Abstract
[Context and Motivation] The word “creativity” is used widely in business and academia, but its meaning may differ greatly depending on context. This may cause confusion in the minds of requirements engineers who have to determine which kinds of creativity are relevant to their project and which creativity tools to use. [Question/Problem] The main goal of this work is to understand why and how the meaning of the word “creativity” varies, and study the impacts of these variations on requirements engineering. [Principal ideas / results]. A comparative review of creativity-related literature from Social Sciences and Requirements Engineering was performed. [Contributions] This study results in a new framework for understanding the precise local meaning of creativity used in a specific context, before deciding on the adequate support for it. Since creativity in RE is still a relatively new topic, research directions are also proposed.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Maiden, N., Jones, S., Karlsen, K., Neill, R., Zachos, K., Milne, A.: Requirements Engineering as Creative Problem Solving: A Research Agenda for Idea Finding. In: IEEE RE 2010, Sydney, Australia, pp. 57–66 (2010)
Deming, W.E.: Out of the crisis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1986)
Ley, M., Bast, H.: Computer Science Bibliography, http://www.dblp.org
Google Scholar, http://scholar.google.be/ (accessed: October 8, 2011)
Sawyer, R.K.: Explaining Creativity: The Science of Human Innovation, 1st edn. Oxford University Press, USA (2006)
Nguyen, L., Shanks, G.: A framework for understanding creativity in requirements engineering. Information and Software Technology 51(3), 655–662 (2009)
Wallas, G.: The Art of Thought, Abridged ed. Watts and Co. (1949)
Hadamard, J.: An essay on the psychology of invention in the mathematical field. Courier Dover Publications (1954)
Boden, M.: The creative mind: myths & mechanisms, 2nd edn. Routledge, London (2004)
Osborn, A.F.: Principles and procedures of creative problem-solving. Scribner (1963)
Gordon, W.J.J.: Synectics: the development of creative capacity. Collier Books (1961)
Dewey, J.: How We Think. Dover Publications (1997)
Sternberg, R.J., Lubart, T.I.: Investing in creativity. American psychologist 51(7) (1996)
Fischer, G.: Social creativity: turning barriers into opportunities for collaborative design. In: Procs. 8th Conference on Participatory Design, vol. 1, pp. 152–161 (2004)
Sawyer, R.K.: Group genius: the creative power of collaboration. Basic Books (2007)
Jones, S., Lynch, P., Maiden, N.A.M., Lindstaedt, S.N.: Use and Influence of Creative Ideas and Requirements for a Work-Integrated Learning System. In: RE, pp. 289–294 (2008)
Mich, L., Anesi, C., Berry, D.M.: Requirements engineering and creativity: An innovative approach based on a model of the pragmatics of communication. In: Proc. REFSQ, pp. 3–922602 (2004)
Regev, G., Cause, D.C., Wegmann, A.: Creativity and the Age-Old Resistance to Change Problem in RE. In: Procs. IEEE RE 2006, pp. 291–296 (2006)
Pennel, L., Maiden, N.A.M.: Creating Requirements – Techniques and Experiences in the Policing Domain
Nguyen, L., Cybulski, J.: Into the future: inspiring and stimulating users’ creativity. In: Proceedings of the Pacific Asia Conference on Information Systems PACIS (2008)
Ocker, R.J.: Promoting Group Creativity in Upstreal Requirements Engineering. In: The Right Concepts for the Right Problems, p. 55 (2010)
Yilmaz, L.: On the Synergy of Conflict and Collective Creativity in Open Innovation Socio-technical Ecologies. In: Procs. CSE 2009., vol. 4, pp. 502–508 (2009)
Baer, J., Kaufman, J.C.: Bridging Generality and Specificity: The Amusement Park Theoretical Model of Creativity. Roeper Review: A Journal on Gifted Education (2005)
Glass, R.L., Vessey, I.: Contemporary application-domain taxonomies. IEEE Software 12, 63–76 (1995)
Vaajakallio, K., Mattelmäki, T.: Collaborative design exploration, p. 223 (2007)
Cybulski, J., Nguyen, L.: Learning to Become a Creative Systems Analyst. In: The PSI Handbook of Virtual Environments for Training and Education (2008)
Simonton, D.K.: Cinematic creativity and production budgets: Does money make the movie? The Journal of Creative Behavior 39(1), 1–15 (2005)
Cowen, T., Tabarrok, A.: An Economic Theory of Avant-Garde and Popular Art, or High and Low Culture. Southern Economic Journal 67(2), 232–253 (2000)
Wever, A., Maiden, N.A.M.: The day-to-day factors that are preventing business analysts from effective business analysis. In: Procs IEEE RE 2011, Trento, Italy (2011)
Fricker, S., Seyff, N.: 1st international requirements engineering efficiency workshop. ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes 36, 26 (2011)
Gorschek, T., Fricker, S., Palm, K., Kunsman, S.: A Lightweight Innovation Process for Software-Intensive Product Development. IEEE Software 27(1), 37–45 (2010)
Mullen, B., Johnson, C., Salas, E.: Productivity loss in brainstorming groups: A meta-analytic integration. Basic and Applied Social Psychology (1991)
Arias, E., Eden, H., Fischer, G., Gorman, A., Scharff, E.: Transcending the individual human mind. ACM TOCHI 7(1), 84–113 (2000)
Boehm, B., Grunbacher, P., Briggs, R.O.: Developing groupware for requirements negotiation: lessons learned. IEEE Software 18(3), 46–55 (2001)
Coughlan, J., Macredie, R.D.: Effective communication in requirements elicitation: A comparison of methodologies. Requirements Engineering 7(2), 47–60 (2002)
Holtzblatt, K., Beyer, H.R.: Requirements gathering: the human factor. Communications of the ACM 38(5), 31–32 (1995)
Maiden, N., Robertson, S.: Integrating creativity into requirements processes: Experiences with an air traffic management system (2005)
Mahaux, M., Maiden, N.A.M., Heymans, P.: Making it all up: getting on the act to improvise creative requirements. In: IEEE RE 2010, Sydney, Australia (2010)
Sosa, R., Gero, J.: Design and change: a model of situated creativity, Sydney (2003)
Kaufman, J.C., Beghetto, R.A., Baer, J., Ivcevic, Z.: Creativity polymathy: What Benjamin Franklin can teach your kindergartener. Learning and Individual Differences 20(4) (2010)
Vera, D., Crossan, M.: Improvisation and innovative performance in teams. Organization Science 16(3), 203–224 (2005)
Castiaux, A.: Radical innovation in established organizations: Being a knowledge predator. JETM 24(1-2), 36–52 (2007)
March, J.G.: Exploration and exploitation in organizational learning. Organization Science 2(1), 71–87 (1991)
Dallman, S., Nguyen, L., Lamp, J., Cybulski, J.: Contextual factors which influence creativity in requirements engineering. In: Procs. ECIS (2005)
Mahaux, M., Maiden, N.: Theater Improvisers Know the Requirements Game. IEEE Software 25(5), 68–69 (2008)
Gottesdiener, E.: Requirements by Collaboration: Workshops for Defining Needs. Addison-Wesley Professional (2002)
Visser, W.: Designers’ activities examined at three levels: organization, strategies and problem-solving processes. Knowledge-Based Systems 5(1), 92–104 (1992)
Nguyen, L., Carroll, J., Swatman, P.A.: Supporting and monitoring the creativity of IS personnel during the requirements engineering process. In: HICSS, p. 7008 (2000)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2012 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Mahaux, M., Mavin, A., Heymans, P. (2012). Choose Your Creativity: Why and How Creativity in Requirements Engineering Means Different Things to Different People. In: Regnell, B., Damian, D. (eds) Requirements Engineering: Foundation for Software Quality. REFSQ 2012. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 7195. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-28714-5_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-28714-5_9
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-28713-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-28714-5
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)