Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Software crowdsourcing for developing Software-as-a-Service

  • Research Article
  • Published:
Frontiers of Computer Science Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Recently software crowdsourcing has become a viable development paradigm for Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) ecosystems. TopCoder, one of the largest competitive programming communities, enables enterprises to tap into its global talent pool and crowdsource a variety of SaaS development tasks including requirement analysis, architecture design, code, and testing. Many researchers have proposed auction-based modelling methods to characterize general software crowdsourcing. But there are few papers on the comprehensive analysis of SaaS crowdsourcing process and developer community.

This paper introduces a holistic analysis framework to model the SaaS-oriented software crowdsourcing from two dimensions: individual behavior in crowdsourcing contests and collective competition in the community. The framework includes a game-theoretical model to describe the competitive nature of software crowdsourcing process. Moreover, the framework defines a competition network to characterize the topological properties of a crowdsourcing community for SaaS development. The analysis of this model indicates that the success of a competitive software crowdsourcing project essentially depends upon the networks of key participants with sufficient skills and dedication for the project. This is validated by a large historical data collected from the Top-Coder website over a ten-year period.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Tsai W T, Sun X, Balasooriya J. Service-oriented cloud computing architecture. In: Proceedings of the 7th IEEE International Conference on Information Technology: New Generations. 2010, 684–689

    Google Scholar 

  2. Fisher S. The architecture of the apex platform, salesforce.com’s platform for building on-demand applications. In: Proceedings of the 29th International Conference on Software Engineering IEEE Computer Society, 2007

    Google Scholar 

  3. Lakhani K R, Garvin D A, Eric Logstein E. TopCoder: Developing Software through Crowdsourcing. Harvard Business School Case 610-032, 2010

    Google Scholar 

  4. Ramasubbu N, Cataldo M, Balan R. K, Herbsleb J D. Configuring global software teams: a multi-company analysis of project productivity, quality, and profits. In: Proceedings of the 33rd ACM International Conference on Software Engineering. 2011, 261–270

    Google Scholar 

  5. Šmite D, Wohlin C, Gorschek T, Feldt R. Empirical evidence in global software engineering: a systematic rreview. Empirical Software Engineering, 2010, 15(1): 91–118

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Scacchi W, Joseph F, Brian F, Scott H, Karim L. Understanding free/open source software development processes. Software Process: Improvement and Practice, 2006, 11(2): 95–105

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Crowston, K, Wei K, Howison J, Wiggins A. Free/Libre open-source software development: what we know and what we do not know. ACM Computing Surveys, 2012, 44(2): 7

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Archak N. Money glory and cheap talk: analyzing strategic behavior of contestants in simultaneous crowdsourcing contests on TopCoder.com. In: Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on World Wide Web, 2010

    Google Scholar 

  9. DiPalantino D, Vojnovic M. Crowdsourcing and all-pay auctions. In: Proceedings of the 10th ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce. 2009

    Google Scholar 

  10. Bacond D F, Chen Y, Parkes D, Rao M. A market-based approach to software evolution. In: Proceedings of the 24th ACM SIGPLAN Conference Companion on Object Oriented Programming Systems Languages and Applications. 2009

    Google Scholar 

  11. Herbsleb J, MüllerBirn C, Towne W B. The vist a ecosystem: current status and future directions. Pittsburgh, PA: Institute for Software Research, 2010

    Google Scholar 

  12. Tsai W T, Huang Y, Shao Q. EasySaaS: a SaaS development framework. IEEE International Conference on Service-oriented Computing and Applications, 2011: 1–4

    Google Scholar 

  13. Tsai W T, Wu W, Huhns M N. Cloud-based software crowdsourcing. Internet Computing, IEEE, 2014, 18(3): 78–83

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Ye Y, Kishida K. Toward an understanding of the motivation of open source software developers. In: Proceedings of the 25th IEEE International Conference on Software Engineering. 2003, 419–429

    Google Scholar 

  15. Mason W, Watts D J. Financial incentives and the performance of crowds. ACM SigKDD Explorations Newsletter, 2010, 11(2): 100–108

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Jsang A. The beta reputation system. In: Proceedings of the 15th Bled Electronic Commerce Conference on e-Reality: Constructing the e- Economy. 2002

    Google Scholar 

  17. Wu W, Tsai W T, Li W. An evaluation framework for software crowdsourcing. Frontiers of Computer Science, 2013, 7(5): 694–709

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  18. Gupta R, Pareek S. Developing applications with salesforce chatter. Packt Publishing Ltd, 2013

    Google Scholar 

  19. Wargo J M. PhoneGap Essentials: Building Cross-Platform Mobile Apps. Addison-Wesley, 2012

    Google Scholar 

  20. Corchón L C. The theory of contests: a survey. Review of Economic Design, 2007, 11(2): 69–100

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  21. DiPalantino D, Karagiannis T, Milan V. Individual and collective user behavior in crowdsourcing services. Technical report, Microsoft Research, 2011

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Chinese Institute of Electronics, Beijing, 100036, China

    Xiaolan Xu

  2. State Key Laboratory of Software Development Environment, Beihang University, Beijing, 100191, China

    Xiaolan Xu, Wenjun Wu & Yuchuan Wu

  3. School of Software Engineering, Beihang University, Beijing, 100191, China

    Ya Wang

Authors
  1. Xiaolan Xu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Wenjun Wu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Ya Wang
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Yuchuan Wu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Wenjun Wu.

Additional information

Xiaolan XU received her BS degree in computer science, and MS degree in engineering management in Xidian University, China in 1986 and 2006. Her mainly research area is in the development and application of electronic information technology. She won Technology Achievement Award sponsored by China PLA General Political Department for the System of Intelligent processing of military intelligence. She has a patent for machine translation method and device based on language knowledge base issued by Department of Intellectual Property, China.

WenjunWu is a professor in the School of Computer Science and Engineering at the Beihang University, China. He was previously a research scientist from 2006 to 2010, at the Computation Institute (CI) at the University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory, USA. He was a technical staff and post-doctoral research associate from 2002 to 2006, at the Community Grids Lab at the Indiana University. He received his BS, Master and PhD degrees in Computer Science from Beihang University in 1994, 1997 and 2001, respectively. He published over fifty peer-review papers on journals and conferences. His research interests include: crowdsourcing, green computing, cloud computing, eScience and cyberinfrastructure, multimedia collaboration.

Ya Wang is a PhD candidate in School of Computer Science at Beihang University, China. She is mainly engaging in the research of groupware engineering, complex network, and data mining, etc. She received the MS degree in School of Software at Beihang University.

Yuchuan Wu received his BS degree in computer science from Shandong University, China in 2012 and now he is a graduate student for master degree in the State Key Laboratory of Software Development Environment at Beihang University, China. His main research interests include software crowdsourcing and social network analysis.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Xu, X., Wu, W., Wang, Y. et al. Software crowdsourcing for developing Software-as-a-Service. Front. Comput. Sci. 9, 554–565 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11704-015-4900-9

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11704-015-4900-9

Keywords

Search

Navigation