“There are a billion people in China. It’s not easy to be an individual in a crowd of more than a billion people. Think of it. More than a billion people.That means even if you’re a one-in-a-million type of guy, there are still a thousand guys exactly like you.” That means that when we have enough people, we have a thousand special people. These people can also look at a application from a different side and have an opinion about it. They can test the application! Wouldn’t this make an applications better??
Crowdtesting depends on a crowd that is composed out of a large group of diversified people. This might be the key aspect of crowdtesting; to create a crowd! A crowd should consist out of test experts, users, specialty testers, novices and everybody else that wants to test. A small group of 10 people with the same background gives crowdtesting no added value. But they should not only be of various test knowledge, but preferably also from different backgrounds and even different languages. The more different views there are on an application, the more different views that can help get a better product.
The most difficult task of crowdtesting is determining a good enough crowd.
But how can you determine what is the most beneficial structure of the crowd it when it is needed? That is the most difficult task of crowdtesting, determining a good enough crowd. The use of the crowd itself is decided by the client/customer that owns the work that needs to be tested. And beside these needed people there are people that can join voluntarily and most of these people will do this in addition to their daily work.
We can say Crowdtesting acts like complementary to ‘normal’ testing.
The crowd tests the software and can use the application further or even make others enthusiastic about it. But crowdtesting complements ‘normal’ or traditional testing. Normal test runs are still needed in previous test levels. Crowdtesting can use the creativity and diversity of various testers around the world and not just a small user group to accept the software.
