Abstract

JOURNAL OF GLOBAL INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY MANAGEMENT, 2016 VOL. 19, NO. 1, 73–74 BOOK REVIEW Ågerfalk, Pär J., Fitzgerald, Brian, and Stol, Klaas-Jan. (2015). Software Sourcing in the Age of Open: Leveraging the Unknown Workforce. Heidelberg, Germany: Springer International Publishing. 77 pp. $59.99. ISBN: 978-3-319-17265-1 Information technology (IT) developers are constantly looking for new and innovative software development methods to create high-quality systems in shorter cycle times and at reduced costs. Meanwhile, the recent developments in cloud computing, mobile computing, and social media have enabled the creation of new paradigms. One of these new concepts is crowdsourcing. Although crowdsourcing may seem new, surprisingly the concept was introduced as early as 2006 by J. Howe in his article “The Rise of Crowdsourcing,” published in Wired magazine. According to a recent study by Gartner entitled “Harnessing a Global Talent Pool Through Crowdsourcing,” many organizations have plans to take advantage of crowdsourcing. According to this study, crowdsour- cing is the application of cloud computing concepts (scalability, elasticity) to IT software develop- ment. Crowdsourcing provides organizations with access to experienced developers and can significantly reduce the development lifecycle time. Crowdsourcing has gained popularity in recent years as a potential source of talent and has