The Dynamics of Creativity in Software Development

Software is primarily developed for people by people and human factors must be studied in all software engineering phases. Creativity is the source to improvise solutions to problems for dominating complex systems such as software development. However, there is a lack of knowledge in what creativity is in software development and what its dynamics are. This study describes the current state of the research plan towards a theory on creativity in software development. More specifically, it (1) states the motivation for studying creativity in software development under a multidisciplinary view; it (2) provides a first review of the literature identifying the shortcomings in the field; it (3) proposes a research design, which includes rarely employed methods in software engineering. To understand creativity in software development will provide a better knowledge of the software construction process and how individuals intellectually contribute to the creation of better, innovative products.Comment: 6 Pages. To be presented in the 14th International Conference on Product-Focused Software Process Improvement (PROFES 2013) - Doctoral Symposium, 12 June 2013, Paphos, Cyprus. This is the final, accepted version (after peer review

Happy software developers solve problems better: psychological measurements in empirical software engineering

For more than 30 years, it has been claimed that a way to improve software developers' productivity and software quality is to focus on people and to provide incentives to make developers satisfied and happy. This claim has rarely been verified in software engineering research, which faces an additional challenge in comparison to more traditional engineering fields: software development is an intellectual activity and is dominated by often-neglected human aspects. Among the skills required for software development, developers must possess high analytical problem-solving skills and creativity for the software construction process. According to psychology research, affects-emotions and moods-deeply influence the cognitive processing abilities and performance of workers, including creativity and analytical problem solving. Nonetheless, little research has investigated the correlation between the affective states, creativity, and analytical problem-solving performance of programmers. This article echoes the call to employ psychological measurements in software engineering research. We report a study with 42 participants to investigate the relationship between the affective states, creativity, and analytical problem-solving skills of software developers. The results offer support for the claim that happy developers are indeed better problem solvers in terms of their analytical abilities. The following contributions are made by this study: (1) providing a better understanding of the impact of affective states on the creativity and analytical problem-solving capacities of developers, (2) introducing and validating psychological measurements, theories, and concepts of affective states, creativity, and analytical-problem-solving skills in empirical software engineering, and (3) raising the need for studying the human factors of software engineering by employing a multidisciplinary viewpoint.Comment: 33 pages, 11 figures, published at Peer

Creativity In Conscience Society

Creativity is a result of brain activity which differentiates individuals and could ensure an important competitive advantage for persons, for companies, and for Society in general. Very innovative branches – like software industry, computer industry, car industry – consider creativity as the key of business success. Natural Intelligence Creativity can develop basic creative activities, but Artificial Intelligence Creativity, and, especially, Conscience Intelligence Creativity should be developed and they could be enhanced over the level of Natural Intelligence. Providing only neurological research still does not offer a scientific basis for understanding creativity but thousand years of creative natural intelligence behavior observations offer some algorithms, models, methods, guidelines and procedures which could be used successfully in Conscience Society Creativity. Present Essay discusses the evolution of the notion of Creativity (what it is, why it is important, where it is used), analyzes creativity from basic point of view (Creativity as a Brain Activity; Mastering Daily Life; Creativity and Profession; Piirto’s six Steps; When and where Creativity Occurs; How Creative People are looked upon), and also manages Individual Creativity and Company Goals (Individual Creativity; Teams, Creativity and Product Development; Company’s Product Development Goals; Entrepreneur’s and Small Companies’ Product Development).creativity, intuition, spirituality, conscience society, natural intelligence, artificial intelligence.

Knowledge Management in Software Development

Today’s business environment is extremely dynamic and competitive. In order to sustain the pressure and gain a competitive edge, it is imperative for organizations to be creative in their software development efforts. Agile software development has huge potential for nurturing creativity. However, little research has examined creativity in the context of software development projects, particularly those using agile practices. The objective of this paper is to articulate a model that elucidates the relationship between agile practices and creativity. Further, the model tries to provide an understanding of how Knowledge Integration mediates the Relationship between agile practices and team creativity

Conceptual Model for Developing Creativity in Batik Industry

The purpose of this research is to develop a conceptual model of creativity in batik industry. This model was developed by conducting a study from previous research that discuss important factors for the development of creativity. This conceptual model was built based on four variable, namely creative person, intrinsic motivation, job skills training, and creative organizational climate. Creative person will stimulate the creativity development in batik industry. A creative person are more able to improve their creativity if they have intrinsic motivation, given some training that related with the job skills they needed, and supported by organization that have positive climate (climate in organization that respects creativity, provide opportunities, time, facilities, infrastructure and incentives to employees to think about, designing, researching and developing new products that better and more innovative). For the further research, this study can be continued by testing the model empirically through distributing the questionnaire to some participant of SMEs and processing data from the results of questionnaire distribution using the data processing software like SPSS, LISRELL, etc

Entanglements of creative agency and digital technology : a sociomaterial study of computer game development

Digital technology, with its distinctive characteristics that result from the fundamental process of digitalization that underpins it, is seen as fundamentally altering processes of creativity. However, we currently have limited understanding of creativity in relation to the development of digital technology. Computer game development, with its combination of esthetic, affective and cultural use features and highly sophisticated digital technologies, is a valuable setting for investigating these issues. In this paper, we explore how computer games are shaped through the interplay between the creative intentions of developers and the digital technologies involved in their production and playing. Drawing on in-depth studies conducted at three leading computer game development studios and a leading producer of the software system used in game development, this paper shows how the game developers' creative ideas for imagined novel game-playing experiences relate to a) the development of relevant digital technologies, and b) the emergence of new game development practices. The article goes on to propose a view of creativity as an on-going flow that, following an initial ‘creative impulse’, ripples through the sociomaterial entanglements of a particular setting, reconfiguring them in the process and spreading out in time and space in often unexpected ways

Impact of Stress on Software Engineers Knowledge Sharing and Creativity (A Pakistani Perspective)

Software development involves technology as well as human efforts. Software engineering is supportive to create a quality of product by adopting the process of sharing knowledge. A lot of research was conducted on the technical side but human side of software development disregarded. Knowledge and creativity considered major factors for improving the software quality. Currently professionals working in the field of software engineering are under impressive pressure which cause stress for the Software engineers. It is highly desirable to conduct an empirical study on impact of stress on software engineers knowledge sharing & creativity. The major motivation for this study is to investigate the impact of job stress factors which can affect the software engineering knowledge sharing capabilities and creativity. The research is based on industrial assessment. For conducting this study we developed a questionnaire based on Stress Factors. Statistical analyses are performed through SPSS tool. On the basis of the results from the survey, we proposed some strategies for those factors that have high impact on software engineers and try to mitigate their affect. These results highlight stress factors and their impact on software engineers knowledge sharing and creativity, working in Pakistani software industry

Impact of Stress on Software Engineers Knowledge Sharing and Creativity (A Pakistani Perspective)

Software development involves technology as well as human efforts. Software engineering is supportive to create a quality of product by adopting the process of sharing knowledge. A lot of research was conducted on the technical side but human side of software development disregarded. Knowledge and creativity considered major factors for improving the software quality. Currently professionals working in the field of software engineering are under impressive pressure which cause stress for the Software engineers. It is highly desirable to conduct an empirical study on impact of stress on software engineers knowledge sharing & creativity. The major motivation for this study is to investigate the impact of job stress factors which can affect the software engineering knowledge sharing capabilities and creativity. The research is based on industrial assessment. For conducting this study we developed a questionnaire based on Stress Factors. Statistical analyses are performed through SPSS tool. On the basis of the results from the survey, we proposed some strategies for those factors that have high impact on software engineers and try to mitigate their affect. These results highlight stress factors and their impact on software engineers knowledge sharing and creativity, working in Pakistani software industry

Creative Thinking in eXtreme Programming

Agile methods such as eXtreme Programming have achieved an explosive interest in the software development community. They can be seen as a reaction to the more traditional and control-oriented methods, agile methods handle changes in design and requirements and they open up for creativity during the whole project lifecycle. The knowledge management in agile methods is also agile, it means that knowledge creation and sharing processes are simplified in comparison with other more comprehensive development methodologies. This paper is developed under the idea that agile software development can be enhanced by a better understanding of knowledge management and creativity. eXtreme Programming is analyzed from the perspective of the creativity, we believe that concepts related to creative teams (roles, structure, performance and purposes) are important insights about the use of agile methods in general and eXtreme Programming in particular.Keywords/Index Terms: Knowledge Management; Creativity; Software Engineering; Agile Methods; User-centered innovation