NASA Establishes Tournament Lab For Software Developers
WASHINGTON -- NASA and Harvard University have established the NASA Tournament Lab (NTL), which will enable software developers to compete with each other to create the best computer code for NASA systems.The NTL provides an online virtual facility for NASA researchers with a computational or complex data processing challenge to "order" a solution, just like they would order laboratory tests or supplies.
Software developers will compete with each other to create a winning
solution, as measured by internal code quality, performance against
benchmarks, and the ability to be integrated into NASA systems. The
competition will provide the researchers with a finished software
solution at a lower cost than if they hired an individual developer or team.
"NASA is at the forefront of this cutting edge approach," said Jason
Crusan, chief technologist for space operations at NASA Headquarters
in Washington. "We want to advance knowledge of how to manage these
tournaments and gain solutions to technical mission requirements with
real world results for operational and future programs."
This approach, often termed "crowd sourcing" or "broadcast search,"
lessens the effects of uncertainty in software development by
searching for a problem's solution through multiple, parallel paths.
Instead of relying on one individual or team, the researcher can
access many, independent ideas, which increases the chances of a
successful solution.
The lab will be housed at Harvard's Institute for Quantitative Social
Science under the direction of Principal Investigator and Harvard
Business School Professor Karim R. Lakhani, a leading scholar on
distributed innovation and crowdsourcing. London Business School
Professor Kevin Boudreau, an expert on platform-based competition,
will be the chief economist of the NTL.
Under the NTL initiative, Lakhani and Boudreau also will conduct basic
empirical research on the appropriate contest design parameters that
yield the most effective solutions in a tournament setting. This will
enable the routine use of innovation tournaments as a problem solving
approach within NASA and the rest of the public sector. Harvard will
collaborate with TopCoder Inc., a company that administers contests
in software architecture and development, to manage and conduct the
tournaments.
Lakhani and Boudreau have previously worked with challenge
implementation companies to launch three experimental competitions
using problems from the Harvard Medical School's Clinical and
Translational Science Center and NASA's division of Space Life
Sciences. Results from the experiments demonstrated the ability to
deliver high performing solutions and extend the concept of
innovation tournaments to scientific and engineering contexts.
Founded in 2001, TopCoder provides a stable infrastructure for
conducting competitions. Through its website, members obtain
problems; submit solutions, judge submissions, and view results,
scores and statistics.
All member activities are tracked in real-time and performance
statistics are made available for all to see. The website also
enhances interaction through a "town square" with discussion boards
and a wiki to share information.
For additional information about the NASA Tournament Lab initiative, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/directorates/somd/ntl
Source: NASA
