A Scrumban integrated gamification approach to guide software process improvement: A Turkish case study

In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in tailoring agile development methodologies by combining different agile practices. The adoption of such a balancing approach requires a systematic customization of best practices among agile methodologies. This paper presents an empirical case study for adopting a hybrid Scrumban methodology with an integrated gamification approach, which was conducted in the context of a small-medium enterprise (SME). First, we conducted a focus group to better understand the potential inquiries that might have been useful to improve the development process. Secondly, we employed a cross-sectional survey approach to explore the company personnel’s opinions regarding the changes in the process. The survey data was collected from 30 practitioners who were working for the same project in a software development organization in a technology research centre. The descriptive statistics were calculated with paired sample t-tests being used to compare for integration process that contains three stages (i) initial stage, (ii) Scrumban stage, (iii) Scrumban with integrated Gamification stage. The preliminary results of this research support the idea that a set of game elements can be integrated with a hybrid software development methodology to enhance individual and organizational productivity.