1.

What key skills would you need to master if you were a senior manager at TopCoder to succeed
in leading the company? Are these skills like or different from those needed to run a more
conventional business?

The critical skillsets required to master as a successful senior manager at TopCoder would be: -

1. Process Management: It was not possible at TopCoder to manage individual programmers

- in a community model. The managers could only control their
participation. Therefore, to handle the community as a whole, it
was vital that managers master process management so that they
can influence the community response and achieve the desired
outcome when affecting individuals isn’t possible.

2. Attracting Talent: - Managers must set competition prizes, difficulty, and timelines to
attract talented community members to participate in competitions.
They need to be able to strike a careful balance in these
parameters.

3. Establishing norms: - In contests, managers must set consistent competition norms and
the highest ethical standards. Managers must avoid uncertainties in
competition conditions and create fixed winning criteria to dissuade
non-participation. Managers must also be as transparent with
community members as possible.

4. Unique Governance: - As TopCoder depends on the voluntary community's competitive

participation, managers must incorporate the community viewpoint
in as many decisions as possible while balancing TopCoder’s bottom
line.

5. Resource Allocation: - Managers must master allocating community resources and

controlling contest participation. To do that, they can adjust the
prize amount or the timelines of the competition. They must also
remember how many competitions run concurrently and the
subject competition’s difficulty and scope.

6. Retain Talent: - Managers must try to retain top talent within the community, as
communities tend to be fickle. It can supply community members
with consistent work streams and prize money. It can also
undertake several other internal measures to pique community
members’ interests.

7. Guide Client: - Managers must also master guiding clients through the contest-
based software development process of TopCoder. They must
alleviate client concerns vis-à-vis Intellectual Property and Security
and act as a sounding board for client concerns and suggestions.

While there are several unique elements to handling a community-based development model, I
don’t think these skills are much different from those needed to run a more conventional
business.

2. What strategies did Topcoder follow to foster healthy competition among its users? What were
the drivers of community spirit on the Topcoder platform?
TopCoder’s strategy to foster healthy competition among its users had two components: - Formal
enforcement of standards and promotion and encouraging informal enforcement via mutual
interaction.

Formal Enforcement Informal Enforcement

The company paid close attention to
community norms. It maintained the highest
ethical standards in its contests. Strict
disciplinary actions were undertaken against
breaching community members. The company
launched much effort to resolve disputes,
including re-running contests in the argument.
The company maintained the highest
standards of transparency in contest and
competitor statistics.
TopCoder fostered the creation of “TopCoder
forums” to help community members interact
with one another. There, less-experienced
competitors were encouraged to ask for help
and indeed got it from experienced
competitors, even if they were competing in
the same competition.

The drivers of community spirit in TopCoder were the numerous opportunities to learn and
improve. The peer-review system allowed members a no-nonsense code review from experienced
programmers. Additionally, the outpouring of support provided in situations outside software
development, such as the death of a community member, was both the result and a catalyst for
furthering community spirit.

3. What was Topcoder vision about incorporating co-pilots on its platform?

As per the case, a platform manager at TopCoder costs the organization $100,000 per annum (all
expenses encompassed). To avoid a massive increase in this expense as the company’s projects
and clients grew, the company wanted to introduce “TopCoder Direct,” a self-service model for
clients to access and direct their contest-based software development themselves. In this model,
the primary job of a platform manager was to educate the client on how to use the model.

Jack Hughes envisioned that this role could be given to an experienced community member or an
external consultant, a “co-pilot” to assist client staff, and someone familiar with the platform. He
believed that it would reduce the Platform manager’s time served on a project from 40 to 2 hours,
saving considerable time and money for TopCoder.