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A gamification solution for improving Scrum adoption

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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.

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Notes

  1. Jira Software: https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/features (Accessed: 14/11/2019)

  2. Pentaho Data Integration: https://community.hitachivantara.com/s/article/data-integration-kettle (Accessed 14/11/2019).

  3. Jupyter Notebook: http://jupyter.org/ (Accessed 14/11/2019).

  4. pandas: https://pandas.pydata.org/ (Accessed 14/11/2019).

  5. SciPy: https://www.scipy.org/ (Accessed 14/11/2019).

  6. Jiraffe: http://bugpotion.com/ (Accessed: 14/11/2019)

  7. Gamification for Jira:https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/1220811/gamification-for-jira/(Accessed: 14/11/2019)

  8. ScrumKnowsy:http://www.scrumknowsy.com/home/(Accessed: 23/11/2019)

  9. getKanban:https://getkanban.com/(Accessed: 23/11/2019)

  10. Lego4Scrum:https://www.lego4scrum.com/(Accessed: 23/11/2019)

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Acknowledgements

This work was partially funded by IAPMEI through project XGamify/P2020/SII&DT/11497.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa, Av. Rovisco Pais 1, 1049-001, Lisbon, Portugal

    Rita Marques, Gonçalo Costa, Miguel Mira da Silva & Daniel Gonçalves

  2. INOV Inesc Inovação, Av. Duque de Ávila 23, 1000-005, Lisbon, Portugal

    Rita Marques, Gonçalo Costa & Miguel Mira da Silva

  3. INESC-ID, Rua Alves Redol n°9, 1000-029, Lisbon, Portugal

    Daniel Gonçalves

  4. Xpand IT, Rua de Fornelos 77, 4900-709, Viana do Castelo, Portugal

    Pedro Gonçalves

Authors
  1. Rita Marques
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  2. Gonçalo Costa
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  3. Miguel Mira da Silva
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  4. Daniel Gonçalves
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  5. Pedro Gonçalves
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Correspondence to Rita Marques.

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Communicated by: Emerson Murphy-Hill

Appendices

Appendix 1

1.1 Questionnaire

We are a research team interested in improving the adoption of Scrum practices software development practitioners, and for that reason we are contacting you and would appreciate if you could help us by filling out a questionnaire.

The main goal is to understand the level of Scrum practices’ implementation in your team, as well as your opinion regarding your team’s motivation to adopt such practices.

Your participation in this study is voluntary. By completing and submitting it, you are voluntarily agreeing to participate. You are free to decline to answer any particular question and to abandon the questionnaire at any moment.

This questionnaire is anonymous, and data collected will only be used under the scope of the research project.

Filling the questionnaire will take you no more than 10 minutes.

Thank you!

figure a
figure b
figure c

Appendix 2

1.1 Interview Guide

Duration: 20 - 40min

Goals of the study

Understand the impact that the gamification app had in the performance and motivation of the studied Scrum team.

Goals of the interview

  • Figure out which type of work practitioners do using Jira Software;

  • Understand how important practitioners think Scrum is, and to what extent they are motivated to use the framework;

  • Gather practitioners’ opinions about initiatives that use gamification to increase motivation in the workplace;

  • Identify the strengths and weaknesses of the gamification app in improving the adoption of Scrum practices;

  • Gather insights on how the gamification app can be improved to better align with the team’s needs.

Questions

Warm up

  1. 1.

    Briefly describe your main responsibilities and tasks in your team.

  2. 2.

    For how long have you been working in the organization? And in this team, in particular?

  3. 3.

    Describe your career path (including years of experience).

  4. 4.

    Describe your academic background.

  5. 5.

    Are you Scrum certified?

Jira Software

  1. 1.

    Did you receive Jira Software training?

  2. 2.

    How frequently do you use Jira Software (daily, weekly, etc.)?

  3. 3.

    Which kind of work/tasks do you perform in Jira Software?

  4. 4.

    Which are the major advantages and drawbacks of the tool, in your opinion?

  5. 5.

    Classify your level of satisfaction in working with Jira Software in a scale from 1 to 5, where 1 corresponds to “Strongly Dissatisfied” and 5 to “Strongly Satisfied”

Scrum

Please answer these questions based on your experience before the usage of the gamification app.

  1. 1.

    For how many years have you been using Scrum?

  2. 2.

    How do you classify the compliance with Scrum practices in your team in a scale from 1 to 5, where 1 corresponds to “Very Weak” and 5 to “Excellent”?

  3. 2.1

    Using the same scale, how do you classify the compliance with the adapted Scrum practices in your team?

  4. 3.

    How important your team believes is to follow Scrum? And how motivated are they?

  5. 3.1

    And to conduct meetings, in particular?

  6. 4.

    List the main reasons you believe that explain employees’ lack of motivation to follow Scrum.

Gamification

  1. 1.

    Do you play games? How frequently?

  2. 2.

    Which type of games do you like to play (adventure, strategy, social, casual, war, educational, sandbox, etc.)?

  3. 3.

    What do you like to do the most in a game (explore the game space, socialize, create new contents, conquer rewards/spaces/etc., risk, solving puzzles, etc.)?

  4. 4.

    Have you heard about gamification before this project?

  5. 4.1

    If your answer is “yes”, which applications did you heard about? Did you use any of them?

  6. 4.2

    If your answer is “no”, what did you believe this approach was about?

Gamification App

  1. 1.

    How much time per day did you spent using the gamification app?

  2. 2.

    About the “Dashboard” screen:

  3. 2.1

    Classify the relevance of the information presented in this screen in a scale from 1 to 5, where 1 corresponds to “Inexistent” and 5 to “Crucial”.

  4. 2.2

    Is there any useful information missing from this screen?

  5. 2.3

    What is your level of agreement with the statement “Project metrics provide important feedback to improve mine and my team’s work” in a scale from 1 to 5, where 1 corresponds to “Strongly Disagree” and 5 to “Strongly Agree”?

  6. 2.4

    What do you like the most in this screen? And the least?

  7. 3.

    About the “Profile Configurations” screen:

  8. 3.1

    Classify the relevance of the information presented in this screen in a scale from 1 to 5, where 1 corresponds to “Inexistent” and 5 to “Crucial”.

  9. 3.2

    Is there any useful information missing from this screen?

  10. 3.3

    Classify the importance of the feedback provided by individual statistics in a scale from 1 to 5, where 1 corresponds to “Not Important” and 5 to “Very Important”.

  11. 3.4

    What do you like the most in this screen? And the least?

  12. 4.

    About the “Team” screen:

  13. 4.1

    Do you consider the information presented in this screen as relevant or interesting?

  14. 4.2

    If your answer is “yes”, is there anything important you believe that should be here?

  15. 4.3

    If your answer is “no”, what could be different (removed or added)?

  16. 4.4

    What do you like the most in this screen? And the least?

  17. 5.

    About the notifications:

  18. 5.1

    Classify the usefulness of the information presented in pop-ups in a scale from 1 to 5, where 1 corresponds to “Not Useful” and 5 to “Very Useful”.

  19. 5.2

    Classify the usefulness of the tips to improve issues’ specification in a scale from 1 to 5, where 1 corresponds to “Not Useful” and 5 to “Very Useful”.

  20. 5.3

    What do you like the most in this functionality? And the least?

  21. 6.

    About the rewards:

  22. 6.1

    Do you believe these rewards are meaningful for your team as a whole and for each member?

  23. 6.2

    What do you like the most in this functionality? And the least?

  24. 7.

    About the score system:

  25. 7.1

    Classify the clarity of the score system (i.e., if it is easy to understand) in a scale from 1 to 5, where 1 corresponds to “Very Weak” and 5 to “Excellent”.

  26. 7.2

    Classify the balance of the score system (i.e., if it is fair) in a scale from 1 to 5, where 1 corresponds to “Very Weak” and 5 to “Excellent”.

  27. 7.3

    What do you like the most in this functionality? And less?

The gamification app implements two Scrum elements that Jira does not natively support: Roles and Meetings.

  1. 1.

    Classify the importance of supporting Scrum roles and meetings in Jira Software in a scale from 1 to 5, where 1 corresponds to “Not Important” and 5 to “Very Important”.

  2. 2.

    Did these elements benefit the project?

  3. 3.

    How could Scrum roles definition in Jira Software benefit your projects?

  4. 4.

    Do you consider the procedure to register meetings as simple and perceptible?

  5. 4.1

    If your answer is “no”, do you have any improvement suggestion?

For the Scrum Master only:

  1. 1.

    Do you think the gamification app motivated your team to follow Scrum?

For the Product Owner only:

  1. 1.

    Do you think the gamification app has led to an alignment between the increment and the sprint’s user stories (e.g. having all user stories fully implemented, without bugs, etc.)?

Final

  1. 1.

    Altogether, what do you believe is the best and the worst in the gamification app?

  2. 2.

    Do you believe this gamification app motivated you to follow Scrum best practices?

  3. 3.

    From all functionalities, which do you consider that positively impacts your motivation in using Scrum the most? And the least?

  4. 4.

    Do you regard the experience of using the gamification app as positive?

  5. 5.

    For how long would you use the gamification app?

  6. 5.1

    If the period is low, what could be done to prevent your motivation to decline?

Thank you for your time and the information you shared with us. We hope this study's results can help improving the gamification app and, consequently, your work.

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Marques, R., Costa, G., Mira da Silva, M. et al. A gamification solution for improving Scrum adoption. Empir Software Eng 25, 2583–2629 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10664-020-09816-9

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