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G. Moser:
"Improving the Software Quality Assurance Process in Academic Software Development with Gamification and Continuous Feedback Techniques";
Supervisor: T. Grechenig, A. Mauczka; 194-03, 2019.

Software Quality Assurance (SQA) in academic software development has not been subject to a
substantial amount of research so far. While subjects like agile practices in academic software
projects have been covered in detail, the focus was never placed on the development process as a
whole. While gamification has been applied to various aspects of software development, research
on applications in the field of SQA are scarce.
Throughout this thesis, the author evaluated several practices aimed at improving SQA in a case
study. For the purpose of making Quality Assurance (QA) related tasks more appealing, the author
used concepts of gamification. Representing a typical student software project, the Mineralbay
project, started by the Montanuniversität Leoben in cooperation with the research group Industrial
Software (INSO) of the Vienna University of Technology (TU), built the underlying case. The
goals of the thesis were formulated as several research questions dividing the complex subject of
quality assurance into the levels of process, coding and documentation.
Initially, a thorough analysis of the development process as a whole was performed, highlighting
deficits and bad smells in terms of SQA. Interviews and surveys were held, gaining insights on the
developers view of SQA in the given setup. The result was a multitude of possible improvements
which was elaborated and subsequently expressed as a list of research questions.
In order for the results to gain general validity, the representativeness of the underlying case was
assured by expert interviews, where domain experts identified Mineralbay as a typical student
software project.
The proposed measures were evaluated and data was collected using interviews, participant observation as well as surveys.
The gained results suggested that high software quality in student projects is a product of multiple
factors. An easy to understand, working and non-frustrating build process forms a solid basis. A
profound set of tests should be executed on each change, preventing regression. An unreliable
or hard to maintain build process will not be followed. A tailored review process (on code, but
also configuration basis) supported by easy to use tools has been identified as another key factor
of quality assurance, as well as for knowledge transfer. Introducing code style guidelines will
help for better readability and maintainability. Integrated Development Environment (IDE), integrated tools for checking code compliance and auto correction are important for developers in
this context. Static code analysis will help uncovering bad code, improve code quality as well as
developer knowledge. Gamification has furthermore been identified as a way of making otherwise
unrewarding quality assurance tasks more attractive. The elaborated and evaluated gamification
tools did increase motivation to attend these kind of tasks.
Based on the gathered conclusions, a list of suggestions on how to implement quality assurance in
a typical student software project was compiled.

Software Quality Assurance (SQA) in academic software development has not been subject to a
substantial amount of research so far. While subjects like agile practices in academic software
projects have been covered in detail, the focus was never placed on the development process as a
whole. While gamification has been applied to various aspects of software development, research
on applications in the field of SQA are scarce.
Throughout this thesis, the author evaluated several practices aimed at improving SQA in a case
study. For the purpose of making Quality Assurance (QA) related tasks more appealing, the author
used concepts of gamification. Representing a typical student software project, the Mineralbay
project, started by the Montanuniversität Leoben in cooperation with the research group Industrial
Software (INSO) of the Vienna University of Technology (TU), built the underlying case. The
goals of the thesis were formulated as several research questions dividing the complex subject of
quality assurance into the levels of process, coding and documentation.
Initially, a thorough analysis of the development process as a whole was performed, highlighting
deficits and bad smells in terms of SQA. Interviews and surveys were held, gaining insights on the
developers view of SQA in the given setup. The result was a multitude of possible improvements
which was elaborated and subsequently expressed as a list of research questions.
In order for the results to gain general validity, the representativeness of the underlying case was
assured by expert interviews, where domain experts identified Mineralbay as a typical student
software project.
The proposed measures were evaluated and data was collected using interviews, participant observation as well as surveys.
The gained results suggested that high software quality in student projects is a product of multiple
factors. An easy to understand, working and non-frustrating build process forms a solid basis. A
profound set of tests should be executed on each change, preventing regression. An unreliable
or hard to maintain build process will not be followed. A tailored review process (on code, but
also configuration basis) supported by easy to use tools has been identified as another key factor
of quality assurance, as well as for knowledge transfer. Introducing code style guidelines will
help for better readability and maintainability. Integrated Development Environment (IDE), integrated tools for checking code compliance and auto correction are important for developers in
this context. Static code analysis will help uncovering bad code, improve code quality as well as
developer knowledge. Gamification has furthermore been identified as a way of making otherwise
unrewarding quality assurance tasks more attractive. The elaborated and evaluated gamification
tools did increase motivation to attend these kind of tasks.
Based on the gathered conclusions, a list of suggestions on how to implement quality assurance in
a typical student software project was compiled.