Optimal release planning using machine learning and linear integer programming for ideas in a crowdsourcing platform

Obtaining and analyzing customer and product information from various sources has become a top priority for major competitive companies who are striving to keep up with the digital and technological progress. Therefore, the need for creating a crowdsourcing platform to collect ideas from different stakeholders has become a major component of a company's digital transformation strategy. However, these platforms suffer from problems that are related to the voluminous and vast amount of data. Different large sets of data are being spurred in these platforms as time goes by that render them unbeneficial. The aim of this paper is to propose a solution on how to discover the most promising ideas to match them to the strategic decisions of a business regarding resource allocation and product development (PD) roadmap. The paper introduces a 2-stage filtering process that includes a prediction model using a Random Forest Classifier that predicts ideas most likely to be implemented and a resource allocation optimization model based on Integer Linear Programming that produces an optimal release plan for the predicted ideas. The model was tested using real data on an idea crowdsourcing platform that remains unnamed in the paper due to confidentiality. Our prediction model has proved to be 92% accurate in predicting promising ideas and our release planning optimization problem results were found out to be 85% accurate in producing an optimal release plan for ideas.