28th European Conference on Systems, Software and Services Process Improvement (EuroSPI), Krems, Austria, 1 - 03 September 2021, vol.1442, pp.695-707
A common strategy to train software practitioners in agile frameworks is to have employees undertake classroom-based training. However, due to its nature, participants are lectured for a scheduled time-line with little necessity to interact. In particular, classroom-based training often might not provide substantial trainee interaction, which could result in apathy. To tackle this issue, we conducted empirical research to investigate the role of digital game-based learning (GBL) in employees' training on the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe). To figure out whether gameplay was a preferable training method, PlaySAFe (i.e., a 3D game) was developed within the study's scope and tested with nine active SAFe practitioners from an industrial setting. Restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic have forced many to seek alternative means of teaching and learning. In particular, the findings obtained from the tests illustrate that PlaySAFe can be effectively used as a complementary tool that supports SAFe classroom-based training. This study has highlighted numerous benefits of GBL, such as allowing newcomers a quick and efficient means to learn and understand the practical groundwork of SAFe in advance of learning more theoretical concepts in conventional training.