Please wait a minute...
Frontiers of Computer Science

ISSN 2095-2228

ISSN 2095-2236(Online)

CN 10-1014/TP

Postal Subscription Code 80-970

2018 Impact Factor: 1.129

Front. Comput. Sci.    2015, Vol. 9 Issue (4) : 554-565    https://doi.org/10.1007/s11704-015-4900-9
RESEARCH ARTICLE
Software crowdsourcing for developing Software-as-a-Service
Xiaolan XU1,2,Wenjun WU2,*(),Ya WANG3,Yuchuan WU2
1. Chinese Institute of Electronics, Beijing 100036, China
2. State Key Laboratory of Software Development Environment, Beihang University, Beijing 100191, China
3. School of Software Engineering, Beihang University, Beijing 100191, China
 Download: PDF(561 KB)  
 Export: BibTeX | EndNote | Reference Manager | ProCite | RefWorks
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.

Keywords SaaS      Software Crowdsourcing      TopCoder     
Corresponding Author(s): Wenjun WU   
Just Accepted Date: 31 December 2014   Issue Date: 07 September 2015
 Cite this article:   
Xiaolan XU,Wenjun WU,Ya WANG, et al. Software crowdsourcing for developing Software-as-a-Service[J]. Front. Comput. Sci., 2015, 9(4): 554-565.
 URL:  
https://academic.hep.com.cn/fcs/EN/10.1007/s11704-015-4900-9
https://academic.hep.com.cn/fcs/EN/Y2015/V9/I4/554
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
https://doi.org/10.1109/itng.2010.214
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
https://doi.org/10.1109/icsecompanion.2007.76
3 Lakhani K R, Garvin D A, Eric Logstein E. TopCoder: Developing Software through Crowdsourcing. Harvard Business School Case 610-032, 2010
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
https://doi.org/10.1145/1985793.1985830
5 ?mite D, Wohlin C, Gorschek T, Feldt R. Empirical evidence in global software engineering: a systematic rreview. Empirical Software Engineering, 2010, 15(1): 91―118
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10664-009-9123-y
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
https://doi.org/10.1002/spip.255
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
https://doi.org/10.1145/2089125.2089127
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
https://doi.org/10.1145/1772690.1772694
9 DiPalantino D, Vojnovic M. Crowdsourcing and all-pay auctions. In: Proceedings of the 10th ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce. 2009
https://doi.org/10.1145/1566374.1566392
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
11 Herbsleb J, MüllerBirn C, Towne W B. The vist a ecosystem: current status and future directions. Pittsburgh, PA: Institute for Software Research, 2010
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
https://doi.org/10.1109/soca.2011.6166262
13 Tsai W T, Wu W, Huhns M N. Cloud-based software crowdsourcing. Internet Computing, IEEE, 2014, 18(3): 78―83
https://doi.org/10.1109/MIC.2014.46
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
15 Mason W, Watts D J. Financial incentives and the performance of crowds. ACM SigKDD Explorations Newsletter, 2010, 11(2): 100―108
https://doi.org/10.1145/1809400.1809422
16 Jsang A. The beta reputation system. In: Proceedings of the 15th Bled Electronic Commerce Conference on e-Reality: Constructing the e-Economy. 2002
17 Wu W, Tsai W T, Li W. An evaluation framework for software crowdsourcing. Frontiers of Computer Science, 2013, 7(5): 694―709
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11704-013-2320-2
18 Gupta R, Pareek S. Developing applications with salesforce chatter. Packt Publishing Ltd, 2013
19 Wargo J M. PhoneGap Essentials: Building Cross-Platform Mobile Apps. Addison-Wesley, 2012
20 Corchón L C. The theory of contests: a survey. Review of Economic Design, 2007, 11(2): 69―100
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10058-007-0032-5
21 DiPalantino D, Karagiannis T, Milan V. Individual and collective user behavior in crowdsourcing services. Technical report, Microsoft Research, 2011
[1] Qiong ZUO, Meiyi XIE, Guanqiu QI, Hong ZHU. Tenant-based access control model for multi-tenancy and sub-tenancy architecture in Software-as-a-Service[J]. Front. Comput. Sci., 2017, 11(3): 465-484.
Viewed
Full text


Abstract

Cited

  Shared   
  Discussed