The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: An Onboard Journey in Software Crowdsourcing Competitive Model

Abstract

This paper reports on a study that aimed to characterize how crowd workers experienced for the first time the use of TopCoder, a crowdsourcing platform for software development that implements a competitive model. We explored how they perceived collaboration in this setting, what challenges they faced to perform a single task, and reflect upon their suggestions to overcome the challenges their experienced. More specifically, we asked graduate students to select a development challenge task, work on it, and submit their contribution to the platform. Early analysis of the results: (1) reveal the potential benefits of software crowdsourcing from the crowd perspective, (2) discuss collaboration in a competitive model, and (3) highlight that the onboarding process for newcomers is seen as challenging. We discuss our findings in light of current literature.