Gamification is the “use of the game element in a non-gaming context”, defined by Deterding et al. ^[1] to encourage user engagement and improve their motivation towards the intended goals ^[1][2]. The integration of gamification into Enterprise Systems (ESs) has been the most intriguing phenomenon and has proven successful in different domains, such as banking ^[3], tourism ^[4], health ^[5], education ^[6], and enterprise resource planning (ERP) ^[7][8]. The global gamification market was valued at USD 9.9 billion in 2020 and is expected to reach USD 95.5 billion by 2030 ^[9]. This paper focuses on the gamification of software engineering ^[10], especially in the agile Scrum framework ^{[11][12][13][14]}, and shows how the use of gamification has evolved significantly to motivate and engage software engineers in their work and help guide their behavior toward productivity improvements ^{[10][15][16][17]}. Software practitioners also acknowledge the benefits of gamification and use support tools, such as JIRA Hero, that implement essential gamification components ^[18], ScrumKnowsy ^[19], and Visual Studio Achievement ^[20].

Agile methodologies, particularly Scrum, have become foundational to software development practices because their iterative and incremental approaches are designed for flexibility, adaptability, and stakeholder engagement ^[21][22]. This methodology emphasizes empiricism and adaptations, leading to continuous feedback and continued planning ^[23]. However, while Agile possesses many strengths, it is not free of weaknesses. Scalability remains an issue, with Agile having initially been developed for small teams, and coordination in larger organizations proving difficult. The overreliance on highly skilled and self-organizing teams could cause difficulties in environments with less experienced developers. Meanwhile, Agile’s emphasis on a lack of documentation can act counterproductively towards long-term maintainability and knowledge transfer. Poor planning and changing requirements inevitably lead to scope creep, and it proves difficult to accurately estimate both cost and timelines. In addition, Agile’s high velocity and constant adaptability can burn out development teams. There have recently been studies reporting increased concerns about Agile’s effectiveness in real-life environments, with companies dropping and changing agile frameworks and reducing the use of Scrum Masters and agile roles. All these concerns serve to illustrate a need for formalized approaches to managing risks, particularly with emerging areas such as gamification, to make agile settings in modern software development environments and preserve its effectiveness and viability.

Gamification has been adopted in agile software development to address challenges related to the motivation, performance, and engagement of the agile roles (Scrum Master, Product Owner, Development Team) in their software development tasks and Scrum events. Previous studies have shown that improvements were not only related to the engineers’ motivation, engagement, and productivity in their tedious tasks, such as bug fixing, freeing up backlogs or writing unit testing, creating and prioritizing user stories, documentation, and improving employee performance ^{[24][25][26][27][28][29]} but also related to achieving organizational objectives such as developing ^[27][28][29] higher product quality, project performance, and better-defining goals ^[17][30][31].

The research in ^[31] has synthesized gamification in software engineering (SE), shedding light on some of the challenges that arise when gamification is implemented in an enterprise software system. Additionally, Ebert et al. emphasize trust deficiency and the possibility of cheating as notable concerns stemming from applying gamification in software development contexts ^[32]. The literature shows that gamification has led to the emergence of adverse side effects in enterprise systems ^[33], especially teamwork enterprises ^[34], education ^[35], and software development ^[36][37]. They refer to these as “gamification risks” that can detract from teamwork, job performance, and project success.

It was mentioned in principle that, due to the risk of gamification and adverse side effects, emergence was the predominant focus on points, badges, and leaderboards as the primary game elements ^{[15][21][23][24][25][26][29]}, known as “shallow gamification” ^[38]. Studies related to gamified software engineering, agile software development, and software education tend to overlook various other game elements. Also, the adoption of a “one size fits all” gamification strategy applied to the enterprise system ^[34] that disregards user preferences and creates a universal design could lead to the emergence of gamification risks ^[34][39][40].

Meanwhile, the iterative approach of agile methods is beneficial in mitigating certain types of risk, such as product engineering, development engineering, or program constraints-related risks ^[41]. However, there has been increasing recognition that more explicit risk management (RM) practices must be integrated to address emerging challenges, especially in complex and large projects ^{[41][42][43][44][45]}. This gap has encouraged explicit risk management approaches, including risk registers ^[41][46], risk poker ^[47], risk checklist, risk assessment forums ^[48], and risk recommender systems ^[49] within agile frameworks to ensure positive project outcomes and reduce the chances of project failure. Such methods introduce systematic ways of predicting risks and mitigations while making the project management process resilient. The proposed agile risk management methods do not cater to the specifics of gamification risks within agile settings.

A systematic risk management process will equip teams to identify, evaluate, and mitigate gamification risks to ensure that gamification benefits can be accrued without compromising either team well-being or project outcomes. Although the number of adoptions of gamification in agile methodologies is increasing, comprehensive frameworks for managing those risks still constitute a gap in literature. None of the previously mentioned agile risk management frameworks addressed risks related to incorporating gamification into the agile framework, and neither did they study the nature of gamification risks and risk factors related to the software development domain. Thus, in this study, a new risk identification and assessment and management process is proposed to offer a systematic way to proactively handle and prevent the emergence of gamification-specific risks within agile Scrum by identifying, analyzing, and prioritizing risks.

This paper presents an Agile Gamification Risk Management (AGRM) process, which systematically identifies, assesses, and mitigates gamification risks within agile enterprises adopting the Scrum framework, hence responding to a literature gap concerning the management of such risks in software development. The AGRM process combines procedural steps, artifacts, agile roles, and measures for assessment to proactively handle gamification-specific risks while maintaining employee motivation in gamified environments. An evaluation study was performed in three phases: an expert pilot study, a control group without AGRM, and case studies involving two teams with the AGRM process.

Based on the previous multi-stage study ^[36][37], this paper involves qualitative research methods, such as semi-structured interviews and focus groups, that are used to (1) conceptualize gamification risks and risk factors in software development enterprises, particularly in agile Scrum; (2) provide a gamification risk taxonomy that would help with the risk assessment and management process; (3) design a software process model resembling the gamified Scrum framework, events, and roles; and (4) design context-inclusive risk profiles that consider beyond personality types as a contextual risk factor that has led to the emergence of risks, which we elaborate on in the Results section of this paper.