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The Dynamics of Creativityin Software Development
Daniel GraziotinPROFES 2013 Doctoral Symposium12th June, Paphos, Cyprus
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IntroductionBackground, Motivation, Purposes
Literature ReviewCreativity, Affective States, Improvisation, Research Questions
ConclusionWhat is next
Research MethodologyTheory Building, Data Analysis, Theory Representation
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Daniel Graziotin
‣ Researcher
- Human Factors in SE
- Emotions / Moods
- Creativity
- Productivity
- Web Engineering
- Open{Source, Access, Data}
Background
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Daniel Graziotin
‣ Practitioner
• Web Development
• Open Source Software
• Open Knowledge
• task3.cc
Background
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Daniel Graziotin
‣ Stuff
• Singer
• Electric Bass
Background
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“Programming [..] gratifies creative longings [..] and delights sensibilities we have in common with all men.”
Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.The Mythical Man-Month, p.
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Software is for People, by People
Human Factors must be studied
(Crawford et al. , 2012).
Process
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People Trump Process?(Cockburn, 2001)
Picture Credits
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Focus on People
Picture Credits
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Focus on People
Picture Credits
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Software Developmentis Cognitive(Khan et al., 2010)
‣ Creativity
‣ Emotions / Moods
‣ Improvisation
Picture Credits
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Software Engineering
ignores
‣ Creativity misconception
‣ Emotions/Moods ignored
‣ Improvisation neglected
Picture Credits
Purposes of this Study
‣ Definition
‣ Dynamics
‣ Influence
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Creativit
y
Software
Development
‣ Generate a theory
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IntroductionBackground, Motivation, Purposes
Literature ReviewCreativity, Affective States, Improvisation, Research Questions
ConclusionWhat is next
Research MethodologyTheory Building, Data Analysis, Theory Representation
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Literature Review
‣ Hundreds of Definitions in
Psychology
‣ Product/Idea Generation
(evaluation?)
• Novelty
• Usefulness
Defining Creativity
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Literature Review
‣ Definitions limited for the
context of Software
Development
• Pre-implementation phases
• Final Product
Defining Creativity
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Literature Review
‣ Gu and Tong, 2004, exploratory research.
‣ Software Project developed by students
‣ Measurements: Perceived creative time, perceived discipline-based
time, and “other” time.
‣ Formulated Hypotheses:
• Implementation phase most creative, Post-mortem analysis phase least creative;
• UML documentation promotes students to do more creative work in requirement specification and
architecture design phases;
• more creative work does neither accelerate nor decelerate development speed compared with
discipline-based work;
• developers prefer development phases including more creative work than discipline-based work
Creativity in Software Engineering
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Literature Review
‣ Crawford et al., 2012
‣ Previous research on creativity focused on
RE
‣ Techniques to foster creativity are rarely
investigated
‣ Linkage between eXtreme Programming and
Creative Thinking
Creativity in Software Engineering
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Literature Review
‣ Several proposals to foster creativity in software requirements
‣ Evaluation is always in terms of the generated product
‣ Requirements look like ideas
Creativity in Software Engineering
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Literature Review
‣ More than 60 years of studies
‣ Angles
• Product, Process, Person, and Press
‣ Majority of studies on Product (novelty and value)
‣ Affective States
Creativity in Psychology
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Literature Review
‣ Affective States (Mood, Emotions, Feelings)
‣ “one of the most widely studied and least disputed predictors of creativity” (Davis, 2009)
‣ Several Studies
• Tendency: extreme affective states indicate higher creativity
• No big consensus
Creativity and Affective States in Psychology
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Literature Review
‣ “Making sense of incoming working events and developing ad-hoc solutions” (Ciborra, 1996)
• Problem-setting and problem-solving
• Creative
‣ Do we always follow the process?
• We report to follow the process
• We improvise
• Essential to IT firms
‣ Improvisation is a mood
Improvisation
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Improvisation, Creativity, Affective States
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ImprovisationCreativit
y
Affective States
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Research Questions
‣ Is there a misconception of creativity in the context of software development?
‣ What are the key components of creativity in software development at the individual, team, and organizational levels?
‣ What is the relationship between creativity, moods, and improvisation in software development?
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IntroductionBackground, Motivation, Purposes
Literature ReviewCreativity, Affective States, Improvisation, Research Questions
ConclusionWhat is next
Research MethodologyTheory Building, Data Analysis, Theory Representation
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Research Methodology
‣ Explorative study
‣ Generate a theory from empirical evidence.
• Define the steps of the theory building process
• Select a strategy to analyze the data
• Represent the theory in a meaningful way
• Choose research methods
AIMS
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Research Questions 1
Case Selection 2Instruments & Protocols 3
Field Entrance 4
Data Analysis 5Hypotheses Shaping 6Literature Enfolding 7
Closure Reaching 8
Theory Building PhasesEisenhardt, 1989
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Data Analysis PhasesMontoni & Rocha (2010), Charmaz (2006)
Context&
ScopeAudit
Data Collection
Coding
‣ Overlaps with Step 1of previous slide
‣ Surveys
‣ Literature Reviews
‣ Structured and semi-structured interviews
‣ Open
‣ Conceptualization
‣ Axial
‣ Relationships
‣ Selective
‣ Prioritization
‣ Validity
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Theory Representation
Elements of a theory
‣ Constructs
‣ Propositions
‣ Explanations
‣ Scope
Sjøberg et al., 2008
Sjøberg et al., 2008, p. 324
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IntroductionBackground, Motivation, Purposes
Literature ReviewCreativity, Affective States, Improvisation, Research Questions
ConclusionWhat is next
Research MethodologyTheory Building, Data Analysis, Theory Representation
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2
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4
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Conclusion
‣ Proposal: generate theory on creativity in software development
‣ Creativity, Affective States, Improvisation
‣ Major issue: still no focus.
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References
Brooks, F.P.: The Mythical Man-Month. Addison-Wesley, Philippines (1975)Ciborra, C.: Improvisation and information technology in organizations. ICIS 1996. p. 26 (1996).Charmaz, K.: Constructing grounded theory: a practical guide through qualitative analysis. Sage Publications, London (2006).Crawford, B. et al.: Agile software teams must be creatives. 5th International Workshop on Co-operative and Human Aspects of Software Engineering. pp. 20–26 (2012).Davis, M.: Understanding the relationship between mood and creativity: A meta-analysis. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. 108, 1, 25–38 (2009).Dybå, T.: Improvisation in small software organizations. Software, IEEE. September/October, 82–87 (2000).Eisenhardt, K.: Building theories from case study research. Academy of management review. 14, 4, 532–550 (1989).Gu, M., Tong, X.: Towards Hypotheses on Creativity in Software Development. 5th International Conference on Product Focused Software Process Improvement,. pp. 47–61, (2004).Khan, I.A. et al.: Do moods affect programmers’ debug performance? Cognition, Technology & Work. 13, 4, 245–258 (2010).Montoni, M.A., Rocha, A.R.: Applying Grounded Theory to Understand Software Process Improvement Implementation. 7th International Conference on the Quality of Information and Communications Technology. pp. 25–34 IEEE (2010).Sjøberg, D. et al.: Building theories in software engineering. Guide to Advanced Empirical Software Engineering. 1, 1, 312–336 (2008).
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