Markov Decision Theory-Based Crowdsourcing Software Process Model

The word crowdsourcing, a compound contraction of crowd and outsourcing, was introduced by Jeff Howe in order to define outsourcing to the crowd. It is a sourcing model in which individuals or organizations obtain goods and services. These services include ideas and development of software or hardware, or any other business-task from a large, relatively open and often rapidly-evolving group of internet users; it divides work between participants to achieve a cumulative result. It has been used for completing various human intelligence tasks in the past, and this is an emerging form of outsourcing software development as it has the potential to significantly reduce the implementation cost. This chapter analyses the process of software development at a crowdsourced platform. The work analyses and identifies the phase wise deliverables in a competitive software development problem. It also proposes the use of Markov decision theory to model the dynamics of the development processes of a software by using a simulated example.

An Algorithm for Making Regime-Changing Markov Decisions

In industrial applications, the processes of optimal sequential decision making are naturally formulated and optimized within a standard setting of Markov decision theory. In practice, however, decisions must be made under incomplete and uncertain information about parameters and transition probabilities. This situation occurs when a system may suffer a regime switch changing not only the transition probabilities but also the control costs. After such an event, the effect of the actions may turn to the opposite, meaning that all strategies must be revised. Due to practical importance of this problem, a variety of methods has been suggested, ranging from incorporating regime switches into Markov dynamics to numerous concepts addressing model uncertainty. In this work, we suggest a pragmatic and practical approach using a natural re-formulation of this problem as a so-called convex switching system, we make efficient numerical algorithms applicable.

Markov Decision Theory-Based Crowdsourcing Software Process Model

The word crowdsourcing, a compound contraction of crowd and outsourcing, was introduced by Jeff Howe in order to define outsourcing to the crowd. It is a sourcing model in which individuals or organizations obtain goods and services. These services include ideas and development of software or hardware, or any other business-task from a large, relatively open and often rapidly-evolving group of internet users; it divides work between participants to achieve a cumulative result. It has been used for completing various human intelligence tasks in the past, and this is an emerging form of outsourcing software development as it has the potential to significantly reduce the implementation cost. This chapter analyses the process of software development at a crowdsourced platform. The work analyses and identifies the phase wise deliverables in a competitive software development problem. It also proposes the use of Markov decision theory to model the dynamics of the development processes of a software by using a simulated example.