ScrumAge: Serious Game de Simulação para o Aprendizado da Metodologia Ágil Scrum

Abstract

Agile methodologies are being widely used for project management, especially software development. For this purpose, Scrum is the most used and requested methodology in the industry. Based on this, studies on new approaches that seek to simplify their learning can be of great value. On the other hand, among the most promising methods to assist in educational purposes are serious games, which are games with goals beyond pure entertainment. In this context, a bibliographic review was conducted to verify which serious games have already been created to support Scrum learning. This research identified that, although some games with the same purpose already exist, there is still room for new approaches, exploring more motivating strategies and considering the possible roles involved in the software development process. Therefore, this work describes the design, prototyping, and evaluation of a serious game to help learn Scrum, called ScrumAge. In it, the player will participate in the simulation of software development by a team using Scrum. ScrumAge intends to stand out among other similar-purpose games by being more accessible, introducing the player to complementary concepts that are useful but usually disregarded in academic teaching. Also, by providing an integrated knowledge repository to keep theoretical concepts easily accessible during the practice simulated by the game. After the prototype development, 39 information technology professionals carried out an evaluation that showed a very positive perception of the system.