Four of the five acknowledged universal core problems, based on Clement and Puranam’s (2020) theory, that organizations try to solve upon designing their organizational structure are (1) task division; (2) task allocation; (3) provision of information; (4) provision of rewards. These formed the analytical model for a study about how IT startups could design their organizational structure in their transition phase. The conclusion is that IT startups in their transition phase could benefit from having an organization structure with selective horizontal and vertical decentralization that enables clarity, transparency, and autonomy. An organizational structure with such decentralization uses mutual adjustment as the coordination mechanism, which is best suited for organizations with complex and dynamic environments such as IT startups in their transition phase. The purpose of this paper is to provide IT startups with insights on how they could design their organizational structure as they scale up in their transition phase.

Startups indeed play a pivotal role in society as agents of innovation and generators of employment. Despite this, a large proportion of startups fail. As a substantial amount of these temporary project-like companies called startups engage in software development and as application of project management has been correlated with project success, this research exploits a gap in the literature concerned with best practices as it pertains to project management methodologies for software development in startups. Given that a significant number of academic studies have already been conducted in the area of software development practices in startups spanning project management methodologies and software development methodologies, this research applies a strategy of systematic review as along with the application of thematic synthesis is appropriate for ascertaining the current state of knowledge and the search for some consensus. Consequently, this has been deemed to be an appropriate strategy for answering the research question: What are the best practices in applying Project Management Methodologies for software development projects in startups? The scope of the systematic review is the last decade (from 2012 to 2022) and the PRISMA framework has been used to facilitate the identification and screening of records. As a result, 17 studies with varying methods were deemed eligible and of high quality according to the quality assessment guidelines by Garousi et al. The main findings of this study identify three high-order themes for best practices in applying project management methodologies for software development in startups: Agility & Maturity, Empower & Value People, Tool Usage & Support.