Creativity in Agile Systems Development: A Literature Review

Abstract

Abstract. Proponents of agile methods claim that enabling, fostering and driving creativity is the key motivation that differentiates agile methods from their more traditional, beauraucratic counterparts. However, there is very little rigorous research to support this claim. Like most of their predecessors, the development and promotion of these methods has been almost entirely driven by practitioners and consultants, with little objective validation from the research community. This lack of validation is particularly relevant for SMEs, given that many of their project teams typify the environment to which agile methods are most suited i.e. small, co-located teams with diverse, blended skills in unstructured, sometimes even chaotic surroundings. This paper uses creativity theory as a lens to review the current agile method literature to understand exactly how much we know about the extent to which creativity actually occurs in these agile environments. The study reveals many gaps and conflict of opinion in the body of knowledge in its current state and identifies many avenues for further research.

Sprinting Out of Stuckness: Overcoming Moments of Stuckness to Support the Creativity Flow in Agile Team Settings

“…Although Agile and Scrum aim for highly effective and productive processes, with continuous cycles of ideation, validation and iteration, standstills can occur. More specifically, during sprint cycles, team members sometimes experience they feel stuck or fixated, as they are required to iterate and reframe creatively in every sprint (Conboy, Wang and Fitzgerald, 2009). Such cognitive hindrances have often been clustered into the group of phenomena related to design fixation (e.g., Crilly and Cardoso, 2017).…”

“…The fast pace of deliverables required in sprints carries the underlying assumption that creativity is highly expected in order to produce value. Hence, it is important to investigate creativity in the Agile and Scrum contexts, to support the flow of work and ability of a team to deliver during each of these stages (Conboy, Wang and Fitzgerald, 2009). The literature review is clustered into three categories, which are deemed essential for the context of Agile and Scrumcollaboration, communication and creativity.…”

“…This process provokes a feeling ICED19 of uncertainty in the team, which is coped with by relying on the team's creativity and interactions rather than on processes and tools (Cockburn, 2001). This cycle can often be exhausting for the team, due to time constraints and the need to be continuously creative (Conboy, Wang and Fitzgerald, 2009). Dorst and Cross (2001) state that irrespective of whether it can be classified as a "big" or "small" one, every design process has creative moments.…”

Pragmatic Software Innovation

“…Within software development, there is some interest in innovation as a goal for software development. Jim Highsmith and Alistair Cockburn point to the potential for agile development to support innovation [25], but as Conboy et al observe based on a number of studies on the relationship between agility and innovation or improvisation: These have tended to focus more on the agile practices themselves as the innovation and not the extent to which the practices facilitate agility and innovation [13].…”

Adopting Collaborative Games into Agile Requirements Engineering

“…This requires that the customers work with developers as active team members. The idea of having a customer as a member of a development team has grown from a single on-site customer, which has been dismissed by Kent Beck himself as "an error of early XP thinking" (Conboy et al, 2009), to a customer team "equal to or larger in size than the programming team" (McBreen, 2003). Since there is a wide range of potential customers, it would be difficult for a single person to represent them all (Ambler, 2008).…”