The use of microtasks in crowdsourcing software development

Crowdsourcing (CS) is a distributed software development model in which small activities (or microtasks) of design, development, and tests are developed by employees by an online platform. Due to the possibility of aggregating specialists, reducing time and costs, companies are applying CS in their software development projects. However, there are still gaps in the literature about microtasks, there are few studies focused on the theme and the lack of taxonomy, generating several management challenges. In this form, it was conducted an analysis of 14485 microtasks recorded on a CS platform to investigate microtasks in the development of CS software. As results demonstrated a set of considerations about the use of microtasks, the risks and the impacts of the microtasks in CS projects. Finally, the benefits and percentage of successful completion of each microtask were also verified