Toward a Gamification Framework for Requirement Elicitation: Insights From a Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

Requirement elicitation is the first and foremost step in project development. A set of quality requirements anticipates utmost diligence as this carries the rest of the project. During requirement elicitation, the involvement and engagement of stakeholders determine the extent of the project’s success. Ensuring constant stakeholder motivation and engagement is challenging and requires adequate measures to keep them ambitious throughout. Gamification is an approach that helps sustain and enhance continuous stakeholder enthusiasm by using concepts and elements that appeal to human psychology. The accurate use of gamified concepts and elements ensures constant stakeholder motivation in requirement elicitation and leads to quality requirement generation by reducing ambiguity. Although the use of gamification has the potential to yield productive results, it is not guaranteed in every case. Therefore, there is a need for a comprehensive study of the characteristics, attributes, and elements of gamification in the context of software project development. This paper attempts to identify this problem, and its study is based on the detailed investigation of 74 research articles. This paper adopts a systematic review approach to previous studies and proposes research based on gamification and its elements and using gamified concepts in industrial software development. This detailed analysis and review assembles data, examines queries, and explores implications to develop a theoretical framework to contribute to the knowledge of the existing body of literature. A valuable contribution is made through the projection of the current standing of gamification in software project development that suggests that further research in contextual specificity of a project’s requirement elicitation step can guarantee successful software by yielding quality results. Overall, gamification has potential if used appropriately in requirement engineering, and its application can potentially revolutionize requirement elicitation for stakeholders and project managers.