Collaborative practices for software requirements gathering in software startups

Capturing requirements during the software development process has always been a challenge. Usually, there is a customer with a defined problem or a problem to be explored. However, when we talk about software startups, the requirements gathering process changes. The entrepreneurs need to systematically work with hypotheses and experimentations, and test them as quickly as possible, trying to understand whether these assumptions can become requirements for a system or not. In this context, entrepreneurship training programs, specially for technical students, help these entrepreneurs to understand this new way of gathering systems requirements. This paper describes how some of these practices were performed in a program for new entrepreneurs that took place in a science and technology park. Our preliminary results indicate that several collaborative practices can foster the understanding of the software requirement process for software startups.