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A Board Game to Teach Team Composition in Software Startups

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Software Business (ICSOB 2019)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing ((LNBIP,volume 370))

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Abstract

Startup education presence in Computer Science and Software Engineering curriculum has risen in the recent years. Currently, most reported courses focus on teaching innovation and business techniques and try to emulate real-world projects to convey the content. They have not focused on team composition which is a critical element for the success of startups since missing human capital increases the uncertainty involved in the process. In this paper, based on a literature review, we present a set of concepts about software startups team composition to be explored in a course. We also present a board game as a supplementary tool to convey these concepts. To evaluate the tool, we placed students in an artificial learning environment where they watched a video lesson about the topics and played the game. Then, participants answered a questionnaire about motivation, user experience, and perception of learning. The results indicate a first evidence of the value of the tool inducing a positive effect on learning as perceived by students.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank all the students that participated in the study and to Eduardo Pompermayer for running some game sessions.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Piazza Domenicani 3, 39100, Bolzano, Italy

    Jorge Melegati & Xiaofeng Wang

  2. National Institute for Space Research (INPE), Sao Jose dos Campos, Brazil

    Eduardo Guerra

  3. Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora (UFJF), Juiz de Fora, Brazil

    Igor Knop

Authors
  1. Jorge Melegati
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  2. Eduardo Guerra
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  3. Igor Knop
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  4. Xiaofeng Wang
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jorge Melegati .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Tampere University of Technology, Pori, Finland

    Sami Hyrynsalmi

  2. University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland

    Mari Suoranta

  3. University of South-Eastern Norway, Bø i Telemark, Norway

    Anh Nguyen-Duc

  4. University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland

    Pasi Tyrväinen

  5. University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland

    Pekka Abrahamsson

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Melegati, J., Guerra, E., Knop, I., Wang, X. (2019). A Board Game to Teach Team Composition in Software Startups. In: Hyrynsalmi, S., Suoranta, M., Nguyen-Duc, A., Tyrväinen, P., Abrahamsson, P. (eds) Software Business. ICSOB 2019. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol 370. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33742-1_25

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33742-1_25

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-33741-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-33742-1

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