Three decades of empirical research in high-performing software development teams provides evidence that creativity can be promoted by an effective, disciplined development culture. This paper describes 'contrasting' as a key driver for creativity; describes creativity moves, tactics used by high-performing teams to produce useful contrasts; and characterizes key development behaviours observed to support a 'culture' of creativity. The empirical research was carried out in a broad range of software development organizations and application domains.
@article{arxiv.2503.06407,
title = {Contrasting to spark creativity in software development teams},
author = {Marian Petre and Mary Shaw},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2503.06407},
year = {2025}
}