Gamification and Gaming Elements for Software Requirements Elicitation: A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

: Requirements elicitation holds a significant place in developing successful software, thus stands crucial for the success of any software project. There are numerous elicitation techniques present for eliciting requirements from the stakeholders, but these techniques are more textual in nature which give rise not only to problems like ambiguity, inconsistency, incompleteness but also lack of stakeholder’s involvement and interest in the system. If stakeholders are not properly engaged in the process, this could lead to disastrous outcomes. Researchers have worked on new ways of eliciting requirements from the user; one of them is using gamification. Gamification is a ‘ young ’ yet exciting way of engaging stakeholders to the system. It uses game mechanism and elements in non-gaming context. Several studies have referred its use as ‘the use of non-serious context in a serious context’ . In this article, SLR is presented on gamification in elicitation of requirements. Although, there are multiple studies on gamification in requirements elicitation, yet none of them targeted the suitable game elements for elicitation, and undesirable features of gamification during elicitation. For this purpose, we have surveyed 525 initial and 48 primary studies. A set of 18 game elements suitable for requirements elicitation except points, badges, leaderboards (PBL) were determined. Also, undesirable features of gamification and the solution to overcome these challenges have also been identified. Furthermore, effect of gamification on verbal communication during elicitation has also been determined. This study effectively contributes to highlighting the role of gamification in eliciting requirements from the users. This study also provides answers to the research questions which will be helpful for practitioners and software development teams while performing elicitation. qualities of gamification, undesirable features, requirements extraction, unacceptable features of gamification, gamification