Strategies for Crowdworkers to Overcome Barriers in Competition-based Software Crowdsourcing Development

Abstract

Crowdsourcing in software development uses a large pool of developers on-demand to outsource parts or the entire software project to a crowd. To succeed, this requires a continuous influx of developers, or simply crowdworkers. However, crowdworkers face many barriers when attempting to participate in software crowdsourcing. Often, these barriers lead to a low number and poor quality of submitted solutions. In our previous work, we identified several barriers faced by crowdworkers including finding a task according to his/her abilities, setting up the environment to perform the task, and managing one's personal time. We also proposed six strategies to overcome or minimize these barriers. In this paper, these six strategies are evaluated questioning Software Crowdsourcing (SW CS) experts. The results show that software crowdsourcing needs to: (i) provide a system that helps matching tasks requirements and crowdworker's profile; (ii) adopt containers or virtual machines to help crowdworkers set up their environment to perform the task, (iii) plan and control crowdworkers' personal time, and (iv) adopt communication channels to allow crowdworkers to clarify questions about the requirements and, as a consequence, finish the tasks.