Scheduling Tasks for Software Crowdsourcing Platforms to Reduce Task Failure
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Context: Highly dynamic and competitive crowd-sourcing software development (CSD) marketplaces may experience task failure due to unforeseen reasons, such as increased competition over shared supplier resources, or uncertainty associated with a dynamic worker supply. Existing analysis reveals an average task failure ratio of 15.7 objective of this study is to provide a task scheduling recommendation model for software crowdsourcing platforms in order to improve the success and efficiency of software crowdsourcing. Method: We propose a task scheduling model based on neural networks, and develop an approach to predict and analyze task failure probability upon arrival. More specifically, the model uses number of open tasks in the platform, average task similarity level of new arrival task with open tasks, task monetary prize and task duration as input, and then predicts the probability of task failure on the planned arrival date with three surplus days and recommending the day associated with lowest task failure probability to post the task. The proposed model is based on the workflow and data of TopCoder, one of the primary software crowdsourcing platforms.Results: We present a model that suggests the best recommended arrival dates for any task in the project with surplus of three days per task in the project. The model on average provided 4 proposed model empowers crowdsourcing managers to explore potential crowdsourcing outcomes with respect to different task arrival strategies.
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