Title: Using Gamification for Improving the Adoption of IT Management Frameworks

Date: 11/04/2018

Time: 11h30

Location: Room 0.17, Pavilhão de Informática II, Alameda

Advisor: Professor Miguel Leitão Bignolas Mira da Silva 

Abstract: New tools and methods are being recently adopted to manage Information Technology (IT), whose importance has been growing in software development organizations. Due to this exponential rising of IT, Information Technology Service Management (ITSM) strategies have been adopted to bring closer traditional technology and business needs. Despite proven benefits delivered when specific frameworks support IT management, which includes software development and ITSM, IT workers are still resistant and lack motivation to adopt best practices.This thesis proposes the usage of gamification, i.e. using game elements in non-gaming contexts, to increase adoption of IT frameworks that translate best practices for professionals working in software development and ITSM fields, which cover the IT management tasks.A Design Science Research Methodology (DSRM) is being used to guide this work. A generic proposal was partially built from outputs from semi-structured interviews with managers and a survey disseminated to practitioners. That solution was then adapted to Scrum, the most widely adopted agile methodology, and ITIL, the most accepted ITSM framework, and implemented as Jira Software and Jira Service Desk apps, respectively.For each framework, two iterations will be conducted on design and development, demonstration, and evaluation activities. Field studies will be conducted in real environments, and end-users are being involved during the whole process. Behaviour will be assessed based on data extracted from Jira Software and Jira Service Desk, which will allow to calculate relevant metrics. Feedback will be gathered through interviews with end-users. These activities were selected while designing the evaluation process, based on a DSRM evaluation framework.