among the factors leading to the rise of hardware startups nowadays. It is essential for hardware startups to be not only agile to develop their business but also efficient to develop the right products. [Objective] We investigate how hardware startups achieve agility when developing their products in early stages. [Methods] A qualitative research is conducted with data from 20 hardware startups. [Result] Preliminary results show that agile development is known to hardware entrepreneurs, however it is adopted limitedly. We also found tactics in four domains (1) strategy, (2) personnel, (3) artifact and (4) resource that enable hardware startups agile in their early stage business and product development. [Conclusions] Agile methodologies should be adopted with the consideration of specific features of hardware development, such as up-front design and vendor dependencies.