Crowdsourcing for software development is an emerging concept that is increasingly revolutionising the way software is engineered. Most organisations in developed countries have adopted it, according to the literature - but there is less research being done in developing countries, especially in SA.
Crowdsourced software development is when an organisation solicits software development services from a voluntary online talent pool, rather than from traditional employees or suppliers.
An organisation will outsource various types of software development tasks such as architecture, component design, component development, testing and bug fixing.
Faith Nokuthula Ndala, an honours degree student in information systems at the University of Cape Town, is conducting an online survey into software crowdsourcing and the extent it has been adopted by organisations in SA.
According to a ResearchGate study, companies are increasingly using crowdsourcing to accomplish specific software development tasks. However, very little research exists on this specific topic, it adds.
Gartner says by 2018, crowdsourcing will constitute 20% of all enterprise application development sourcing initiatives.
This raises the question of where SA software development organisations stand in regard to crowdsourcing, says Ndala.
"Are they aware of it? Or do they choose not to adopt it for certain reasons?"
Customer demands for software solutions are increasing, but there is a shortage of IT talent to develop this software, says Ndala. To meet the needs of their customers, some organisations are using crowdsourcing to find software developers.
"I developed an interest in exploring the phenomenon of crowdsourcing for software development, and decided to get the input of different organisations in SA."
The participants of the survey can be anyone who is responsible for allocating resources to complete software development project.
To complete the survey click here.
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