Title: Gamification for agile: a systematic literature review

Authors: Rita Marques; Miguel Mira da Silva; Daniel Gonçalves

Addresses: Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa, Av. Rovisco Pais 1, 1049-001, Lisboa, Portugal; INOV Inesc Inovação, Rua Alves Redol nº9, 1000-029, Lisboa, Portugal ' Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa, Av. Rovisco Pais 1, 1049-001, Lisboa, Portugal; INOV Inesc Inovação, Rua Alves Redol nº9, 1000-029, Lisboa, Portugal ' Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa, Av. Rovisco Pais 1, 1049-001, Lisboa, Portugal; INESC-ID, Rua Alves Redol nº9, 1000-029, Lisboa, Portugal

Abstract: Gamification has been used in software engineering to motivate practitioners to adopt agile. This study assesses the state of the art regarding the use of gamification in agile projects. A systematic literature review was followed by searching for peer-reviewed papers and dissertations on the topic and assessing their quality. Overall, 225 studies were found, but only 12 selected. Most studies focused on the Scrum framework, and the completion of stories/tasks was the practice subject to gamification more times. While the impact of gamification initiatives was positive, these studies lacked a proper empirical validation of the proposed gamification solutions. Despite the novelty of this field, there seems to be potential in the use of gamification to improve agile projects, but future studies should address the gaps identified in this analysis and provide more detail when reporting their results, namely regarding the discussion of the impact, benefits, and challenges of gamification.

Keywords: gamification; agile; agile management; agile projects; agile practices; scrum; SLR; systematic literature review; software engineering; software engineers; motivation.

DOI: 10.1504/IJASM.2023.130838

International Journal of Agile Systems and Management, 2023 Vol.16 No.2, pp.226 - 261

Received: 22 Nov 2020
Accepted: 07 Nov 2021
Published online: 12 May 2023 *

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