Gamifying the Onboarding Process for Novice Software Practitioners

Abstract

As the software development process becomes more complex, the adaptation challenges for novice software practitioners become magnified. In particular, an invisible adaptation barrier could have emerged between a software project and newly hired software engineers. This barrier needs to be overcome as soon as possible for the new comers to be productive and effective. To address this issue, we propose a tailored gamification process especially for novice software engineers so as to improve their onboarding process. The approach aims to provide the novice practitioners more motivation and less struggling, which promotes the utilization of "6D Gamification Framework" that is discussed as an example.