TopCoder : Developing Software through CrowdsourcingKarim R. Lakhani, David A. Garvin, Eric LonsteinHarvard Business School31 May 2012

Yalçın YENİGÜN 04 November 2013

Managing TopCoder

The Supply Side :

• George Tsipolitis (Vice President) : «When you are managing a community, you are no longer managing indivituals. We can’t control individuals, we can only control the process of their participation.»

• Risk: The community could be unforgiven

Managing TopCoder

• Attraction:

• TopCoder needed to have access to a critical mass of talent and coding capacity.• Solutions:• Algorithm contests• Paying for Google keyword searches using terms

such as «design contests»• Member development days at international

universities

Managing TopCoder

• Norms:

• TopCoder had to maintain the highest standarts of contest integrity, fairness, transparency and quality.• Ex: No tolerance to cheating• Using unauthorized code = eliminating from

contest• Contest transparency: Storing all contests and

statistics in a dataware house

Managing TopCoder

• Governance:

• TopCoder executives are responsible for final decisions• Executives got feedback from community by

forums• Disagreement between contestant & reviewer:

TopCoder employee and contestant investigated

Managing TopCoder

• Resource allocation:

• Controlling contest participation • Run contests concurrently• Not to act like a community boss• Hughes : «We don’t own this community. We

want people to be here when they want to be here.»

Managing TopCoder

• Retention:

• TopCoder supply community members with consistent work streams and prize money• Get feedback for contests• Flexible working hours• Members can also develop TopCoder’s internal

systems

Managing TopCoder

The Demand Side :

• Platform Managers:

• Provide project status updates to clients• Make suggestions for contest prize amounts• Define contest requirements• Support role after delivery• High Cost ($100.000 for year)

Managing TopCoder

The Demand Side :

• TopCoder Direct:

• Client used the company’s platform with little or no intervention (self-service)• Platform managers: educate clients to use

platform• Platform managers: co-pilot• Reduce platform manager cost

Future

• 2010 : revenue doubled• Competitions increased 30%• 275000 members• Contract with NASA• TopCoder Direct : driving 2010’s success• 2011 : more than 300000 members• Experienced copilots

Future

• RentACoder, Elance, oDesk: buy talent approach• Offering more money would increase participation• What would happen if TopCoder clients expanded?• What would happen if a company like Accenture

started to develop software in the same way as TopCoder?• Would the TopCoder community remain intact?