Crowd-sourcing in CAD / PLM software development

The topic of crowd-sourcing is fascinating these days. Community based development is interesting topic, and I’m continuing to follow different aspects of crowd-sourcing and finding new examples. I had a chance to write about Local Motors few weeks ago – it was a perfect example of crowd-sourcing and community-based development. Earlier today, I had a chance to read about interesting examples of how Autodesk is using crowd-sourcing to improve localization of their products. Localization is a complicated topic. Even if you’re hiring the best bi-lingual people, your software won’t be perfect.

Autodesk is proposing for users of Inventor 2012 to participate in the project to improve Autodesk Inventor translation. Navigate to the following link (in Russian) and you can see how you can propose a new translation for a specific term and / or command.

I found another interesting example in crowd-sourcing in PLM software – Aras Community roadmap. Navigate to following link and see how you can actually “vote” for specific features and functionality.

This story is specifically ineresting in my view. The ability of software vendor to manage in a very precisely way what features and functionality need to be implemented is a complicated product management objective. To use crowd-sourcing principles in this project is a very interesting and innovative approach, in my view.

What is my conclusion? Crowd-sourcing is fascinating and inspiring. I think it opens additional opportunities in the way nobody thoughts before. It is promising, and I’m expecting more in the future.

Best, Oleg