The Experts below are selected from a list of 360 Experts worldwide ranked by ideXlab platform
Thomas Hanne - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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fostering product innovations in software startups through Freelancer supported requirement engineering
Results in Engineering, 2020Co-Authors: Varun Gupta, Jose Maria Fernandezcrehuet, Thomas Hanne, Rainer TeleskoAbstract:Abstract This research paper explores the involvement of Freelancers in requirement engineering activities to continuously innovating the value propositions and utilizing their expertise in various requirement engineering tasks. This paper reports the case study conducted with the startups that involve Freelancers for the requirement engineering activities. The findings are then compared with the literature to explore the Freelancer supported requirement engineering domain. Results indicate that the Freelancers could help innovate value proposition by providing different perspectives of the global segments and also expertise in executing requirement engineering activities. The Freelancers have varying levels of involvement in requirement engineering activities depending on on startup contexts and is highly challenged by various inhibitors. The inhibitors include difficulty to select Freelancers optimally, ensuring their long term association for continuous rework arising because of continuous learnings in the market, building trust, mechanism to integrate their perspective, establishing communication, negotiations and strategic pricings. However, there is a need to optimally establish the Freelancer involvement from beginning of the startup life cycle with a promise for long term benefits in exchange for their trustworthy and accurate perspectives, which is harder to get by involving crowds of customers due to resource limitations. Further research is required to investigate how Freelancers could represent the samples of globally distributed customer segments as input source of information on one side and on another side become startup team representatives to establish direct interactions with global customer segments.
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fostering continuous value proposition innovation through Freelancer involvement in software startups insights from multiple case studies
Sustainability, 2020Co-Authors: Varun Gupta, Jose Maria Fernandezcrehuet, Thomas HanneAbstract:[Context] The software startups could continuously innovate business model value proposition by involving Freelancers as a source of innovative ideas (that enhance customer perceived value) and as experts for implementing the innovative ideas (by undertaking software engineering tasks). Startups employ one of three strategies for associating with Freelancers i.e., task based (association ends with completion of the outsourced task), panel based (outsourcing task to a panel of Freelancers associated with startup), or hybrid. Uncertainties, terminology issues, high technical debt, lack of documentation, lack of systematic decision making processes, lack of resources, lack of brand values, need for the continuous involvement of the Freelancer to incorporate continuous validated learnings, merging Freelancer perspectives, and deciding the level of their involvement in individual requirement engineering (or value proposition innovation) activities, are the main inhibitors for associations with Freelancers. The availability of good Freelancers and their long term and continuous commitments are necessary requirements for value proposition innovation. The theory about Freelancer association with the software startups is extended by studying the real practices of startups, which successfully involved Freelancers for value proposition innovation by capturing innovative ideas and acquiring the Freelancer’s skills to implement those ideas. [Objectives] The objective of this paper is to explain the strategies adopted by the software startups to foster value proposition innovation by continuously involving the Freelancers and the way they overcome the challenges arising because of the associations. The findings are driven by the study of real practices of startups that proved to be successful in the market by involving Freelancers and continuous innovations leading to increased market shares. [Method] This paper performs empirical studies through case studies of three software startups located in Italy, France, and India, which are at the verge of being transforming into big companies, with large market share. The current practices highlighting the successful way of executing freelancing association strategies for value proposition innovation and the way to overcome the arising challenges are reported. The findings are also compared with those of two young startups based in Switzerland and India, to bring useful lessons for the young startups. The case study results are validated by employees from the studied startups (both those who participated in data collection and those who did not). [Results] The results indicate that Freelancer involvement during value proposition activities, which is the core business operation, is beneficial to the both Freelancers and the startups. Startup teams could reduce the development costs, shorten time to market, and increase customer satisfaction (by providing features addressing real market needs) by correctly involving the Freelancers uniformly across value proposition activities. The startups could manage innovation with small teams (compared to human resources in companies) if done jointly with the Freelancers, that helps the team members to learn new skills, upgrade their skills, and learn new perspectives about their markets. Business impacts due to Freelancer involvement are stronger if the level of Freelancer involvement across various value proposition activities is higher compared to their involvement across few activities only. The studied startups are not completely dependent on the Freelancers but the Freelancer’s perspectives and skills are valued as a rich source of market success. Freelancer involvement is taken as an opportunity to gain access to global market perspectives, which otherwise would be effortful for in-house teams to collect. In addition, they resolve technical debt, are a source of upgrading skills for undertaking future innovation, and help reaching customers for marketing (promoting product and gaining access to the feedbacks). Overall, the value proposition innovation in the studied startups have different levels of involvement of the Freelancers but these startups have reported positive impacts on the business in terms of development cost reductions, shorten time to market, and high customer satisfaction (measured on early attainment of product/market fit and fast growth thereafter). The case study results are validated by the startup employees (member checking). The responses collected are analysed using box plots, which shows a higher level of result agreements among the employees.
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Freelancers in the software development process a systematic mapping study
Processes, 2020Co-Authors: Varun Gupta, Jose Maria Fernandezcrehuet, Thomas HanneAbstract:[Context] Freelancers could catalyze the software development process by providing their niche skills to generate high quality outputs. They could help companies (including startups) to foster innovations by suggesting creative ideas and providing their expertise in implementing them (for instance, designing solutions, coding solutions etc.). Freelancers could effectively and efficiently work as a virtual member of the software development team. The company must make informed decisions about which task to allot to the Freelancer, which Freelancer to select, pricing the task, and evaluating the submitted work. On the other hand, the Freelancer should make an informed decision about evaluating the monetary value of the task to be charged, trusting the requester, analyzing the skills requirement of the task (finding matches between skill requirement and skills processed), selecting the best task, and maintaining the highest level of reputation. However, the literature does not provide Freelancers and the companies the guidelines that support their decision making. However, if Freelancers are selected carefully for the most suitable task, the companies will benefit a lot in terms of improved software development metrics. [Objectives] The objective of this paper is to provide the research community the research trends in Freelancer-supported software development. This helps to understand that which software development areas have higher concentrations of research efforts, which area has the support of empirical evidence to support management decision makings, and which area requires the research attention. [Method] The systematic study is conducted by planning the mapping protocol, executing the protocol, and reporting the findings using various visualization tools like bar charts and pie charts. The search process was planned to be executed using set of inclusion and exclusion conditions on four bibliographic databases (IEEExplore, Springerlink, Sciencedirect, and ACM digital library). The relevant papers are selected by applying inclusion and exclusion conditions. The google citations of the relevant papers are subject to the inclusion and exclusion conditions again to include the more relevant papers. Finally, the systematic schema was created and populated after analyzing the studies abstracts. [Results] The results indicate the following (a) The research focus is on generic software development (78%) rather on individual life cycle activities. (b) The number of empirical studies is limited (25%). (c) A number of studies proposing solutions and evaluating on live cases in industrial settings are missing from the literature. This is in comparison to the validation approaches (72%) i.e., solutions tested in laboratory settings. (d) At present, the literature has limited ability to provide the software companies (including startups) with the guidelines (in the form of opinions and experience reports) for involving Freelancers in the software development process. (e) The reported challenges include Collaboration and Coordination (33%), Developer Recommendation (or selection) (19%), Team Formulation (14%), Task Recommendation (allocation) (14%), Task Decomposition (11%), Privacy and Security (Confidentiality) (11%), Budget Estimation (8%), Recognition (8%), Trust Issues (8%), Market Dynamism (6%), Intellectual Property Issues (6%), Participation of Crowd Worker (6%), and Capacity Utilization (3%). These challenges are highly interactive, and each challenge impacts all other challenges. (e) Recent focus of the researchers (total 7 studies in 2019) is on generic software development handling the collaboration and coordination (3 studies out of 7), Developer recommendation (2 studies out of 7), and task recommendation (2 studies out of 7). [Conclusion] The Freelancer-driven software engineering research area has got the attraction of the researchers, but it will take a long time to gain maturity. This puts an urgent call for more empirical studies and evaluation-based solution research that could help companies (including startups) to foster innovations. Further, the research focus should be well distributed among the various development phases to address the unique challenges associated with individual activities. The accurate management of the Freelancer in the software development could help companies and startups to foster innovations and remain competitive in the marketplace.
Varun Gupta - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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fostering product innovations in software startups through Freelancer supported requirement engineering
Results in Engineering, 2020Co-Authors: Varun Gupta, Jose Maria Fernandezcrehuet, Thomas Hanne, Rainer TeleskoAbstract:Abstract This research paper explores the involvement of Freelancers in requirement engineering activities to continuously innovating the value propositions and utilizing their expertise in various requirement engineering tasks. This paper reports the case study conducted with the startups that involve Freelancers for the requirement engineering activities. The findings are then compared with the literature to explore the Freelancer supported requirement engineering domain. Results indicate that the Freelancers could help innovate value proposition by providing different perspectives of the global segments and also expertise in executing requirement engineering activities. The Freelancers have varying levels of involvement in requirement engineering activities depending on on startup contexts and is highly challenged by various inhibitors. The inhibitors include difficulty to select Freelancers optimally, ensuring their long term association for continuous rework arising because of continuous learnings in the market, building trust, mechanism to integrate their perspective, establishing communication, negotiations and strategic pricings. However, there is a need to optimally establish the Freelancer involvement from beginning of the startup life cycle with a promise for long term benefits in exchange for their trustworthy and accurate perspectives, which is harder to get by involving crowds of customers due to resource limitations. Further research is required to investigate how Freelancers could represent the samples of globally distributed customer segments as input source of information on one side and on another side become startup team representatives to establish direct interactions with global customer segments.
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fostering continuous value proposition innovation through Freelancer involvement in software startups insights from multiple case studies
Sustainability, 2020Co-Authors: Varun Gupta, Jose Maria Fernandezcrehuet, Thomas HanneAbstract:[Context] The software startups could continuously innovate business model value proposition by involving Freelancers as a source of innovative ideas (that enhance customer perceived value) and as experts for implementing the innovative ideas (by undertaking software engineering tasks). Startups employ one of three strategies for associating with Freelancers i.e., task based (association ends with completion of the outsourced task), panel based (outsourcing task to a panel of Freelancers associated with startup), or hybrid. Uncertainties, terminology issues, high technical debt, lack of documentation, lack of systematic decision making processes, lack of resources, lack of brand values, need for the continuous involvement of the Freelancer to incorporate continuous validated learnings, merging Freelancer perspectives, and deciding the level of their involvement in individual requirement engineering (or value proposition innovation) activities, are the main inhibitors for associations with Freelancers. The availability of good Freelancers and their long term and continuous commitments are necessary requirements for value proposition innovation. The theory about Freelancer association with the software startups is extended by studying the real practices of startups, which successfully involved Freelancers for value proposition innovation by capturing innovative ideas and acquiring the Freelancer’s skills to implement those ideas. [Objectives] The objective of this paper is to explain the strategies adopted by the software startups to foster value proposition innovation by continuously involving the Freelancers and the way they overcome the challenges arising because of the associations. The findings are driven by the study of real practices of startups that proved to be successful in the market by involving Freelancers and continuous innovations leading to increased market shares. [Method] This paper performs empirical studies through case studies of three software startups located in Italy, France, and India, which are at the verge of being transforming into big companies, with large market share. The current practices highlighting the successful way of executing freelancing association strategies for value proposition innovation and the way to overcome the arising challenges are reported. The findings are also compared with those of two young startups based in Switzerland and India, to bring useful lessons for the young startups. The case study results are validated by employees from the studied startups (both those who participated in data collection and those who did not). [Results] The results indicate that Freelancer involvement during value proposition activities, which is the core business operation, is beneficial to the both Freelancers and the startups. Startup teams could reduce the development costs, shorten time to market, and increase customer satisfaction (by providing features addressing real market needs) by correctly involving the Freelancers uniformly across value proposition activities. The startups could manage innovation with small teams (compared to human resources in companies) if done jointly with the Freelancers, that helps the team members to learn new skills, upgrade their skills, and learn new perspectives about their markets. Business impacts due to Freelancer involvement are stronger if the level of Freelancer involvement across various value proposition activities is higher compared to their involvement across few activities only. The studied startups are not completely dependent on the Freelancers but the Freelancer’s perspectives and skills are valued as a rich source of market success. Freelancer involvement is taken as an opportunity to gain access to global market perspectives, which otherwise would be effortful for in-house teams to collect. In addition, they resolve technical debt, are a source of upgrading skills for undertaking future innovation, and help reaching customers for marketing (promoting product and gaining access to the feedbacks). Overall, the value proposition innovation in the studied startups have different levels of involvement of the Freelancers but these startups have reported positive impacts on the business in terms of development cost reductions, shorten time to market, and high customer satisfaction (measured on early attainment of product/market fit and fast growth thereafter). The case study results are validated by the startup employees (member checking). The responses collected are analysed using box plots, which shows a higher level of result agreements among the employees.
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Freelancers in the software development process a systematic mapping study
Processes, 2020Co-Authors: Varun Gupta, Jose Maria Fernandezcrehuet, Thomas HanneAbstract:[Context] Freelancers could catalyze the software development process by providing their niche skills to generate high quality outputs. They could help companies (including startups) to foster innovations by suggesting creative ideas and providing their expertise in implementing them (for instance, designing solutions, coding solutions etc.). Freelancers could effectively and efficiently work as a virtual member of the software development team. The company must make informed decisions about which task to allot to the Freelancer, which Freelancer to select, pricing the task, and evaluating the submitted work. On the other hand, the Freelancer should make an informed decision about evaluating the monetary value of the task to be charged, trusting the requester, analyzing the skills requirement of the task (finding matches between skill requirement and skills processed), selecting the best task, and maintaining the highest level of reputation. However, the literature does not provide Freelancers and the companies the guidelines that support their decision making. However, if Freelancers are selected carefully for the most suitable task, the companies will benefit a lot in terms of improved software development metrics. [Objectives] The objective of this paper is to provide the research community the research trends in Freelancer-supported software development. This helps to understand that which software development areas have higher concentrations of research efforts, which area has the support of empirical evidence to support management decision makings, and which area requires the research attention. [Method] The systematic study is conducted by planning the mapping protocol, executing the protocol, and reporting the findings using various visualization tools like bar charts and pie charts. The search process was planned to be executed using set of inclusion and exclusion conditions on four bibliographic databases (IEEExplore, Springerlink, Sciencedirect, and ACM digital library). The relevant papers are selected by applying inclusion and exclusion conditions. The google citations of the relevant papers are subject to the inclusion and exclusion conditions again to include the more relevant papers. Finally, the systematic schema was created and populated after analyzing the studies abstracts. [Results] The results indicate the following (a) The research focus is on generic software development (78%) rather on individual life cycle activities. (b) The number of empirical studies is limited (25%). (c) A number of studies proposing solutions and evaluating on live cases in industrial settings are missing from the literature. This is in comparison to the validation approaches (72%) i.e., solutions tested in laboratory settings. (d) At present, the literature has limited ability to provide the software companies (including startups) with the guidelines (in the form of opinions and experience reports) for involving Freelancers in the software development process. (e) The reported challenges include Collaboration and Coordination (33%), Developer Recommendation (or selection) (19%), Team Formulation (14%), Task Recommendation (allocation) (14%), Task Decomposition (11%), Privacy and Security (Confidentiality) (11%), Budget Estimation (8%), Recognition (8%), Trust Issues (8%), Market Dynamism (6%), Intellectual Property Issues (6%), Participation of Crowd Worker (6%), and Capacity Utilization (3%). These challenges are highly interactive, and each challenge impacts all other challenges. (e) Recent focus of the researchers (total 7 studies in 2019) is on generic software development handling the collaboration and coordination (3 studies out of 7), Developer recommendation (2 studies out of 7), and task recommendation (2 studies out of 7). [Conclusion] The Freelancer-driven software engineering research area has got the attraction of the researchers, but it will take a long time to gain maturity. This puts an urgent call for more empirical studies and evaluation-based solution research that could help companies (including startups) to foster innovations. Further, the research focus should be well distributed among the various development phases to address the unique challenges associated with individual activities. The accurate management of the Freelancer in the software development could help companies and startups to foster innovations and remain competitive in the marketplace.
Matthew Smith - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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on conducting security developer studies with cs students examining a password storage study with cs students Freelancers and company developers
Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2020Co-Authors: Alena Naiakshina, Anastasia Danilova, Eva Gerlitz, Matthew SmithAbstract:Ecological validity is a major concern in usable security studies with developers. Many studies are conducted with computer science (CS) students out of convenience, since recruiting professional software developers in sufficient numbers is very challenging. In a password-storage study, Naiakshina et al. (CHI'19) showed that CS students behave similarly to freelance developers recruited online. While this is a promising result for conducting developer studies with students, an open question remains: Do professional developers employed in companies behave similarly as well? To provide more insight into the ecological validity of recruiting students for security developer studies, we replicated the study of Naiakshina et al. with developers from diverse companies in Germany. We found that developers employed in companies performed better than students and Freelancers in a direct comparison. However, treatment effects were found to be significant in all groups; the treatment effects on CS students also held for company developers.
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if you want i can store the encrypted password a password storage field study with freelance developers
Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2019Co-Authors: Alena Naiakshina, Anastasia Danilova, Eva Gerlitz, Emanuel Von Zezschwitz, Matthew SmithAbstract:In 2017 and 2018, Naiakshina et al. (CCS'17, SOUPS'18) studied in a lab setting whether computer science students need to be told to write code that stores passwords securely. The authors' results showed that, without explicit prompting, none of the students implemented secure password storage. When asked about this oversight, a common answer was that they would have implemented secure storage - if they were creating code for a company. To shed light on this possible confusion, we conducted a mixed-methods field study with developers. We hired freelance developers online and gave them a similar password storage task followed by a questionnaire to gain additional insights into their work. From our research, we offer two contributions. First of all, we reveal that, similar to the students, Freelancers do not store passwords securely unless prompted, they have misconceptions about secure password storage, and they use outdated methods. Secondly, we discuss the methodological implications of using Freelancers and students in developer studies.
Karin Sirec - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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the impact of social and cultural norms government programs and digitalization as entrepreneurial environment factors on job and career satisfaction of Freelancers
Sustainability, 2021Co-Authors: Ivona Huđek, Polona Tominc, Karin SirecAbstract:At the end of the last century, digital technology emergence enabled millions of people to compete globally by remotely offering their knowledge and skills. In addition, business processes are becoming fragmented into smaller components, so-called short-term projects. These work arrangements are often carried out by so-called independent professionals (contractors), better known as Freelancers. A literature review has shown that the research topic of freelancing from an entrepreneurial perspective is relatively new and has its assumptions and gaps. Different stakeholders and institutions connect, mediate and manage the services of the entrepreneurial ecosystem to support entrepreneurs. As Freelancers belong to the self-employed entrepreneurial category, they are engaged in business activities and need support from their environment. To contribute to this topic, we have analyzed the relationships between Freelancers’ job and career satisfaction, digitalization and entrepreneurial ecosystem factors, with the aim of making policy recommendations. Regarding the entrepreneurial environment, we analyzed the cultural and social norms and government programs that provide support, based on the measurement instrument, developed in the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) research. We surveyed 200 Freelancers (respondents) in Slovenia. Using factor analysis and structural equation modelling, the empirical results suggest that digitalization and cultural and social norms are significant factors that promote the success of new careers as Freelancers in terms of job and career satisfaction. The results show that both positively influence job and career satisfaction, while government programs indirectly influence the job and career satisfaction of Freelancers. This explains how the entrepreneurial ecosystem, plays a special role in supporting Freelancers on their career path.
Jose Maria Fernandezcrehuet - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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fostering product innovations in software startups through Freelancer supported requirement engineering
Results in Engineering, 2020Co-Authors: Varun Gupta, Jose Maria Fernandezcrehuet, Thomas Hanne, Rainer TeleskoAbstract:Abstract This research paper explores the involvement of Freelancers in requirement engineering activities to continuously innovating the value propositions and utilizing their expertise in various requirement engineering tasks. This paper reports the case study conducted with the startups that involve Freelancers for the requirement engineering activities. The findings are then compared with the literature to explore the Freelancer supported requirement engineering domain. Results indicate that the Freelancers could help innovate value proposition by providing different perspectives of the global segments and also expertise in executing requirement engineering activities. The Freelancers have varying levels of involvement in requirement engineering activities depending on on startup contexts and is highly challenged by various inhibitors. The inhibitors include difficulty to select Freelancers optimally, ensuring their long term association for continuous rework arising because of continuous learnings in the market, building trust, mechanism to integrate their perspective, establishing communication, negotiations and strategic pricings. However, there is a need to optimally establish the Freelancer involvement from beginning of the startup life cycle with a promise for long term benefits in exchange for their trustworthy and accurate perspectives, which is harder to get by involving crowds of customers due to resource limitations. Further research is required to investigate how Freelancers could represent the samples of globally distributed customer segments as input source of information on one side and on another side become startup team representatives to establish direct interactions with global customer segments.
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fostering continuous value proposition innovation through Freelancer involvement in software startups insights from multiple case studies
Sustainability, 2020Co-Authors: Varun Gupta, Jose Maria Fernandezcrehuet, Thomas HanneAbstract:[Context] The software startups could continuously innovate business model value proposition by involving Freelancers as a source of innovative ideas (that enhance customer perceived value) and as experts for implementing the innovative ideas (by undertaking software engineering tasks). Startups employ one of three strategies for associating with Freelancers i.e., task based (association ends with completion of the outsourced task), panel based (outsourcing task to a panel of Freelancers associated with startup), or hybrid. Uncertainties, terminology issues, high technical debt, lack of documentation, lack of systematic decision making processes, lack of resources, lack of brand values, need for the continuous involvement of the Freelancer to incorporate continuous validated learnings, merging Freelancer perspectives, and deciding the level of their involvement in individual requirement engineering (or value proposition innovation) activities, are the main inhibitors for associations with Freelancers. The availability of good Freelancers and their long term and continuous commitments are necessary requirements for value proposition innovation. The theory about Freelancer association with the software startups is extended by studying the real practices of startups, which successfully involved Freelancers for value proposition innovation by capturing innovative ideas and acquiring the Freelancer’s skills to implement those ideas. [Objectives] The objective of this paper is to explain the strategies adopted by the software startups to foster value proposition innovation by continuously involving the Freelancers and the way they overcome the challenges arising because of the associations. The findings are driven by the study of real practices of startups that proved to be successful in the market by involving Freelancers and continuous innovations leading to increased market shares. [Method] This paper performs empirical studies through case studies of three software startups located in Italy, France, and India, which are at the verge of being transforming into big companies, with large market share. The current practices highlighting the successful way of executing freelancing association strategies for value proposition innovation and the way to overcome the arising challenges are reported. The findings are also compared with those of two young startups based in Switzerland and India, to bring useful lessons for the young startups. The case study results are validated by employees from the studied startups (both those who participated in data collection and those who did not). [Results] The results indicate that Freelancer involvement during value proposition activities, which is the core business operation, is beneficial to the both Freelancers and the startups. Startup teams could reduce the development costs, shorten time to market, and increase customer satisfaction (by providing features addressing real market needs) by correctly involving the Freelancers uniformly across value proposition activities. The startups could manage innovation with small teams (compared to human resources in companies) if done jointly with the Freelancers, that helps the team members to learn new skills, upgrade their skills, and learn new perspectives about their markets. Business impacts due to Freelancer involvement are stronger if the level of Freelancer involvement across various value proposition activities is higher compared to their involvement across few activities only. The studied startups are not completely dependent on the Freelancers but the Freelancer’s perspectives and skills are valued as a rich source of market success. Freelancer involvement is taken as an opportunity to gain access to global market perspectives, which otherwise would be effortful for in-house teams to collect. In addition, they resolve technical debt, are a source of upgrading skills for undertaking future innovation, and help reaching customers for marketing (promoting product and gaining access to the feedbacks). Overall, the value proposition innovation in the studied startups have different levels of involvement of the Freelancers but these startups have reported positive impacts on the business in terms of development cost reductions, shorten time to market, and high customer satisfaction (measured on early attainment of product/market fit and fast growth thereafter). The case study results are validated by the startup employees (member checking). The responses collected are analysed using box plots, which shows a higher level of result agreements among the employees.
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Freelancers in the software development process a systematic mapping study
Processes, 2020Co-Authors: Varun Gupta, Jose Maria Fernandezcrehuet, Thomas HanneAbstract:[Context] Freelancers could catalyze the software development process by providing their niche skills to generate high quality outputs. They could help companies (including startups) to foster innovations by suggesting creative ideas and providing their expertise in implementing them (for instance, designing solutions, coding solutions etc.). Freelancers could effectively and efficiently work as a virtual member of the software development team. The company must make informed decisions about which task to allot to the Freelancer, which Freelancer to select, pricing the task, and evaluating the submitted work. On the other hand, the Freelancer should make an informed decision about evaluating the monetary value of the task to be charged, trusting the requester, analyzing the skills requirement of the task (finding matches between skill requirement and skills processed), selecting the best task, and maintaining the highest level of reputation. However, the literature does not provide Freelancers and the companies the guidelines that support their decision making. However, if Freelancers are selected carefully for the most suitable task, the companies will benefit a lot in terms of improved software development metrics. [Objectives] The objective of this paper is to provide the research community the research trends in Freelancer-supported software development. This helps to understand that which software development areas have higher concentrations of research efforts, which area has the support of empirical evidence to support management decision makings, and which area requires the research attention. [Method] The systematic study is conducted by planning the mapping protocol, executing the protocol, and reporting the findings using various visualization tools like bar charts and pie charts. The search process was planned to be executed using set of inclusion and exclusion conditions on four bibliographic databases (IEEExplore, Springerlink, Sciencedirect, and ACM digital library). The relevant papers are selected by applying inclusion and exclusion conditions. The google citations of the relevant papers are subject to the inclusion and exclusion conditions again to include the more relevant papers. Finally, the systematic schema was created and populated after analyzing the studies abstracts. [Results] The results indicate the following (a) The research focus is on generic software development (78%) rather on individual life cycle activities. (b) The number of empirical studies is limited (25%). (c) A number of studies proposing solutions and evaluating on live cases in industrial settings are missing from the literature. This is in comparison to the validation approaches (72%) i.e., solutions tested in laboratory settings. (d) At present, the literature has limited ability to provide the software companies (including startups) with the guidelines (in the form of opinions and experience reports) for involving Freelancers in the software development process. (e) The reported challenges include Collaboration and Coordination (33%), Developer Recommendation (or selection) (19%), Team Formulation (14%), Task Recommendation (allocation) (14%), Task Decomposition (11%), Privacy and Security (Confidentiality) (11%), Budget Estimation (8%), Recognition (8%), Trust Issues (8%), Market Dynamism (6%), Intellectual Property Issues (6%), Participation of Crowd Worker (6%), and Capacity Utilization (3%). These challenges are highly interactive, and each challenge impacts all other challenges. (e) Recent focus of the researchers (total 7 studies in 2019) is on generic software development handling the collaboration and coordination (3 studies out of 7), Developer recommendation (2 studies out of 7), and task recommendation (2 studies out of 7). [Conclusion] The Freelancer-driven software engineering research area has got the attraction of the researchers, but it will take a long time to gain maturity. This puts an urgent call for more empirical studies and evaluation-based solution research that could help companies (including startups) to foster innovations. Further, the research focus should be well distributed among the various development phases to address the unique challenges associated with individual activities. The accurate management of the Freelancer in the software development could help companies and startups to foster innovations and remain competitive in the marketplace.
