US 7,778,866 B2Granted

Systems and methods for software development

AssigneeTopCoder, Inc.

InventorJohn M. Hughes

Life of this patent

Estimating the term…

Loading patent…

Abstract

This invention relates to methods and a system for developing software. In one embodiment, a method for developing software includes communicating a specification for the design of a software program to a first plurality of developers, in response to the specification, receiving a design from a subset of the developers to a subset of the developers, facilitating a design review process for scoring the designs, selecting one design based on its score, communicating the selected design to a second plurality of software developers, in response to the design, receiving software programs from a subset of the second plurality of developers, facilitating a software review process for scoring the programs, and selecting one program based on its score. In another embodiment, a method for the distributed development of software includes providing a software development system to a distributed community of developers, the system including software development software that utilizes a structured development methodology, a communication server, and a review board for determining the quality of submitted software; accepting a request to create a software program; and facilitating the development of the program by a subset of the distributed community of developers using the software development system.

Claims28

Dependent claims

A computerized system for developing software programs by conducting competitions using a communications server and a review board subsystem, the system comprising:

a communications server for communicating as part of a first competition for a design of a software program a specification for the design of a software program to a first plurality of developers and for receiving from each of a subset of the first plurality of software developers, in response to the communicated specification, respective designs for the software program;
a review board subsystem for facilitating a design review process for scoring each of the received designs using an electronic document scorecard and selecting one design from the received designs based at least in part on its score in the design review process;
and wherein the communications server is also for communicating the selected design to a second plurality of software developers as part of a second competition for development of the software program designed in the first competition and receiving from each of a subset of the second plurality of software developers, in response to the communicated design, respective software programs;
and wherein the review board subsystem is also for facilitating a software review process for scoring each of the received programs using an electronic document scorecard;
and selecting one program from the received programs based at least in part on its score in the software review process.

2 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Facts

Application: 11/035,783Filed 14 Jan 2005 · continuation in part
Priority: 8 Apr 2002
Published: US 2005/0160395 A121 Jul 2005
Granted: 17 Aug 2010
Term ends: Not estimatedThe source records don’t support an estimate.

Classification8 codes

G06Q 10/10
Administration; Management: office automation; Time management
G06F 8/20
Arrangements for software engineering: software design
G06Q 10/06398
Performance analysis of employees; Performance analysis of enterprise or organisation operations: performance of employee with respect to a job…
G06Q 10/40
Administration; Management: business processes related to social networking or social networking services

Family

Application60/370,937Us provisional application · filed 8 Apr 2002
Application10/408,402Parent of this continuation-in-part · filed 7 Apr 2003
Application60/536,760Us provisional application · filed 15 Jan 2004
US 2005/0160395 A1Pre-grant publication · published 21 Jul 2005
US 7,292,990 B2Parent of this continuation-in-part
US 2003/0192029 A1Published application
US 7,778,866 B2This patent

From the US filing history. Foreign family members aren’t listed.