# Minimum Viable Products for Internet of Things Applications: Common Pitfalls and Practices
## 1 Introduction  
In recent years, with the emergence of Internet of Things, societies have become extremely interconnected. Advances in hardware development and the availability of powerful but very inexpensive integrated chips enable application of Internet of Things to not only industry, manufacturing but also every aspect of our daily life. With the Industry 4.0 revolution [1], the adoption and development of connected systems, such as smart grids, autonomous automobile systems, medical monitoring are becoming mainstream. Unlike traditional embedded systems, which are designed as stand-alone devices, the focus of Internet of Things is on networking several devices [2]. The number of connected devices available in the worldwide market is approaching 15 billion [3]. According to Gartner's hype cycle, by 2020, such technologies will be in 95% of electronics for new product designs. Internet of Things is typically a complex system in several dimensions as they embody characteristics of physical, networked, software and of human-interactive systems [4]. Physical and software components are closely intertwined in Internet of Things, each specializing in different architectural and operational scales. As an emerging area with the overlapping and integration of multiple fields of science and engineering, the development of Internet of Things requires software and system engineers, computer scientists and network professionals to collaborate closely with experts invarious fields such as automation and control, civil engineering, mechanical engineering and biology. Consequently, Internet of Things development is closely related to software engineering paradigm, processes and practices. It has been much focus on the applications, use cases of Internet of Things, less investigated in how Internet of Things are developed. Internet of Things is also a huge business opportunity as an increasing number of start-ups are in the quest for successful Internet of Things business models. Start-up companies are participating in this technological revolution actively, even as major driving forces in some industry sectors. Start-ups are new companies with limited resources, short operational history, often looking for scalable business models [5; 6]. Start-ups appear as a special context in which traditional product development approaches might not be directly applicable. The global movement of start-ups calls for the attention of practitioners and researchers in the quest for development methodologies that are suitable for start-ups' business objectives, as well as their unique engineering environments [7]. Start-ups adopt certain approaches to develop their products and to some extent, have a direct impact on business objective and activities. For instance, empirical studies on software start-ups reveal common phenomena in the development of software products, such as agile development, evolutionary prototypes, customer involvement, technical debt and the neglect of quality [8; 9; 10; 11; 12]. Recent advances in hardware prototyping (i.e., 3D printing and hardware development kits), the development of hardware-related products can be more agile and iterative [8; 13]. For instance, a higher development pace and greater flexibility are reported to be facilitated by using Agile methodologies in hardware projects at Ericsson [3]. To the best of our knowledge, the body of research examining Internet of Things development in the context of start-ups is very limited. To address this research gap, we aimed to explore the state-of-practice of hardware-related product development. Previous knowledge about Minimum Viable Products (MVPs) in software start-ups helped us to compare and contrast key engineering activities in early-stage start-ups [11]. Consequently, we derived two research questions (RQs) from the research objective:  
1. RQ1: How do start-ups prototype their Internet of Things applications? 2. RQ2: What are the challenges associated with Internet of Things development in start-up contexts?