Developer productivity for humans, part 8: Creativity in software engineering
Open accessAbstract
Creativity is an essential part of software engineering. In this column, we describe our approach and insights into how software developers define creativity in their work. Our findings suggest that creativity in software engineering centers on the concepts of clever reuse over pure novelty.
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Creativity helps software teams address both everyday and major software tasks.
“Creativity helps teams address the more mundane software tasks that arise everyday as well as the more specialized but typically more infrequent tasks aimed at yielding major product advances.”
From The Impact of Generative AI on Creativity in Software Development: A Research Agenda (2025) · cites this paper as [55]
The Introduction describes creativity as central to solving software-development problems, and “Creativity Versus Productivity” gives everyday examples: implementing code, refactoring, and collaborating to solve problems. The paper does not establish that creativity helps teams accomplish the less frequent tasks that yield major product advances; “Measuring Creativity in Software” raises innovation in products as a research question. (LLM, conf=0.83)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredCreativity in software engineering is understudied.
“Understudied [6], creativity in software engineering is at a watershed moment, as the emergence of Generative AI (GenAI) could have a major impact on individuals, employers, and the products they build.”
From The Impact of Generative AI on Creativity in Software Development: A Research Agenda (2025) · cites this paper as [55]
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Cites
A model of creativity and innovation in organizations.
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Atypical Combinations and Scientific Impact
Uzzi, B., Mukherjee, S., Stringer, M. J., & Jones, B. F. (2013) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1240474 · Cited by 1,481 · see citing works
The Diversity–Innovation Paradox in Science
Hofstra, B., Kulkarni, V., Galvez, S. M.-N., He, B. D., Jurafsky, D., & McFarland, D. A. (2020) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.1915378117 · Cited by 1,000 · see citing works
A Dynamic Network Measure of Technological Change
Funk, R. J., & Owen-Smith, J. D. (2016) · Management Science · doi:10.1287/mnsc.2015.2366 · Cited by 506 · see citing works
Grounded Copilot: How Programmers Interact with Code-Generating Models
Barke, S., James, M. B., & Polikarpova, N. (2023) · Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages · doi:10.1145/3586030 · Cited by 436 · see citing works
When participants do the capturing
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An empirical study of open-source and closed-source software products
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The use of photo-elicitation in field research
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What Makes a Great Software Engineer?
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Coordination Breakdowns and Their Impact on Development Productivity and Software Failures
Cataldo, M., & Herbsleb, J. D. (2012) · IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering · doi:10.1109/tse.2012.32 · Cited by 156 · see citing works
The impact of personality traits and knowledge collection behavior on programmer creativity
Amin, A., Basri, S. B., Rehman, M., Capretz, L. F., Akbar, R., Gilal, A. R., & Shabbir, M. F. (2020) · Information and Software Technology · doi:10.1016/j.infsof.2020.106405 · Cited by 60 · see citing works
Creative Writing with an AI-Powered Writing Assistant: Perspectives from Professional Writers
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What distinguishes great software engineers
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Exploring the Role of Creativity in Software Engineering
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Perceptions of Creativity in Software Engineering Research and Practice
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Grounded Copilot: How Programmers Interact with Code-Generating Models
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Old habits die hard: Why refactoring for understandability does not give immediate benefits
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Self-citation
Flagged first, then by citations
Research works printed but not linked: 2
- SARAH D'ANGELO is a user experience researcher on the Engineering Productivity Research team at Google, Canterbury 7999, New Zealand. Contact her at sdangelo@google.com. BOGDAN VASILESCU is a visiting researcher at Google and an Associate Professor at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA Appl. (SEAA), Piscataway, NJ, USA: IEEE Press, 2017, pp. 210-217.
- M. Kim, T. Zimmermann, and N. Nagappan, "A field study of refactor- ing challenges and benefits," in Proc. Int. Symp. Found. Softw. Eng. (FSE), 2012, pp. 1-11.
Cited by
Sorted by citations
The Impact of Generative AI on Creativity in Software Development: A Research Agenda
Jackson, V., Vasilescu, B., Russo, D., Ralph, P., Prikladnicki, R., Izadi, M., D’Angelo, S., Inman, S., Andrade, A., & van der Hoek, A. (2025) · ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology · doi:10.1145/3708523 · Cited by 23 · see citing works
Self-citationSeredko, A., Hillman, T., & Lundin, M. (2025) · Learning Media and Technology · doi:10.1080/17439884.2025.2486968 · Cited by 4 · see citing works
Seamful AI for Creative Software Engineering: Use in Software Development Workflows
Inman, S., Murillo, A., D’Angelo, S., Brown, A., & Green, C. (2025) · IEEE Software · doi:10.1109/ms.2025.3534085 · Cited by 3 · see citing works
Self-citationSoft Skills in Software Engineering: Insights from the Trenches
Malinen, S., Galster, M., Mitrović, A., Iyer, S., Peirisand, P., & Clarke, A. (2025) · 2025 IEEE/ACM 47th International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering in Practice (ICSE-SEIP) · doi:10.1109/icse-seip66354.2025.00032 · Cited by 2 · see citing works
Exploiting Vision-Language Models in GUI Reuse
Niu, V., Alshammari, W., Iluru, N. M., Teeleti, P. V., Niu, N., Bhowmik, T., & Zhang, J. (2025) · doi:10.1109/icsr66718.2025.00009 · Cited by 2 · see citing works
Introduction to the Special Issue on Creativity in Software Engineering
Jackson, V., van der Hoek, A., Prikladnicki, R., & Singh, K. (2025) · IEEE Software · doi:10.1109/ms.2025.3540536 · Cited by 1 · see citing works
Kwiatkowski, F., Mazur, J., Rostkowska, A., & Borowa, K. (2025) · IEEE Software · doi:10.1109/ms.2025.3540158
Creative Problem-Solving: A Study With Blind and Low Vision Software Professionals
Kohl, K., Cha, Y., Jackson, V., Branham, S. M., van der Hoek, A., & Prikladnicki, R. (2025) · International Workshop on Cooperative and Human Aspects of Software Engineering (CHASE) · doi:10.1109/chase66643.2025.00014
Software Developers’ Perceptions of Productivity: An Industry-focused Study
Coelho, M., Reinbold, I., Sancho, L., Paixão, M. H. E., Araújo, A. A., & Freire, S. (2025) · Simpósio Brasileiro de Qualidade de Software (SBQS) · doi:10.5753/sbqs.2025.13759
- Authors
- Inman, S., D’Angelo, S., & Vasilescu, B.
- Affiliations
- Google (United States) (US)
- Google, Canterbury, New Zealand
- Carnegie Mellon University (US)
- Venue
- IEEE Software
- Published
- 2024-03
- Volume
- 41
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 11-16
- ISSN
- 0740-7459 (ISSN-L)
- 1937-4194
- OpenAlex
- W4392180481
- Cited by
- 9
- References
- 20
- Citations by year
- 2025: 8 · 2024: 1
- FWCI
- 3.39
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Locations
- IEEE Software (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Software Engineering Techniques and Practices
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Software Engineering Research
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Creativity in Education and Neuroscience
- Keywords
- software developers, developer productivity, novelty, software development practices
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