What is Crowd Sourcing and its Types?

Introduction:

In the early stages of software development, conventional development techniques were used. The fundamental tasks which can be done in a closed environment by a small number of people can be disseminated among the community with the help of crowdsourcing. Some of the businesses found this approach to be a blessing, while others found it to be a poorly considered choice. The platforms that are now in operation serve as examples for those who want to transition to crowdsourcing software development and establish themselves as popular crowdsourced platforms.

For those who desire to use crowdsourcing, successful systems can serve as an inspiration, while the pioneers can learn a lot from numerous businesses that have suffered significant losses as a result of mistakes they made. The need of the hour is to educate new businesses on the advantages & drawbacks of crowdsourcing software development. We look into case examples that show the advantages and disadvantages of using crowdsourcing for software development. 

What is Crowd Sourcing?

Crowdsourcing is the process of gathering products, concepts, or content with the help of several contributors. In crowdsourcing, the "crowd" is typically a party outside of the company looking for solutions. Instead of relying on staff or shareholders, you may crowdsource information from internet communities and customers. Some participants in crowdsourcing carry out modest chores freely, while others occasionally work as paid freelancers. For instance, traffic applications like Waze encourage users to self-report accidents and other occurrences on the road so that users may access real-time, updated information.

When it comes to software development, this concept translates as the practice of performing any external software engineering jobs by an unspecified, potentially sizable group of online employees in an open-call style known as crowdsourced software engineering.

The main notion behind crowdsourcing, a type of collective intelligence, is that information processing can emerge from the actions of groups of people. Software development has utilized several collective intelligence techniques. For instance, businesses occasionally use internal open innovation, asking staff members for an opinion on topics outside of their typical work responsibilities to generate a lot of ideas. Systems that mine and reuse other people's work are another example. Take, for instance, code search engines that provide code examples or autocomplete tools that mine and surface typical coding idioms. Because these methods don't solicit work through an open call to ambiguous individuals outside of an organization's borders, we do not consider them to be crowdsourcing.

What is Crowd Sourcing's relation with Peer Production?

Open-source software crowdsourcing is one of the most established and well-known types. Software projects like Linux, Apache, Rails, and Firefox receive contributions from tens of thousands of people. Peer production is a concept in which control is decentralized and contributions are provided without financial compensation. 

One example of peer production is open-source development. The project's objectives and scope are chosen by the contributors rather than by a paid customer. Contributors are frequently driven by the chance to practice using cutting-edge technology, build their reputations, and support a worthwhile cause. They must first catch up by studying the project's conventions, architecture, designs, and social norms to accomplish this. Days or weeks may pass throughout this procedure, which may deter those who are only tangentially interested from ever contributing. But numerous contributors keep making open source a success.

Crowd Sourcing and Competitions 

Competitions, a second crowdsourcing strategy, have recently drawn a lot of interest in the software industry. Competitions are like typical outsourcing in that a client requests work and pays for it to be completed. However, rather than treating employees as partners, they regard them as competitors. A client first suggests a project. The project is then broken down into several competitions that may cover requirements, architecture, UI design, implementation, and testing by a copilot (an experienced worker compensated for this task). 

Each challenge is broken down into tasks by the copilot that can be finished in a few days. Each contestant submits a competing answer; the copilot chooses a winning submission and runner-up from these, and the corresponding employees are paid. Competitions give customers access to a variety of options, which some people think produces results of a higher caliber. Meanwhile, additional expenses could develop that aren't immediately apparent.

Microtasks and Crowd Sourcing:

This model breaks down the work into a series of brief, self-contained microtasks that when combined, provide an answer to a larger, more difficult task. Multiple employees may be asked to do the same microtask to verify quality, with the best response being chosen via voting and other techniques. The main benefit of this architecture is its incredible scalability. Large jobs can be completed quickly because they can be divided into small, self-contained projects that can be distributed to arbitrarily large groups.

Crowdsourcing is in the development stage and when it comes to getting professional and state-of-the-art testing services, WeTest has to offer its clients much more than they can get in similar quotations. These include App Functional Testing and PC game Functional testing. Here, clients only have to submit the installation packages of their apps and games and do not need to prepare test equipment and personnel. The test team performs efficiently, fully understands the test scenario, and quickly discovers product compatibility issues.

Wrapping Up: 

Before we conclude the topic of what is crowd sourcing and how it is being done, we can now state that if crowdsourcing is to have the same type of impact in software development that it has had in other disciplines, significant obstacles must be removed. Software's nature has a big role in this. Since the software is complicated, it is difficult to divide it into discrete tasks that can be simply understood and executed. Instead, because of its intricate and invisible nature, crowdsourcing faces a problem that won't be solved for years. Even so, crowdsourcing can bring about very fundamental changes in our industry. The community should gain a thorough understanding of when and how to use crowdsourcing in software projects.