A Systematic Investigation into the Use of Game Elements in the Context of Software Business Landscapes: A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

The software development process is a set of socio-technical activities to produce software artifacts in which humans play a crucial role. Since it is a people centric activity, factors such as user motivation, engagement, communication and collaboration might constrain these activities. Therefore, software business organizations stand to benefit from adopting different tools and methods in order to overcome these obstacles and to improve their software business processes. Research has been made to increase software quality and enhance the software development process. Alongside these studies, innovative techniques and concepts are beneficial. As a solution, the notion of gamification (i.e. employing game elements in non-gaming contexts) has been introduced to enhance the software development process and overcome the challenges mostly related to human factors. However, the applicability of game elements in the context of software business landscapes is still a controversial issue and not totally proven as of yet. Numerous studies have been conducted to examine the benefits of gamification and how game elements affect the software development process. Thus, in this paper, a systematic literature review was conducted in order to investigate the application of game elements both in research and industrial levels of software development and as well as in software business landscapes.