INTEGRATING CREATIVITY INTO EXTREME

PROGRAMMING PROCESS

Broderick Crawford

Pontiﬁcia Universidad Cat´olica de Valpara´ıso, Universidad T´ecnica Federico Santa Mar´ıa, Valpara´ıso, Chile

Claudio Le´on de la Barra

Pontiﬁcia Universidad Cat´olica de Valpara´ıso, Valpara´ıso, Chile

Keywords:

Creativity, Software Development, Agile Methodologies, eXtreme Programming.

Abstract:

Human and social factors are very important in developing software and the development of new software

requires the generation of novel ideas. In this paper, the Agile method called eXtreme Programming (XP) is

analyzed and evaluated from the perspective of the creativity. The conclusion is that XP can be fostered from

a creativity perspective.

1 INTRODUCTION

Software engineering research is technical and de-

emphasizes the human and social aspects, although

Software is developed for people and by people(John

et al., 2005). By other hand, the traditional devel-

opment process of new products has been recently

criticized by Kotler and Tras de Bes (Kotler and

Tr´ıasdeBes, 2004), they point out that fundamental

creative aspects are not considered at all and as a con-

sequence this development is not useful, viable or in-

novative. In this context, it is interesting to consider

the new proposals of agile methodologiesfor software

development in order to analyse and evaluate them at

the light of the existing creative expositions, mainly

considering the teamwork practices.

The agile principles and values have emphasized

the importance of collaboration and interaction in the

software development and, by other hand, creative

work commonly involves collaboration in some form

and it can be understood as an interaction between

an individual and a sociocultural context. We believe

that the innovation and development of new products

is an interdisciplinary issue (Takeuchi and Nonaka,

1986), we are interested in the study of the potential

of new concepts and techniques to foster creativity in

software engineering (Gu and Tong, 2004).

2 CREATIVITY

Considering the object of analysis: a software devel-

opment teamwork, that must respond to the require-

ments of a speciﬁc client for a particular problem, a

suitable deﬁnition of creativity is the one raised by

Welsch (Welsh, 1967):

Creativity is the process of generating unique

products by transformation of existing products.

These products, tangible and intangible, must be

unique only to the creator, and must meet the crite-

ria of purpose and value established by the creator.

More speciﬁcally, and from an eminently creative

perspective, it is possible to distinguish three aspects

at the interior of a group developing new products:

a) The purposes that the team tries to reach, which de-

mand two scopes of results (Csikszentmihalyi, 1998;

Guilford, 1968; Hallman, 1963; Hallman, 1966a;

Hallman, 1966b):

• Those related to the creative result that must be

original, elaborated, productive and ﬂexible.

• Those related to the creative team, so that it

reaches its goals, developing cognitive abilities

and presenting an improved disposition to the

change. All this in order to obtain a better cre-

ative team performance in the future.

b) The performance shown by the team in connection

with the main aspects of the complex dynamics that

the persons build inside a team. We describe three

216

Crawford B. and León de la Barra C. (2008).

INTEGRATING CREATIVITY INTO EXTREME PROGRAMMING PROCESS.

In Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - ISAS, pages 216-219

DOI: 10.5220/0001687402160219

 SciTePress

aspects:

• The personal conditions of the members of the

team, in terms of the styles and cognitives abil-

ities, the personality, their intrinsic motivation

and knowledge (Woodman et al., 1993; Amabile,

1998; Amabile et al., ; Csikszentmihalyi, 1998).

• The organizational conditions in which the cre-

ative team is inserted, and that determines, at least

partly, its functioning. These conditions, in the

extent that present/display certain necessary par-

ticular characteristics - although non sufﬁcient -

for the creative performance. They emphasize

in special the culture (communication, collabo-

ration, trust, conﬂict handle, pressure and learn-

ing) (Woodman et al., 1993; Kotler and Arm-

strong, 2003; Isaksen et al., ); the internal struc-

ture (formalization, autonomy and evaluation of

the performance) (Woodman et al., 1993; Kotler

and Armstrong, 2003; Isaksen et al., ; Amabile,

1998); the team available resources (time dispo-

sition) (Woodman et al., 1993; Kotler and Arm-

strong, 2003; Amabile et al., ) and the physical

atmosphere of work (Leonard and Swap, 1999).

• The conditions of performance of the creative

team, mainly the creative process realized, which

supposes the set of speciﬁc phases that allow to

assure the obtaining of a concrete result (cre-

ative product) (Leonard and Swap, 1999; Wallas,

1926).

c) The structure of the creative team, particularly

the group characteristics, such as norms, cohesive-

ness, size, diversity, roles, task and problem-solving

approaches (Woodman et al., 1993).

Of the mentioned aspects, here we are interested

in the team for the development of new products, spe-

cially considering: the creative process and the roles

surrounding this process.

2.1 The Creative Team

Lumsdaine and Lumsdaine (Lumsdaine and Lums-

daine, 1995) raise the subject of the required cogni-

tives abilities (mindsets) for creative problem resolu-

tion. Their tipology is excellent for the creative team,

and the different roles to consider. These roles are:

Detective, Explorer, Artist, Engineer, Judge and Pro-

ducer. Leonard and Swap (Leonard and Swap, 1999)

have mentioned additional roles, possible to be in-

tegrated with the previous ones, because they try to

make more fruitful the divergence and the conver-

gence in the creative process: provoker, think tank,

facilitator and manager.

Kelley and Littman (Kelley and Littman, 2005),

on the other hand, have raised a role tipology similar

to Lumsdaine and Lumsdaine (Lumsdaine and Lums-

daine, 1995), being interesting that they group the

roles in three categories: those directed to the learn-

ing of the creative team (susceptible of corresponding

with the detective, explorer, artist, provoker and think

tank roles), others directed to the internal organization

and success of the team (similar to the judge, facilita-

tor and manager roles) and, ﬁnally, roles whose pur-

pose is to construct the innovation (possibly related to

the role of the engineer and judge).

3 SOFTWARE CREATIVITY

Since human creativity is thought as the source to re-

solve complex problem or create innovative products,

one possibility to improve the software development

process is to design a process which can stimulate the

creativity of the developers. There are few studies re-

ported on the importance of creativity in software de-

velopment. In management and business, researchers

have done much work about creativity and obtained

evidence that the employees who had appropriate cre-

ativity characteristics, worked on complex, challeng-

ing jobs, and were supervised in a supportive,noncon-

trolling fashion, produced more creative work. Then,

according to the previous ideas the use of creativity

in software development is undeniable, but require-

ments engineering is not recognized as a creative pro-

cess in all the cases (Maiden et al., 2004). In a few

publications the importance of creativity has been in-

vestigated in all the phases of software development

process (Glass, 1995; Gu and Tong, 2004; Crawford

and de la Barra, 2007) and mostly focused in the

requirements engineering (Robertson, 2005; Maiden

and Robertson, 2005; Mich et al., 2005). Neverthe-

less, the use of techniques to foster creativity in re-

quirements engineering is still shortly investigated.

It is not surprising that the role of communication

and interaction is central in many of the creativity

techniques. The most popular creativity technique

used for requirements identiﬁcation is the classical

brainstorming and more recently, role-playing-based

scenarios, storyboard-illustrated scenarios, simulat-

ing and visualizing have been applied as an attempt

to bring more creativity to requirements elicitation.

These techniques try to address the problem of iden-

tifying the viewpoints of all the stakeholders (Mich

et al., 2005).

However, in requirements engineering the an-

swers do not arrive by themselves, it is necessary

to ask, observe, discover, and increasingly create re-

INTEGRATING CREATIVITY INTO EXTREME PROGRAMMING PROCESS

217

quirements. If the goal is to build competitive and

imaginative products, we must make creativity part of

the requirements process. Indeed, the importance of

creative thinking is expected to increase over the next

decade (Maiden and Gizikis, 2001).

4 XP: EXTREME

PROGRAMMING

Extreme Programming is an iterative approach to

software development (Beck, 2000). The methodol-

ogy is designed to deliver the software that customer

needs when it’s needed. This methodology empha-

sizes team work. Managers, customers, and develop-

ers are all part of a team dedicated to deliver quality

software. XP implements a simple, yet effective way

to enable groupware style development. XP improves

a software project in four essential ways; communi-

cation, simplicity, feedback, and courage. XP deﬁnes

the following roles for a software development pro-

cess (Beck, 2000): Programmer, Customer, Tester,

Tracker, Coach, Consultant and Big boss or Manager.

5 CREATIVITY IN XP

Regarding to the structure dimension of a new prod-

uct development team (in particular software), it is

possible to relate the roles in creativity to the roles

deﬁned in the XP methodology distinguishing: base

roles, that is, those directly related to the creative pro-

cesses and software development, and support roles,

whose function is to support or lead the other roles for

a better performance.

In relation with the structure dimension it’s impor-

tant to considerate how the team can operate. In order

to implement the functionality of each role, we must

considerate two aspects: basic organizational condi-

tions and the pertinent creative process.

5.1 The Correspondence between

Creative and XP Roles

The following is the correlation between creative and

XP roles:

• The detective function consisting in collecting in-

formation related to a problem is made by the

client himself in XP, because this one generates

the ﬁrst contact with the software development

team.

• The function of explorer consisting in deﬁning

completely the problem is made in XP as much

by the client as the manager of the team, all to-

gether they appreciate the reach of the identiﬁed

problem, as well as of the possible solutions. The

function of the artist consisting in transforming

the information, creating new relations, and there-

fore generating interesting solutions is made by

the developer, that in XP methodologyis in charge

of the analysis, design and programming of soft-

ware.

• The function of the engineer referred to clarify

and to evaluate the new ideas, in terms of its feasi-

bility is made in XP by the tester and the tracker.

• The function of the judge, understood as the

deﬁnitive selection of the solutions to implant, is

made in XP by the tracker and the client.

• The function of the producer, referred to the im-

plementation of the selected ideas (strictly speak-

ing it is working software) is made in XP by the

client in his organization, including the processes

and procedures that this function implies.

The supporting roles considered are:

• The provoker; creativity demands that the diver-

gence as well as convergence in the solutions be

maximum and complete. There is not explicit ref-

erence in XP methodology about divergent think-

ing.

• The think tank who helps the team work ”from

outside” is equivalent completely to the role of the

consultant.

• The facilitator whose function is helping the team,

corresponds in XP to the coach role.

• The manager whose function is to lead to the team

in terms of its general efﬁciency and its effective-

ness corresponds with XP’s big boss or manager.

6 CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE

RESEARCH

The Extreme Programming methodology includes

implicitly central aspects of a creative teamwork.

These aspects can be organizedaccording to the struc-

ture that the team adopts and the performance that

characterizes to the team.

The structure that the team adopts and specially

the different roles that the methodology advises to de-

ﬁne, nearly correspond with the roles at the interior of

a creative team. The performance that characterizes

the team through certain advisable practices, from the

perspective of creativity, constitutes the necessary ba-

sic conditions, although nonsufﬁcient, in order to fa-

vor the group creative performance. These conditions

ICEIS 2008 - International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems

218

- called practices in XP methodology - are accompa-

nied by concrete phases of constituent activities of an

agile software development process, which is possi-

ble to correspond with the creative process, which is

fundamental to the creative performance.

In spite of the previous comments, we think that

XP methodology should have a more explicit refer-

ence to:

• The provoker role that is thoroughly described in

creativity as a fundamental factor to generate in-

novation. This can be explained because, in gen-

eral, agile methodologies do not aim, as a central

element, to generate an original software, but an

effective one.

• The distinction and formalization of the creative

phases to generate options incubation and option

choices (that are fundamental in creativity). It is

assumed that they take place in the iterative and

production process. Again, XP is not focused in

”originality”, resulting that the divergence is not

so fundamental in XP.

• A more direct mention to the physical atmosphere

of work, that in creativity are considered as highly

relevant to enhance the performance. These as-

pects should have a greater consideration since

software development is a special case of pro-duct

development.

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