Submitted by PPG Ci?ncia da Computa??o (ppgcc@pucrs.br) on 2018-10-24T18:17:00Z No. of bitstreams: 1 ALEXANDRE LAZARETTI ZANATTA.DIS.pdf: 3682553 bytes, checksum: f4e0c608791ce6787d609d8099456e04 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Sheila Dias (sheila.dias@pucrs.br) on 2018-10-26T11:47:02Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 ALEXANDRE LAZARETTI ZANATTA.DIS.pdf: 3682553 bytes, checksum: f4e0c608791ce6787d609d8099456e04 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-10-26T11:56:21Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 ALEXANDRE LAZARETTI ZANATTA.DIS.pdf: 3682553 bytes, checksum: f4e0c608791ce6787d609d8099456e04 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2018-08-13 / Software crowdsourcing development platforms require a continuous influx of crowdworkers for their continuity. Crowdworkers should be encouraged to play an important role in the online communities by being active members, but they face difficulties when attempting to participate. For this reason, we investigated the difficulties that crowdworkers face in crowdsourcing software development platforms. We conducted empirical studies relying on multiple data sources and research methods including literature review, peer review, field study, and procedures of grounded theory. We observed that crowdworkers face many barriers ? related to competence, collaboration, and time management ? when making their contributions in software crowdsourcing development, which can result in dropouts. Based on the identified barriers, literature review and, crowdworkers suggestions, we list 13 recommendations for participants as potential solutions to overcome such barriers. The recommendations were evaluated by surveying software crowdsourcing experts. The main contributions of this dissertation are a) empirical identification of barriers faced by crowdsourcing software development crowdworkers; and b) recommendations on how to minimize the barriers. We conclude that the crowdworkers need competency and an efficient time management effort to take part collaboratively in tasks of the Competition-Based Crowdsourcing Software Development of the Topcoder platform. / O desenvolvimento de projetos por meio de software crowdsourcing depende de um fluxo cont?nuo de trabalhadores da multid?o para sua continuidade. Estes trabalhadores necessitam ser membros ativos, por?m enfrentam dificuldades quando tentam participar em projetos de software crowdsourcing. Por esta raz?o, investigou-se quais foram as dificuldades que os trabalhadores da multid?o enfrentam em plataformas de desenvolvimento de projetos via software crowdsourcing. Foram realizados v?rios estudos emp?ricos baseados em m?ltiplas fontes de dados e m?todos de pesquisa, incluindo revis?o da literatura, revis?o por pares, estudo de campo e procedimentos da teoria fundamentada. Observou-se que os trabalhadores enfrentam muitas barreiras - relacionadas ? compet?ncia, colabora??o e gerenciamento do tempo - ao fazerem suas contribui??es no desenvolvimento projetos por software crowdsourcing, o que pode resultar em desist?ncias. Com base nas barreiras identificadas, revis?o de literatura e sugest?es dos trabalhadores foram apresentadas 13 recomenda??es para que estes trabalhadores possam superar tais barreiras. Estas recomenda??es foram avaliadas por especialistas em software crowdsourcing. As principais contribui??es desta tese foram: a) identifica??o emp?rica das barreiras enfrentadas pelos desenvolvedores de software em projetos de software crowdsourcing; e b) recomenda??es para minimizar estas barreiras. Conclui-se que os trabalhadores da multid?o precisam de compet?ncia e um esfor?o eficiente de gerenciamento de tempo para participar de forma colaborativa nas tarefas do desenvolvimento de projetos em software Crowdsourcing no modelo competitivo da plataforma Topcoder.

Submitted by PPG Ci?ncia da Computa??o (ppgcc@pucrs.br) on 2018-10-09T13:24:12Z No. of bitstreams: 1 LUIS FERNANDES VAZ.DIS.pdf: 17076970 bytes, checksum: 6f8adcfdc62d9c6204d43c0aaaace7e5 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Caroline Xavier (caroline.xavier@pucrs.br) on 2018-10-09T17:12:07Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 LUIS FERNANDES VAZ.DIS.pdf: 17076970 bytes, checksum: 6f8adcfdc62d9c6204d43c0aaaace7e5 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-10-09T17:16:23Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 LUIS FERNANDES VAZ.DIS.pdf: 17076970 bytes, checksum: 6f8adcfdc62d9c6204d43c0aaaace7e5 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2018-03-27 / This research aimed to investigate task documentation in Software Crowdsourcing, more specifically, in the TopCoder platform. It also aimed to identify the elements that should be considered in the documentation of a task in this kind of software development. This research is of importance when considering that a Task is the component that links the other components of the software crowdsourcing model, which are: the Buyer, the Platform, and the Crowd. It is the task that expresses the Buyer?s need to the crowd members. We followed a qualitative research approach and conducted a Case Study with newcomers in Software Crowdsourcing and a Field Study with industry professionals. Data was analyzed using the Content Analysis technique. We found that, for the Case Study novices, the documentation of the task had a secondary role in the task selection. However, the need of a clear documentation become more relevant during the development of the task given that this is the moment that the instructions within the documentation need to be decoded by the developer and turned into a solution to be later submitted to the platform. For the Field Study participants, the most relevant elements related to the documentation of a task were how clear the description of a task is and their prior knowledge about the task content in order to influence its selection. Inspired on our studies? results, we propose a model for task documentation in TopCoder. We believe this model will likely aid the description of tasks in software crowdsourcing and will, as a consequence, help crowd members in their task development journey. / A presente pesquisa teve como objetivo investigar a documenta??o das tarefas disponibilizadas na plataforma TopCoder e os elementos que devem ser considerados na documenta??o de uma tarefa em Software Crowdsourcing. Esta investiga??o torna-se relevante na medida em que a Tarefa ? o elemento fundamental de liga??o entre os demais elementos do modelo de Software Crowdsourcing (Contratante, Plataforma e Multid?o). ? a Tarefa que expressa a necessidade do Contratante para os membros da multid?o. Assim, para o desenvolvimento desta investiga??o foi adotada a abordagem qualitativa, por meio de um Estudo de Caso com novatos em Software Crowdsourcing e de um Estudo de Campo, com profissionais da ind?stria. Para a an?lise e interpreta??o dos dados foi aplicada a t?cnica de An?lise de Conte?do. Como resultado desta pesquisa, constatou-se que no Estudo de Caso a documenta??o da tarefa teve um papel secund?rio quando os participantes selecionavam as tarefas. Entretanto, o papel da clareza da documenta??o surge com maior for?a durante a execu??o da tarefa, uma vez que ? neste momento que deve ser decodificada a instru??o da documenta??o a fim de realizar efetivamente a tarefa e submet?-la ? plataforma. Para os participantes do Estudo de Campo, os elementos mais relevantes referentes ? documenta??o das tarefas foram a clareza na descri??o da tarefa e o conhecimento sobre o assunto tratado pela tarefa. A partir dos resultados obtidos ? proposto um modelo de documenta??o de tarefa a ser utilizado na plataforma TopCoder. Acredita-se que com o mapeamento dos elementos identificados na pesquisa e a proposta de um modelo de documenta??o para a tarefa ser? poss?vel aprimorar a descri??o das tarefas e consequentemente as entregas realizadas pelos membros da multid?o.

Submitted by PPG Ci?ncia da Computa??o (ppgcc@pucrs.br) on 2018-08-22T17:04:33Z No. of bitstreams: 1 LETICIA_SANTOS_MACHADO_TES.pdf: 7715415 bytes, checksum: 7658ad49d27e7fdfea1a76aeee1ca834 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Sheila Dias (sheila.dias@pucrs.br) on 2018-08-24T18:53:57Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 LETICIA_SANTOS_MACHADO_TES.pdf: 7715415 bytes, checksum: 7658ad49d27e7fdfea1a76aeee1ca834 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-24T19:23:50Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 LETICIA_SANTOS_MACHADO_TES.pdf: 7715415 bytes, checksum: 7658ad49d27e7fdfea1a76aeee1ca834 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2018-03-28 / Software Crowdsourcing (SW CS) ? uma estrat?gia emergente de desenvolvimento de software onde um grande n?mero de pessoas tem se engajado para contribuir em v?rias atividades de software. Tal estrat?gia (baseada na multid?o), tem sido utilizada pelas empresas que est?o buscando aumentar a velocidade de seus esfor?os em desenvolvimento de software. SW CS est? geralmente estruturado em torno de plataformas que permitem que um solicitante submeta uma tarefa e conecte-a com uma multid?o de pessoas que ir? pr?ver solu??es para a tarefa. Essas plataformas geralmente exploram uma abordagem competitiva para realiza??o da tarefa: membros da multid?o, independentemente, criam uma solu??o para a tarefa enquanto competem uns contra os outros em busca de uma premia??o financeira ao final da tarefa entregue. Uma vez que a competi??o pode reduzir a colabora??o, recentes estudos, surpreendentemente, indicam que a colabora??o existe em plataformas de SW CS. Estes estudos t?m focado em dois aspectos. O primeiro, em problemas de colabora??o entre plataforma e solicitante com rela??o a atribui??o da multid?o e as tarefas a serem desenvolvidas nos desafios de competi??o (aloca??o e submiss?o de tarefas) e, o segundo aspecto, relacionado ao impacto da colabora??o entre membros da multid?o e a qualidade das solu??es submetidas. Outros aspectos referentes a colabora??o entre os membros da multid?o ainda s?o amplamente inexplorados. Nessa tese, nosso objetivo ? identificar barreiras e caracter?sticas de colabora??o enfrentadas pelos membros da multid?o em SW CS competitivo. Para alcan?ar este objetivo, n?s conduzimos m?ltiplos estudos utilizando diferentes m?todos de pesquisa divididos em duas fases: explorat?ria e avaliatoria. Para a fase explorat?ria, os dados coletados foram obtidos a partir de: (i) partes envolvidas em projetos de SW CS (solicitante, multid?o e plataforma) atrav?s de entrevistas semi-estruturadas com profissionais e empresas, (ii) estudos selecionados atrav?s da revis?o da literatura e; (iii) estudo emp?rico sobre como desenvolvedores colaboram entre si em uma plataforma de SW CS competitivo ? TopCoder. A barreira de colabora??o mais frequente encontrada est? associada a falta de comunica??o apropriada entre as partes. Baseado nessa barreira decidimos na fase avaliat?ria conduzir uma (iv) an?lise qualitativa do principal canal de comunica??o utilizado pela multid?o: f?rums hospedados na plataforma TopCoder e, finalmente, (v) realizamos um survey destinado aos desenvolvedores que competiram na TopCoder para avaliar a influ?ncia da colabora??o no desempenho da tarefa. Os resultados obtidos nos estudos avaliat?rios sugerem que a colabora??o entre os membros da multid?o est? correlacionada com a entrega de solu??es de software vencedoras nos desafios de SW CS. / Software Crowdsourcing (SW CS) is an emergent software development strategy where a large number of people have been engaged to contribute in several software activities. Such strategy (based on the crowd), has been used for companies who are seeking to increase the speed of their software development efforts. This strategy is usually structured around platforms that allow a requester submit a task to be performed and connect with the crowd that assigned and provide a solution for the task. These platforms usually explore a competitive approach: members of the crowd independently create a solution while compete against each other by monetary rewards for task completion. While competition usually reduces collaboration, some recent studies surprisingly indicate that there is collaboration in SW CS platforms. These studies have focused on two aspects. First, collaboration concerns between platform and requester in terms of crowd?s assignment to the challenges (task allocation and submission) and second, the impact of the collaboration among crowd members in the quality of the submitted solutions. Other aspects of the collaboration among crowd members have been largely unexplored. In this thesis, our goal is to identify collaboration?s characteristics and barriers faced by crowd members in competitive software crowdsourcing. To achieve this goal, we have conducted multiple studies, using mixed research methods divided in two phases: one exploratory and one evaluatory. For the exploratory phase, we used data collected from: (i) the three involved parties in SW CS projects (requester, crowd and platform) through semi structured interviews with practitioners and companies, (ii) studies selected via literature review; and (iii) an empirical study about how developer collaborated with each other in a SW CS competitive platform ? TopCoder. The most frequent collaboration barrier was associated to lack of proper communication among the parties. Based on this barrier we decided, in the evaluatory phase, to conduct a (iv) qualitative analysis of the main communication channel used by the crowd: forums hosted on TopCoder platform and (v) a survey aimed at developers who had competed on TopCoder to assess the influence of collaboration in task performance. Our results from these evaluatory studies suggest that collaboration among crowd members is correlated with delivering winning solutions in SW CS challenges.