Top­ics

Description:

In the last years, crowdsourcing has become a serious alternative problem-solving model for many organizations. Through crowdsourcing, companies outsource specific tasks in the form of an open call to a large group of unknown people outside the company. This topic is intended to cover the definition of the crowdsourcing and its components. Besides, the phases of the crowdsourcing process must be introduced with coverage of its benefits and challenges. Furthermore, the typologies that are offered in different papers (including Leimars’ paper and Geiger’s paper) and the differences should be also reported.

References:

  • Leimeister, J. M., & Zogaj, S. (2013). Neue Arbeitsorganisation durch Crowdsourcing (in German)D.
  • Geiger, M. Rosemann, E. Fielt, M. Schader, Crowdsourcing information systems — definition, typology, and design
  • Marjanovic, Sonja, Caroline Fry, and Joanna Chataway. "Crowdsourcing based business models: In search of evidence for innovation 2.0." Science and public policy 39.3 (2012): 318-332.

Description:

Web-based intermediary platforms play an essential role for crowdsourcing approach as the requesters use these platforms in order to publish the specific tasks in the form of an open call to an enormous number of unknown people. Therefore, the architecture of such platforms are considerably significant. Exploring the variation of crowdsourcing platforms’ architecture with help of an example is one of the main aspects that must be covered in this topic. Further, investigating whether the crowdsourcing approach entails remarkable changes in the architecture of the intermediary platforms is another main focus of this topic. Comparison between crowdsourcing platforms with other web-based platforms can help to illustrate the specific required modifications to the web-based software architecture.

References:

  • Kulkarni, Anand, et al. "Mobileworks: Designing for quality in a managed crowdsourcing architecture." IEEE Internet Computing 16.5 (2012): 28-35.
  • Wang, Yufeng, et al. "Mobile crowdsourcing: Architecture, applications, and challenges." Ubiquitous Intelligence and Computing and 2015 IEEE 12th Intl Conf on Autonomic and Trusted Computing and 2015 IEEE 15th Intl Conf on Scalable Computing and Communications and Its Associated Workshops (UIC-ATC-ScalCom), 2015 IEEE 12th Intl Conf on. IEEE, 2015.
  • Majchrzak, Ann, and Arvind Malhotra. "Towards an information systems perspective and research agenda on crowdsourcing for innovation." The Journal of Strategic Information Systems 22.4 (2013): 257-268.

Description:

Crowdsourcing intermediary platforms provide both workers and requesters with functionalities that enable them to accomplish their business needs and goals. Therefore, these functionalities facilitate the crowdsourcing process and the quality of the process is consequently dependent on whether these functionality are well-designed and comprehensive. Achievement of the list of the generic functionalities provided by crowdsourcing platforms of all types is the main focus of this topic. Besides, the general requirements of such platforms, main scenario of each, benefits and challenges of the investigated platforms must be studied and reported.

References:

  • Brabham, Daren C. "Crowdsourcing as a model for problem solving: An introduction and cases." Convergence 14.1 (2008): 75-90.
  • Hirth, Matthias, Tobias Hoßfeld, and Phuoc Tran-Gia. "Anatomy of a crowdsourcing platformusing the example of microworkers. com." Innovative Mobile and Internet Services in Ubiquitous Computing (IMIS), 2011 Fifth International Conference on. IEEE, 2011.

Description:

Crowdsourcing software development has been also an alternative method for software development companies in the recent years. Crowdsourcing platforms has been used in order to accomplish various software-development tasks at any phase of the process. This topic covers crowdsourcing software-development steps including requirement specification, analyze, design, development, testing and maintenance in an abstract level. As a result, generic scenario of each step with help of an example as well as benefits and challenges must be reported.

References:

  • Stol, Klaas-Jan, and Brian Fitzgerald. "Two's company, three's a crowd: a case study of crowdsourcing software development." Proceedings of the 36th International Conference on Software Engineering. ACM, 2014.
  • Leimeister, Jan Marco, et al. Systematisierung und Analyse von Crowd-Sourcing-Anbietern und Crowd-Work-Projekten. No. 324. Study der Hans-Böckler-Stiftung, 2016.
  • LaToza, Thomas D., and Andre van der Hoek. "Crowdsourcing in software engeering: Models, motivations, and challenges." IEEE software 33.1 (2016): 74-80.

Description:

Software implementation tasks are of a type of tasks that considerable number of workers are involved in. In general, crowd coding process must be introduced in detail with help of two crowd coding platforms as examples. Furthermore, the generic scenario of each together with their functionalities must be also reported. The benefits and challenges of crowd coding in comparison to the normal software implementation process must be also investigated.

References:

  • LaToza, Thomas D., et al. "Microtask programming: Building software with a crowd." Proceedings of the 27th annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology. ACM, 2014.

Description:

Software testing companies benefit from the advantages of outsourcing the testing tasks to an enormous number of workers. Leimeister with his colleagues have investigated a German start-up called testCloud which can be an appropriate start point for studying the generic scenario of crowdsourced testing and the functionalities of intermediary platforms. Besides, realizing the benefits and challenges of crowdsourcing testing tasks using relevant platforms is also one aspect that must be covered in this topic.

References:

  • Zogaj, Shkodran, Ulrich Bretschneider, and Jan Marco Leimeister. "Managing crowdsourced software testing: a case study based insight on the challenges of a crowdsourcing intermediary." Journal of Business Economics 84.3 (2014): 375-405.
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