“Crowd-X” has become a widely explored area; examples include crowdfunding, crowdtesting, crowdvoting, crowdsearching, and crowdsourcing. Software crowdsourcing is a specific area in which an undefined group of people takes part in distributions of tasks for developing software.

Developing and improving crowdsourcing for software development requires inquiring about a number of areas: crowdsourcing platforms, principles for developing crowdsourcing, designing incentives for volunteering, quality assurance, software systems appropriate for crowd-based development, and mobile crowdsourcing. We need theoretical underpinnings around these issues, in both social sciences as well as technical fields. We also need empirical data to understand how the proposed principles work.

This book covers most of the necessary components described above for understanding crowdsourced software. To understand basic concepts and notation in software crowdsourcing, Part 1 will be helpful. Part 2 describes theoretical frameworks and models, including those around incentives for social systems. Part 3 covers crowdsourcing platforms and technologies, including mobile platforms.

This book describes a wide array of issues critical in developing and studying cloud-based software systems. It covers learning materials needed for various stakeholders including software engineers, software entrepreneurs, crowdworkers, social scientists interested in incentives in crowd work, information economists, and other researchers studying crowd wisdom (for example, citizen science, collective volunteerism, and commons-based peer production). I highly recommend this book for those stakeholders; it is well organized and written in mostly layman’s language. The content can be easily understood for a wide variety of readers from interdisciplinary fields.