An exploratory study on perception of Indian crowd towards crowdsourcing software development

Evolution in the approaches to develop software has been rapid, continuous and tremendous. Crowdsourcing is the phenomenon of outsouring a problem to the public in order to get diverse solutions to that problem. Crowdsouring Software Development is a contest based activity in which organizations use crowdsourcing platforms to float a problem related to any phase of Software Development Life Cycle. Volunteers participate and compete for this activity and best solution provider gets the reward. This approach proves to be beneficial in reducing the overall cost of the project, getting more innovative solutions, high and good quality of software and many more. The benefits of Crowdsourcing Software Development motivated us to investigate the perception of Indian crowd towards this way of software development. A questionnaire-based survey was used and responses from 144 respondents who practice software development were analyzed through Exploratory Factor Analysis to understand the behavior of the crowd. Our study reveals that, although more than half of our respondents had participated in crowdsourcing, their experiences displayed quite a diversity. The developers tend to show positive attitude and they are motivated to earn money and learn. Lack of time to participate in such activity appears to be a concern.