Serious Refactoring Games

Abstract

Software design issues can severely impede software development and maintenance. Thus, it is important for the success of software projects that developers are aware of bad smells in code artifacts and improve their skills to reduce these issues via refactoring. However, software refactoring is a complex activity and involves multiple tasks and aspects. Therefore, imparting competences for identifying bad smells and refactoring code efficiently is challenging for software engineering education and training. The approaches proposed for teaching software refactoring in recent years mostly concentrate on small and artificial tasks and fall short in terms of higher level competences, such as analysis and evaluation. In this paper, we investigate the possibilities and challenges of designing serious games for software refactoring on real-world code artifacts. In particular, we propose a game design, where students can compete either against a predefined benchmark (technical debt) or against each other. In addition, we describe a lightweight architecture as the technical foundation for the game design that integrates pre-existing analysis tools such as test frameworks and software-quality analyzers. Finally, we provide an exemplary game scenario to illustrate the application of serious games in a learning setting.

Carrot and Stick approaches revisited when managing Technical Debt in an educational context

“…In [17], a serious game design for training in refactoring to improve software quality was proposed. The theoretical design is based on existing tools for assessing the quality of systems such as SonarQube, NDepend or JArchitect.…”

How junior developers deal with their technical debt?

“…However, the authors do not evaluate the effects of this feedback on students' behaviour. Haendler and Neumann experimented with a serious game dedicated to teach about refactoring activities [19]. Our strategy is to let students experiment about technical debt in a realistic, yet academic and supervised environment within a software development project rather than a dedicated learning activity.…”

Introduction to the Minitrack on Measurement and Assessment

“…Thorsten Haendel proposes a combined approach using design patterns and gamification to instruct software refactoring needs, strategies, and techniques in [5]. By competing against other student teams and/or benchmark scores, students can learn to anticipate the need for refactoring, avoid bad design patterns proactively, and incrementally build experience in such matters over time.…”