Breaking Collaboration Barriers through Communication Practices in Software Crowdsourcing

Abstract

Software Crowdsourcing (SW CS) is an emerging area in Software Engineering (SE). It has a dynamic nature in which problems are opened up to crowds of people through an open call to solve problems with the incentive of prizes for the best solutions. Although SW CS has been increasingly adopted in the software industry, many open issues are still to be elucidated. For instance, collaboration aspects are one of those issues. They impact communication and coordination practices. This study aims to identify barriers to collaboration in SW CS and communication practices that might help overcome these barriers. We identified the barriers and practices from a qualitative data analysis study considering an available literature review report. Our study contributes to the SE area by providing insights for researchers, tool designers, and managers that might help them to better understand collaboration issues and proposed solutions to solve them.