A gamification solution for improving Scrum adoption

Abstract

Despite the wide adoption of agile methodologies, software development teams still struggle to meet requirements, partially due to practitioners’ lack of motivation to apply agile techniques in practice. We propose a gamification software tool to make Scrum techniques more fun and engaging for practitioners. This paper presents the results of the first iteration of a larger research effort that follows the Design Science Research methodology, in which a prototype was developed as a Jira Software app and evaluated with a real-world Scrum team. The results suggest that gamification can positively impact practitioners’ motivation by changing the atmosphere within the team, even if it does not contribute to the improvement of Scrum practices adoption. The metrics corresponding to Scrum techniques slightly increased after using the app, but this result probably cannot be attributed to practitioners’ improved motivation. Quantitative analysis and interviews with the team members showed that the gamified experience should be more challenging. We conclude that gamification’s potential can be better achieved if more and better studies are conducted based on mixed methods, even if the conditions are not ideal. The app has been improved based on the feedback received, and currently is being evaluated with other Scrum teams.