The wonderland mystery: a serious game for supporting education on stakeholder identification in requirements engineering
摘要
The failure of many software projects can be due to the poor quality of the software requirements. Furthermore, it is possible that these requirements are a consequence of, among other issues, poor identification of the stakeholders in the project which will undoubtedly lead to incorrect preliminary requirements. Therefore, the training of the practitioners who will carry out the activities related to the elicitation of requirements in real projects, such as the stakeholder identification, is crucial to efficiently determine a correct list of needs and expectations for the software that will be developed. In this regard, the landscape on Requirements Engineering education has changed over the last decade and serious games have been continuously used to improve crucial factors in the efficient practice of this discipline, such as motivation and communication skills. With this aim in mind, this study introduces the “Wonderland Mystery” game, which is based on the Volere Stakeholder Analysis template, a practical tool for helping practitioners in identifying the stakeholder roles and the types of knowledge that is required from them in a given project. An empirical evaluation involving 76 fifth-year Computer Engineering undergraduates was carried out in order to explore their perceptions of this learning alternative. Data were collected through questionnaires, interviews, and game sessions. The results obtained demonstrate the game’s capacity to strengthen the students’ relevant skills on stakeholder identification, while their confidence, satisfaction, and perceived learning are significantly improved considering information collected from pre and post-evaluations.