Designing and Implementing an Environment for Software Start-up Education: Patterns and Anti-Patterns

Today’s students are prospective entrepreneurs, as well as potential employees in modern, start-up-like intrapreneurship environments within established companies. In these settings, software development projects face extreme requirements in terms of innovation and attractiveness of the end-product. They also suffer severe consequences of failure such as termination of the development effort and bankruptcy. As the abilities needed in start-ups are not among those traditionally taught in universities, new knowledge and skills are required to prepare students for the volatile environment that new market entrants face. This article reports experiences gained during seven years of teaching start-up knowledge and skills in a higher-education institution. Using a design-based research approach, we have developed the Software Factory, an educational environment for experiential, project-based learning. We offer a collection of patterns and anti-patterns that help educational institutions to design, implement and operate physical environments, curricula and teaching materials, and to plan interventions that may be required for project-based start-up education.