1 the dynamics of creativity in software development daniel graziotin profes 2013 doctoral symposium...

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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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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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Thank you for your attention

Daniel Graziotindaniel.Graziotin@unibz.it

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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).