Are Software Engineers Incentivized Enough? An Outcome based Incentive Framework using Tokens

Abstract

Modern software delivery is characterized by several participants (e.g., crowd workers, vendors, in-house engineers etc.) contributing in a globally distributed manner. In recent times, there is also a growing emphasis on software to be built in a trustworthy, transparent, and auditable manner adhering to various policies and regulations. Traditional incentive mechanisms are confined only until the software development and deployment and are found lacking on three aspects: (a) they focus mostly on functional elements (b) they lack transparency and are not hyper-personalized, and (c) they are not outcome-based. In this paper, we propose a token based incentive mechanism using smart contracts that provides transparency to all stakeholders of a software and puts development quality, post deployment quality, product quality, and user feedback at the forefront. Our mechanism also has the potential advantage of contributors to be incentivized even if they move on to other projects within an organization.