Software Project Management: Crowdsourcing - Essay Example

Introduction Crowdsourcing is a term that describes the process of organizing labour where different firms post their projects to the social network and the ‘crowd’ work on it then the firm pays the best work done, this term was introduced by Jeff Howe and Mark Robinson(Wired Magazine, 2006). Crowdsourcing was initially in computer field but many businesses have taken up this form of labour in accomplishing of different tasks. There has been varied definition of the term crowdsourcing but what all the definitions agree is to get the intelligence of the public into accomplishing various tasks by the organization which otherwise will be done by the organization or outsource to the third party. Seamus Condron, in his article why the power of crowdsourcing is driving the future of business, expresses how amazing crowdsourcing can be when they wanted a design of their book cover, ‘one book, one twitter, #1bit’ (www.crowdsourcing.typepad.com,2010 ), they got massive covers and the project manager only selected the top three covers where one was to be adopted. According to Jennifer Alsever (2007), CrowdSourcing is gaining momentum with the rise of user-generate media like MySpace, twitter, Facebook, blogs, YouTube among others which have reduced the gap between the consumer and the producer. Why is it important to project managers? From a wider perspective there are many people around the world who would like to help your project, right from designing of the brand, business ideas, ad campaigns to vetting a particular product. With massive skills and creativity from the ‘crowd’, project managers will be at ease in carrying out their projects. Recognition and sense of belonging of the consumers is also a factor that project managers will not want to miss out. Internet and technology generally is another factor that project managers should appreciate and embrace in their projects, the social sites have offered a large pool of skilled labour at a very cheap price with no additional cost. Therefore crowdsourcing is important to project managers. How CrowdSourcing work An organization identifies a project or group of tasks being undertaken in-house. The organization decides to share out the task with the ‘crowd’ whose ideas on accomplishing the task are welcomed at a stipulated fee. The crowd may be either open to all crowd or directed to a particular group within the crowd to get the required skills. The crowd submits their responses, or tasks then one member of the community offers to accomplish the task within a given time frame. After the member completes the task and it is satisfying to the customer, he/she is paid off. Sometimes several experts from the crowd may carry out the task and only one with best idea is selected and paid. In this perspective the community embers working on the task have a mutual understanding that there will be only one ‘winner’. Firms can post their tasks on their websites, but in most cases the tasks are posted to the web sites which acts as a marketplace (Tapscott and Williams, 2006) Advantages of using crowdsourcing Productivity and creativity can be improved by crowdsourcing; this further reduces the labour and research expenses. Howe (2006A), points out that a company that crowdsources its project has an opportunity to benefit from larger community with diverse range of skills and expertise. These people are also willing to work under a short time frame and cheaper than if the project was done in-house. Traditionally, organizations used a lot of money to carry out research on particular product, development process and marketing of the brand. Currently, involving active and passionate community of customers via the social media is cost effective. Diversity is also another advantage where people around the world have varied way of solving problems, their perception and experience. Filter is an aspect that can be ferried from a larger market where views from the ‘crowd’ are collected then select the best ideas rather than sampling fixed team ideas of the employees of a given organization. If a company wants to have a new design probably it would hire new employees or hire a consultant team which is expensive, with crowdsourcing the talents come your way which are cheaper. Mangers also have an option of paying only the best work hence there are slim chances of project failure. Disadvantages of crowdsourcing Crowdsourcing can be a risk and the organization that crowsource may end up losing everything, for instance you are giving out information to a person you have never met hence no legal rules binding the two parties, if the information is leaked out the company stands to lose. Also the crowd is not your employees hence they cannot be controlled by the mangers, they may also demand for compensation as a form of satisfaction not necessarily asks for cash, recognition and freedom. These type of management sometimes hard tasks for organization with top-down organizations. Consumer’s perspective of CrowdSourcing CrowdSourcing is a new terminology hence there are no a lot of literature on the subject and how it is being utilized on the marketplace. To be able to unfold the perspective of the consumers on this subject I visited several web sites such as Crowdspirit.org, Innocentive, Amazon, YouTube and Gannet the newspaper in US among others that are doing CrowdSourcing, forums and various social media with this objective. The study sought the methods that tasks are CrowdSourced, how does the “crowd” respond to the tasks, the method of accomplishing the tasks and how the clients are paid. After analysis of literature, and closely monitoring the activities of the CrowdSourcing sites, there are three market-related areas that consumers perceive CrowdSourcing is used for. These market-related areas include; product development, advertising and promotion and marketing research. The two methods of CrowdSourcing were evident, one where the tasks are open to all the crowd to complete the tasks and the other where an organization demands prior knowledge before one can attempt the task. The customers feel that they are recognized and valued by their producers once given a chance to participate in any of the market-related activities. They feel that their ideas and views are put into consideration by the producers and they are given a chance basing neither geographical location nor the race of the individuals but by the creativity, skills and capability to complete a given task. The crowd feels that this is a place to grow, gain skills and experience which later helps them in their life. This is seen as a driving force for the widespread of CrowdSourcing in many disciplines apart from computing rather than the compensation aspect. CrowdSourcing in Marketing As mentioned easier, CrowdSourcing is being used widely in market-related areas such as product development, promotion and advertising, and marketing research. Product development According to Von Hippel (1998, 2006), getting the input of the consumers for product development is not a new phenomenon. Producers have turned to consumers for ideas and advice on the model of the new product. CrowdSourcing have enhanced the processing of getting the end user input where a large number of consumers can be reached even the potential clients who previously did not use the product. There is an advantage of getting direct feedback from a large pool of many ideas and consumer experience. The Innocentive is one of the CrowdSourcing company with over 500 companies that are involved in scientific solutions, they pay the crowd for providing a working solution to the firms problem (Rigby, 2007). LG the electronic device developer has CrowdSourced the design of the mobile phone model, the task was referred to as “Design the Future” where the winners takes $ 20,000 (www.crowdspring.com/LG , 2010). the crowd have an opportunity to develop the new product for LG. Advertising and Promotion Firms that don’t have enough time to hire promoters or design promotion ads themselves have found an avenue of getting their products advertised. They have a chance of hiring experienced people who have been used by other companies to successfully advertise and promote their product. Many companies have placed the tasks that they are doing on their sites and the crowd are asked to contribute their ideas any idea that will be used in accomplishing the task will be compensated. For instance Frito-Lay used this method where the users generated advertising through Yahoo. Crowds may also be asked to write good reviews of the products of a given firm to gain internet presence. Marketing Research Marketing managers have an opportunity to gather information from large number of consumers within time and a at a relatively low cost. The crowd are given a chance to respond to survey questions and they are paid for the task. Example of such sites is Mechanical turk . HP the largest producers of printers used crowdsourcing in predicting their sales in the next one year, it was surprising that the crowd gave a forecast that was exact which super passed the in-house research. Ethical challenges of CrowdSourcing There are serious ethical issues that arise in relation to CrowdSourcing, for instance who will be the rightful owner of an idea from the crowd, the company or the individual? The legal issues of copyright and patent issues, who deserves the rights. CrowdSourcing is where unemployed people are working for the company, how will the project manager monitor them and ensure that tasks are undertaken within time and budget. The act of using competitive intelligence and to engage in ‘click fraud’ is an ethical violation in the marketing field. The other issue is replacing highly paid employees of the company with cheap labour from outside the firm. Professionals in various fields such as researchers, copywriters to executive accountants find their services undervalued. This is an aspect of workers exploitation. How can you reward somebody you do not know? May be a reputable company many be giving its resources and ideas to criminals who are earn from the company and fund their criminal activities such as drug trafficking , terrorism and internet fraud among others. Conclusion The discussion above identified the advantages and disadvantages of CrowdSourcing, the consumer perspective on the subject of CrowdSourcing, the Market application and the ethical challenges in CrowdSourcing. It is with no doubt that CrowdSourcing is going to be next project management tool for many project managers to have tasks done very first and at a lower cost. However, further research needs to be done because this methodology is still in its initial stage rather than fully depending on it to accomplish tasks. A firm has an advantage of accessing a massive labour apart from the firm’s labour which can complete tasks within short time and at relatively lower cost. It is possible to get the crowd that is not highly skilled but are willing to do manual job otherwise could not be done by a computer. Firms are also able to get experienced expertise which they do not have in the organization to tackle complex work. Jeff Howe points out that ‘sometimes the crowd can be wise but sometimes the crowd can be stupid ’, therefore proper filtering of the ideas from the crowd is needed (Hemple 2007). Information that is confidential to the company cannot be disclosed to the crowd hence some tasks as not be Crowd sourced. In the business field, CrowdSourcing is used to accomplish many tasks as discussed above. Many firms are changing their methodology of undertaking projects which are viewed as complex and expensive by CroudSourcing. The working process on the market has changed where producers and consumers are at the same level in the production of the new product. It is only time that will tell how long CrowdSourcing will exist and be embraced by firms worldwide. References Benkler, Y. 2006. The Wealth of Networks: how social production transforms markets and freedom. Yale University Press Hempel, J. 2006. Crowdsourcing: milk the masses for inspiration. Business Week September 25. Hempel, J. 2007. Tapping the wisdom of the crowd. Business Week January 17. Howe, J. 2006 (A). The rise of crowdsourcing. Wired. June 14. Howe, J. 2006 (B). Crowdsourcing: a definition. Crowdsourcing.com http://crowdsourcing.typepad.com/cs/2006/06/crowdsourcing_a.html Howe, J. 2006 ( C). Gannett to crowdsource news. Wired. November 3 . Rigby, R. 2007. The billion-man research team. Financial Times. January 10. Suroweicki, J. 2004. The Wisdom of crowds. Doubleday. Von Hippel, E. 1998. The Sources of Innovation. Oxford University Press. Von Hippel, E. 2006. Democratising innovation. MIT Press. Read More