Crowdsourcing is often used as an example of how effective organic and leaderless groups can achieve tremendous feats.  As new research from the University of Michigan reminds us, however, it can often fall back on very traditional managerial tropes.

The research took place on the GitHub coding community, and explored what happens to projects when they obtain a degree of success.  The analysis reveals that this success can often prompt the creators of the project to revert to traditional management roles to ensure the project continues to progress.

“They struggle with staffing and response. This forces them to carry on as before or open up and accept outside help,” the researchers explain.

Managing growth

As projects gain in popularity on GitHub, they attract a deluge of willing volunteers.  The analysis of over 1,100 software projects on the platform revealed that this growth in popularity forced project owners to resort to things such as clear organizational structures, work routines, and management styles.

This process often results in the project creators moving from a developer-focused role to a more management-focused role.  This is compounded by the unequal contributions made by many of the new contributors.  The data suggests that many of these new contributions are shallow and transient, which can often require more managerial input than they provide in terms of contribution to the project.

The researchers believe it’s important that the original team is aware of this probable transition so that their projects can grow smoothly and not encounter unnecessary hurdles.  In a worst case, the failure to handle the influx of interest results in that interest filtering away, and the project stagnating.

“When you have a team of say five people and you get 1,000 external engagements, how do you respond to that? Most likely you will be overwhelmed and not respond,” the researchers say. “Most engagements will be shallow. There will be a limited number of high-value engagements but how do you find them among the 1,000?”

The authors advocate using things such as to-do lists for new volunteers to give them specific tasks to work on, or using automated mechanisms to filter out bots and other frivolous people, to allow the core team to continue playing a valuable role and not get overwhelmed with the administrative burden.