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Gamification for Improving Software Project Management Processes: A Systematic Literature Review

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Trends and Applications in Software Engineering (CIMPS 2018)

Part of the book series: Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing ((AISC,volume 865))

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Abstract

This systematic literature review aims to (a) understand the current state of gamification as a strategy for improving processes associated with software project management and (b) define future gamification in the context of software project management. For these purposes, we identified and analyzed studies based on research interests, including software project management areas explored with gamification, gamification elements used in this context, research methods, and industry type. Our findings indicate a predominance of studies in project management areas related to integration, resources, and scoping. The most commonly reported research method is the solution proposal, and the most commonly used gamification element is the point system. Future research must focus on addressing unexplored project management areas, which can be intervened with gamification as an improvement strategy to facilitate the implementation of good practices that impact the success of software development projects.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Universidad del Valle, Calle 13 # 100-00, 760032, Cali, Valle del Cauca, Colombia

    Liliana Machuca-Villegas

  2. Universidad de Medellín, Carrera 87 No. 30-65, 50026, Medellín, Colombia

    Gloria Piedad Gasca-Hurtado

Authors
  1. Liliana Machuca-Villegas
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  2. Gloria Piedad Gasca-Hurtado
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Liliana Machuca-Villegas .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Unidad Zacatecas, Centro de Investigación en Matemáticas A. C., Zacatecas, Zacatecas, Mexico

    Jezreel Mejia

  2. Unidad Zacatecas, Centro de Investigación en Matemáticas A. C., Zacatecas, Zacatecas, Mexico

    Mirna Muñoz

  3. Departamento de Engenharia Informática, Universidade de Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal

    Álvaro Rocha

  4. Departamento de Ciencias Computacionales, Universidad de Guadalajara, Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico

    Adriana Peña

  5. Centro Universitario de Ciencias Exactas, Universidad de Guadalajara, Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico

    Marco Pérez-Cisneros

Appendix: List of All Studies Included Herein

Appendix: List of All Studies Included Herein

  • A1. Soska, A., Mottok, J., Wolff, C.: Pattern Oriented Card Game Development. 1170–1177 (2017).

  • A2. Fraser, G.: Gamification of software testing. Proc. - 2017 IEEE/ACM 12th Int. Work. Autom. Softw. Testing, AST 2017. 2–7 (2017).

  • A3. Jovanovic, M., Mesquida, A., Mas, A.: Process Improvement with Retrospective Gaming in Agile Software Development. 543, 287–294 (2015).

  • A4. Uyaguari, F.U., Intriago, M., Jácome, E.S.: Gamification Proposal for a Software Engineering Risk Management Course. Adv. Intell. Syst. Comput. 353, III–IV (2015).

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  • A7. Sharma, V.S., Kaulgud, V., Duraisamy, P.: A gamification approach for distributed agile delivery. Proc. 5th Int. Work. Games Softw. Eng. - GAS’16. 42–45 (2016).

  • A8. Jurado, J.L., Fernandez, A., Collazos, C.A.: Applying gamification in the context of knowledge management. Proc. 15th Int. Conf. Knowl. Technol. Data-driven Bus. - i-KNOW’15. 1, 1–4 (2015).

  • A9. Herranz, E., Colomo-Palacios, R., Seco, A. de A.: Gamiware: A Gamification Platform for Software Process Improvement. Commun. Comput. Inf. Sci. 425, 13–24 (2014).

  • A10. Ašeriškis, D., Damaševičius, R.: Gamification of a Project Management System. Seventh Int. Conf. Adv. Comput. Interact. Gamification. 200–207 (2014).

  • A11. Sharma, V.S., Kaulgud, V.: Agile workbench: Tying people, process, and tools in distributed agile delivery. Proc. - 11th IEEE Int. Conf. Glob. Softw. Eng. ICGSE 2016. 69–73 (2016).

  • A12. Sammut, R., Seychell, D., Attard, N.: Gamification of Project Management within a Corporate Environment. Proc. 15th Int. Acad. MindTrek Conf. Envisioning Futur. Media Environ. - MindTrek’11. 9 (2011).

  • A13. Parizi, R.M.: On the gamification of human-centric traceability tasks in software testing and coding. 2016 IEEE/ACIS 14th Int. Conf. Softw. Eng. Res. Manag. Appl. SERA 2016. 193–200 (2016).

  • A14. Passos, E.B., Medeiros, D.B., Neto, P.A.S., Clua, E.W.G.: Turning real-world software development into a game. Brazilian Symp. Games Digit. Entertain. SBGAMES. 260–269 (2011).

  • A15. Maxim, B.R., Kaur, R., Apzynski, C., Edwards, D., Evans, E.: An agile software engineering process improvement game. 2016 IEEE Front. Educ. Conf. 1–4 (2016).

  • A16. Gasca-hurtado, G.P., Gómez-Alvarez, M.C., Muñoz, M., Mejía, J.: Gamification Proposal for Defect Tracking in Software Development Process Gloria. In: Communications in Computer and Information Science. pp. 212–224 (2016).

  • A17. Mesquida, A., Jovanovic, M., Mas, A.: Process Improving by Playing: Implementing Best Practices through Business Games. 633, 225–233 (2016).

  • A18. Pedreira, O., García, F., Brisaboa, N., Piattini, M.: Gamification in software engineering - A systematic mapping. Inf. Softw. Technol. 57, 157–168 (2015).

  • A19. Souza, M.R.D.A., Veado, L.F., Moreira, R.T., Figueiredo, E.M.L., Costa, H.A.X.: Games for learning: Bridging game-related education methods to software engineering knowledge areas. Proc. - 2017 IEEE/ACM 39th Int. Conf. Softw. Eng. Softw. Eng. Educ. Track, ICSE-SEET 2017. 170–179 (2017).

  • A20. Olgun, S., Yilmaz, M., Clarke, P.M., O’Connor, R. V.: A Systematic Investigation into the Use of Game Elements in the Context of Software Business Landscapes: A Systematic Literature Review. In: International Conference on Software Process Improvement and Capability Determination. pp. 384–398 (2017).

  • A21. Kosa, M., Yilmaz, M.: Designing Games for Improving the Software. 1, 303–310 (2015).

  • A22. Kumar, B.S., Krishnamurthi, I.: Improving User Participation in Requirement Elicitation and Analysis by Applying Gamification Using Architect’s Use Case Diagram. 49, 471–482 (2016).

  • A23. Busetta, P., Kifetew, F.M., Munante, D., Perini, A., Siena, A., Susi, A.: Tool-Supported Collaborative Requirements Prioritisation. Proc. - Int. Comput. Softw. Appl. Conf. 1, 180–189 (2017).

  • A24. Snijders, R., Dalpiaz, F.: Crowd-Centric Requirements Engineering. 0–1 (2014).

  • A25. Snijders, R., Dalpiaz, F., Brinkkemper, S., Hosseini, M., Ali, R., Özüm, A.: REfine: A gamified platform for participatory requirements engineering. 1st Int. Work. Crowd-Based Requir. Eng. CrowdRE 2015 - Proc. 1–6 (2015).

  • A26. Piras, L., Giorgini, P., Mylopoulos, J.: Acceptance Requirements and Their Gamification Solutions. Proc. - 2016 IEEE 24th Int. Requir. Eng. Conf. RE 2016. 365–370 (2016).

  • A27. Unkelos-Shpigel, N., Hadar, I.: Inviting everyone to play: Gamifying collaborative requirements engineering. 5th Int. Work. Empir. Requir. Eng. Emp. 2015 - Proc. 13–16 (2016).

  • A28. Ribeiro, C., Farinha, C., Pereira, J., Mira da Silva, M.: Gamifying requirement elicitation: Practical implications and outcomes in improving stakeholders collaboration. Entertain. Comput. 5, 335–345 (2014).

  • A29. Fernandes, J., Duarte, D., Ribeiro, C., Farinha, C., Pereira, J.M., Da Silva, M.M.: IThink : A game-based approach towards improving collaboration and participation in requirement elicitation. Procedia Comput. Sci. 15, 66–77 (2012).

  • A30. Lombriser, P., Dalpiaz, F., Lucassen, G., Brinkkemper, S.: Gamified requirements engineering: Model and experimentation. Lect. Notes Comput. Sci. (including Subser. Lect. Notes Artif. Intell. Lect. Notes Bioinformatics). 9619, 171–187 (2016).

  • A31. Diniz, G.C., Silva, M.A.G., Gerosa, M.A., Steinmacher, I.: Using gamification to orient and motivate students to contribute to oss projects. Proc. - 2017 IEEE/ACM 10th Int. Work. Coop. Hum. Asp. Softw. Eng. CHASE 2017. 36–42 (2017).

  • A32. Steffens, F., Marczak, S., Filho, F.F., Treude, C., De Souza, C.R.B.: A preliminary evaluation of a gamification framework to jump start collaboration behavior change. Proc. - 2017 IEEE/ACM 10th Int. Work. Coop. Hum. Asp. Softw. Eng. CHASE 2017. 90–91 (2017).

  • A33. Hof, S., Kropp, M., Landolt, M.: Use of Gamification to Teach Agile Values and Collaboration. Proc. 2017 ACM Conf. Innov. Technol. Comput. Sci. Educ. - ITiCSE’17. 323–328 (2017).

  • A34. Prause, C.R., Jarke, M.: Gamification for Enforcing Coding Conventions. Proceeding 10th Jt. Meet. Eur. Softw. Eng. Conf. ACM SIGSOFT Symp. Found. Softw. Eng. (ESEC/FSE 2015). 649–660 (2015).

  • A35. Sukale, R., Pfaff, M.S.: QuoDocs: Improving developer engagement in software documentation through gamification. Proc. Ext. Abstr. 32nd Annu. ACM Conf. Hum. factors Comput. Syst. - CHI EA’14. 1531–1536 (2014).

  • A36. Snipes, W., Nair, A.R., Murphy-Hill, E.: Experiences gamifying developer adoption of practices and tools. Companion Proc. 36th Int. Conf. Softw. Eng. - ICSE Companion 2014. 105–114 (2014).

  • A37. Yilmaz, M., Connor, R.V.O.: A Scrumban integrated gamification approach to guide software process improvement: a Turkish case study. Teh. Vjesn. - Tech. Gaz. 23, 237–245 (2016).

  • A38. Hernandez, L., Munoz, M., Mejia, J., Pena, A., Rangel, N., Torres, C.: Application of gamification elements in software engineering teamwork [Aplicación de elementos de gamificación en equipos de trabajo en la ingeniería de software]. Iber. Conf. Inf. Syst. Technol. Cist. (2017).

  • A39. Schafer, U.: Training scrum with gamification: Lessons learned after two teaching periods. IEEE Glob. Eng. Educ. Conf. EDUCON. 754–761 (2017).

  • A40. Akpolat, B.S., Slany, W.: Enhancing Software Engineering Student Team Engagement in a High-Intensity Extreme Programming Course using Gamification. 149–153.

  • A41. Butgereit, L.: Gamifying mobile micro-learning for continuing education in a corporate IT environment. 2016 IST-Africa Conf. IST-Africa 2016. 1–7 (2016).

  • A42. Calderón, A., Ruiz, M., O’Connor, R. V: ProDecAdmin: A Game Scenario Design Tool for Software Project Management Training. In: European Conference on Software Process Improvement. pp. 241–248 (2017).

  • A43. Calderón, A., Ruiz, M., O’Connor, R. V: Coverage of ISO/IEC 29110 Project Management Process of Basic Profile by a Serious Game. In: European Conference on Software Process Improvement. pp. 111–122 (2017).

  • A44. Muñoz, M., Hernández, L., Mejia, J., Peña, A., Rangel, N., Torres, C., Sauberer, G.: A Model to Integrate Highly Effective Teams for Software Development. In: European Conference on Software Process Improvement. pp. 613–626 (2017).

  • A45. Rangel, N., Torres, C., Peña, A., Muñoz, M., Mejia, J., Hernández, L.: Team Members’ Interactive Styles Involved in the Software Development Process. In: European Conference on Software Process Improvement. pp. 675–685 (2017).

  • A46. Muñoz, M., Hernández, L., Mejia, J., Gasca-Hurtado, G.P., Gómez-Alvarez, M.C.: State of the Use of Gamification Elements in Software Development Teams. In: European Conference on Software Process Improvement. pp. 249–258 (2017).

  • A47. De Melo, A.A., Hinz, M., Scheibel, G., Diacui Medeiros Berkenbrock, C., Gasparini, I., Baldo, F.: Version control system gamification: A proposal to encourage the engagement of developers to collaborate in software projects. Lect. Notes Comput. Sci. (including Subser. Lect. Notes Artif. Intell. Lect. Notes Bioinformatics). 8531 LNCS, 550–558 (2014).

  • A48. Calderón, A., Ruiz, M.: Coverage of ISO/IEC 12207 Software Lifecycle Process by a Simulation-Based Serious Game. 155, 59–70 (2016).

  • A49. Hernández, L., Muñoz, M., Mejia, J., Peña, A.: Gamificación en equipos de trabajo en la ingeniería de software: Una revisión sistemática de la literatura Gamification in software engineering teamworks: A systematic literature review. Presented at the (2016).

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Machuca-Villegas, L., Gasca-Hurtado, G.P. (2019). Gamification for Improving Software Project Management Processes: A Systematic Literature Review. In: Mejia, J., Muñoz, M., Rocha, Á., Peña, A., Pérez-Cisneros, M. (eds) Trends and Applications in Software Engineering. CIMPS 2018. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 865. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01171-0_4

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