Gamification of Software Testing

Writing good software tests is difficult, not every software developer's favorite occupation, and not a prominent aspect in programming education. However, human involvement in testing is unavoidable: What makes a test good is often down to intuition; what makes a test useful depends on an understanding of the program context; what makes a test find bugs depends on understanding the intended program behaviour. Because the consequences of insufficient testing can be dire, this paper explores a new angle to address the testing problem: Gamification is the approach of converting potentially tedious or boring tasks to components of entertaining gameplay, where the competitive nature of humans motivates them to compete and excel. By applying gamification concepts to software testing, there is potential to fundamentally change software testing in several ways: First, gamification can help to overcome deficiencies in education, where testing is a highly neglected topic. Second, gamification engages practitioners in testing tasks they would otherwise neglect, and gets them to use advanced testing tools and techniques they would otherwise not consider. Finally, gamification makes it possible to crowdsource complex testing tasks through games with a purpose. Collectively, these applications of gamification have the potential to substantially improve software testing practice, and thus software quality.