A three-year participant observation of software startup software evolution
Amy J. Ko · 2017
This paper presents a three-year participant observation in which the author acted as CTO of a software startup, spanning more than 9,000 hours of direct experience. The author's emails and diary reflections were analyzed and synthesized into a set of nine claims about software engineering work. These claims help shape software engineering research, practice, and education by provoking new questions about what makes software engineering difficult.