Researching crowdsourcing software development:perspectives and concerns

Crowdsourcing is an emerging form of ‘outsourcing’ software development. While there has been considerable research in the area of crowdsourcing in general, very little research has focused specifically on how crowdsourcing works in a software development context, and as far as we know, there have been no published studies of crowdsourcing software development from a customer perspective. Based on a review of the literature, we identified a number of key concerns related to crowdsourcing that are of particular importance in a software development context. Furthermore, we observed a number of recurring key stakeholders, or actors, each of whom has a unique perspective on crowdsourcing. This paper presents a research framework that consists of the various combinations of stakeholders and key concerns. The framework can be used to guide future research on the use of crowdsourcing as a ‘sourcing’ strategy, as well as a means to review and synthesize research findings so as to be able to compare studies on crowdsourcing in a software development context.