access icon free Auction-based serious game for bug tracking

Today, one of the challenges in software engineering is utilising application lifecycle management (ALM) tools effectively in software development. In particular, it is hard for software developers to engage with the work items that are appointed to themselves in these ALM tools. In this study, the authors have focused on bug tracking in ALM where one of the most important metrics is mean time to resolution that is the average time to fix a reported bug. To improve this metric, they developed a serious game application based on an auction-based reward mechanism. The ultimate aim of this approach is to create an incentive structure for software practitioners to find and resolved bugs that are auctioned where participants are encouraged to solve and test more bugs in less time and improve quality of software development in a competitive environment. They conduct hypothesis tests by performing a Monte Carlo simulation. The preliminary results of this research support the idea that using a gamification approach for an issue tracking system enhances the productivity and decreases mean time to resolution.

Inspec keywords: Monte Carlo methods; software maintenance; software development management; computer games; public domain software; program debugging; software engineering; project management

Other keywords: bug tracking; important metrics; software developers; mean time; bugs; software engineering; software practitioners; ALM tools; auction-based serious game; utilising application lifecycle management; serious game application; reported bug; average time; auction-based reward mechanism; software development

Subjects: Diagnostic, testing, debugging and evaluating systems; Software management; Software engineering techniques; Computer games

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