skip to main content
10.1145/1882362.1882404acmconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication PagesfseConference Proceedingsconference-collections
research-article

Designing for incentives: better information sharing for better software engineering

Published: 07 November 2010 Publication History

Abstract

Software-reliant systems permeate all aspects of modern society. The resulting interconnectedness and associated complexity has resulted in a proliferation of diverse stakeholders with conflicting goals. Thus, contemporary software engineering is plagued by incentive conflicts, in settling on design features, allocating resources during the development of products, and allocating computational resources at runtime. In this position paper, we describe some of these problems and outline a research agenda in bridging to the economic theory of mechanism design, which seeks to align incentives in multi-agent systems with private information and conflicting goals. The ultimate goal is to advance a principled methodology for the design of incentive-compatible approaches to manage the dynamic processes of software engineering.

References

[1]
D. Bergemann and J. Välimäki. Efficient dynamic auctions. Technical Report Cowles Foundation Discussion Paper No. 1584, Yale University, 2006.
[2]
S. Biffl, A. Aurum, B. Boehm, H. Erdogmus, and P. Grünbacher, editors. Value-Based Software Engineering. Springer-Verlag, 2006.
[3]
B. Boehm. Value-based software engineering. ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes, 28(2):3, 2003.
[4]
B. Boehm and R. Ross. Theory-W software project management principles and examples. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 15(7), 1989.
[5]
M. M. Brown, R. M. Flowe, and S. P. Hamel. The acquisition of joint programs: The implications of interdependencies. CrossTalk: The Journal of Defense Software Engineering, pages 20--24, May 2007.
[6]
R. Cavallo, D. C. Parkes, and S. Singh. Efficient mechanisms with dynamic populations and dynamic types. Technical report, Harvard University, 2009.
[7]
T. DeMarco and T. Lister. Risk management during requirements. IEEE Software, 20(5), Sept.-Oct. 2003.
[8]
P. Grünbacher, S. Köszeqi, and S. Biffl. Stakeholder value proposition elicitation and reconciliation. In S. Biffl, A. Aurum, B. Boehm, H. Erdogmus, and P. Grünbacher, editors, Value-Based Software Engineering, pages 133--154. Springer-Verlag, 2006.
[9]
M. Halling, S. Biffl, and P. Grünbacher. The role of valuation in value-based software engineering. In 6th International Workshop on Economics-Driven Software Engineering Research Proceedings. IEE, 2004.
[10]
M. O. Jackson. Mechanism theory. In U. Derigs, editor, The Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems. EOLSS Publishers, 2003.
[11]
C. Jones. Software project management practices: Failure versus success. CrossTalk: The Journal of Defense Software Engineering, October 2004.
[12]
R. North, N. Browne, and L. Schiavone. Joint Tactical Radio System - connecting the GIG to the tactical edge. In IEEE Military Communications Conference, 2006. MILCOM 2006., Oct. 2006.
[13]
D. C. Parkes. Online mechanisms. In N. Nisan, T. Roughgarden, E. Tardos, and V. Vazirani, editors, Algorithmic Game Theory, chapter 16. Cambridge University Press, 2007.
[14]
D. C. Parkes and S. Singh. An MDP-based approach to Online Mechanism Design. In Proc. 17th Annual Conf. on Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS'03), 2003.
[15]
H. V. D. Parunak, A. Ward, and J. Sauter. The MarCon Algorithm: A Systematic Market Approach to Distributed Constraint Problems. Artificial Intelligence for Engineering Design, Analysis, and Manufacturing (AI EDAM), pages 217--234, 1999.
[16]
K. Sullivan, P. Chalasani, S. Jha, and V. Sazawal. Software design as an investment activity: A real options perspective. In L. Trigeorgis, editor, Real Options and Business Strategy: Applications to Decision Making, chapter 10. Risk Books, 1999.
[17]
J. E. Tomakyo and O. Hazaan. Human Aspects of Software Engineering. Charles River Media, 2004.
[18]
M. P. Wellman. A computational market model for distributed configuration design. Artificial Intelligence for Engineering Design, Analysis, and Manufacturing (AI EDAM), pages 125--133, 1995.

Cited By

View all
  • (2018)Reputation-based Distributed Knowledge Sharing System in BlockchainProceedings of the 15th EAI International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Systems: Computing, Networking and Services10.1145/3286978.3286981(476-481)Online publication date: 5-Nov-2018
  • (2012)A Market Based Approach for Resolving Resource Constrained Task Allocation Problems in a Software Development ProcessSystems, Software and Services Process Improvement10.1007/978-3-642-31199-4_3(25-36)Online publication date: 2012

Recommendations

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences
FoSER '10: Proceedings of the FSE/SDP workshop on Future of software engineering research
November 2010
460 pages
ISBN:9781450304276
DOI:10.1145/1882362
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Sponsors

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 07 November 2010

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Check for updates

Author Tags

  1. incentives
  2. mechanism design
  3. software engineering

Qualifiers

  • Research-article

Conference

SIGSOFT/FSE'10
Sponsor:

Contributors

Other Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

  • Downloads (Last 12 months)1
  • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)0
Reflects downloads up to 30 Jan 2025

Other Metrics

Citations

Cited By

View all
  • (2018)Reputation-based Distributed Knowledge Sharing System in BlockchainProceedings of the 15th EAI International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Systems: Computing, Networking and Services10.1145/3286978.3286981(476-481)Online publication date: 5-Nov-2018
  • (2012)A Market Based Approach for Resolving Resource Constrained Task Allocation Problems in a Software Development ProcessSystems, Software and Services Process Improvement10.1007/978-3-642-31199-4_3(25-36)Online publication date: 2012

View Options

Login options

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

PDF

eReader

View online with eReader.

eReader

Figures

Tables

Media

Share

Share

Share this Publication link

Share on social media