Characterizing the hyperspecialists in the context of crowdsourcing software development
Abstract Companies around the world use crowdsourcing platforms to complete simple tasks, collect product ideas, and launch advertising campaigns. Recently, crowdsourcing has also been used for software development to run tests, fix small defects, or perform small coding tasks. Among the pillars uph...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Sociedade Brasileira de Computação
2018-12-01
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| Series: | Journal of the Brazilian Computer Society |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s13173-018-0082-2 |
| _version_ | 1811200578734260224 |
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| author | Anderson Bergamini de Neira Igor Steinmacher Igor Scaliante Wiese |
| author_facet | Anderson Bergamini de Neira Igor Steinmacher Igor Scaliante Wiese |
| author_sort | Anderson Bergamini de Neira |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Abstract Companies around the world use crowdsourcing platforms to complete simple tasks, collect product ideas, and launch advertising campaigns. Recently, crowdsourcing has also been used for software development to run tests, fix small defects, or perform small coding tasks. Among the pillars upholding the crowdsourcing business model are the platform participants, as they are responsible for accomplishing the requested tasks. Since successful crowdsourcing heavily relies on attracting and retaining participants, it is essential to understand how they behave. This exploratory study aims to understand a specific contributor profile: hyperspecialists. We analyzed developers’ participation on challenges in two ways. First, we analyzed the type of challenge that 664 Topcoder platform developers participated in during the first 18 months of their participation. Second, we focused on the profile of users who had more collaborations in the development challenges. After quantitative analysis, we observed that, in general, users who do not stop participating have behavioral traits that indicate hyper-specialization, since they participate in the majority of the same types of challenge. An interesting, though troubling, finding was the high dropout rate on the platform: 66% of participants discontinued their participation during the study period. The results also showed that hyperspecialization can be observed in terms of technologies required in the development challenges. We found that 60% of the 2,086 developers analyzed participated in at least 75% of challenges that required the same technology. We found hyperspecialists and non-specialists significantly differ in behavior and characteristics, including hyperspecialists’ lower winning rate when compared to non-specialists. |
| first_indexed | 2024-04-12T02:05:52Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-949472f864b7488784c31238d9999da3 |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 0104-6500 1678-4804 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-04-12T02:05:52Z |
| publishDate | 2018-12-01 |
| publisher | Sociedade Brasileira de Computação |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Journal of the Brazilian Computer Society |
| spelling | doaj.art-949472f864b7488784c31238d9999da32022-12-22T03:52:32ZengSociedade Brasileira de ComputaçãoJournal of the Brazilian Computer Society0104-65001678-48042018-12-0124111610.1186/s13173-018-0082-2Characterizing the hyperspecialists in the context of crowdsourcing software developmentAnderson Bergamini de Neira0Igor Steinmacher1Igor Scaliante Wiese2Departamento de Informática, Universidade Estadual de MaringáDepartamento de Computação, Universidade Tecnológica Federal do ParanáDepartamento de Computação, Universidade Tecnológica Federal do ParanáAbstract Companies around the world use crowdsourcing platforms to complete simple tasks, collect product ideas, and launch advertising campaigns. Recently, crowdsourcing has also been used for software development to run tests, fix small defects, or perform small coding tasks. Among the pillars upholding the crowdsourcing business model are the platform participants, as they are responsible for accomplishing the requested tasks. Since successful crowdsourcing heavily relies on attracting and retaining participants, it is essential to understand how they behave. This exploratory study aims to understand a specific contributor profile: hyperspecialists. We analyzed developers’ participation on challenges in two ways. First, we analyzed the type of challenge that 664 Topcoder platform developers participated in during the first 18 months of their participation. Second, we focused on the profile of users who had more collaborations in the development challenges. After quantitative analysis, we observed that, in general, users who do not stop participating have behavioral traits that indicate hyper-specialization, since they participate in the majority of the same types of challenge. An interesting, though troubling, finding was the high dropout rate on the platform: 66% of participants discontinued their participation during the study period. The results also showed that hyperspecialization can be observed in terms of technologies required in the development challenges. We found that 60% of the 2,086 developers analyzed participated in at least 75% of challenges that required the same technology. We found hyperspecialists and non-specialists significantly differ in behavior and characteristics, including hyperspecialists’ lower winning rate when compared to non-specialists.http://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s13173-018-0082-2CrowdsourcingTopcoderHyperspecialization |
| spellingShingle | Anderson Bergamini de Neira Igor Steinmacher Igor Scaliante Wiese Characterizing the hyperspecialists in the context of crowdsourcing software development Journal of the Brazilian Computer Society Crowdsourcing Topcoder Hyperspecialization |
| title | Characterizing the hyperspecialists in the context of crowdsourcing software development |
| title_full | Characterizing the hyperspecialists in the context of crowdsourcing software development |
| title_fullStr | Characterizing the hyperspecialists in the context of crowdsourcing software development |
| title_full_unstemmed | Characterizing the hyperspecialists in the context of crowdsourcing software development |
| title_short | Characterizing the hyperspecialists in the context of crowdsourcing software development |
| title_sort | characterizing the hyperspecialists in the context of crowdsourcing software development |
| topic | Crowdsourcing Topcoder Hyperspecialization |
| url | http://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s13173-018-0082-2 |
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