When is creativity needed in Software Development?
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Software Development is regarded as a highly technical field, and almost nowhere in the job description of a software development job you will see ‘- Needs to be creative’ as a requirement, but don’t they have to though?
Well, in this article I want to discuss this aspect and go a bit more in-depth about creativity in software development, as well as its necessity.
So, first off, let’s see what creativity actually is:
According to Cambridge Dictionary, creativity is “the ability to produce or use original and unusual ideas”.
Is this a quality that developers should have?
Well, it really depends on a large number of factors; is your company developing an innovative software product? Is the development of that software product done in-house? Is your software product running on a limited amount of resources? Do you have the seniority and the presence in order to have your ideas listened to?
If that’s so, it’s probably going to be more important to be creative with your solutions and suggestions regarding the product. Otherwise, it might not be that important, since most projects and their development processes are rather straightforward & linear.
The need for creativity in software development is directly influenced by the difference between the tech solution of your project in relation to other projects’ tech solutions’. You might not want to reinvent the wheel most of the time, but when needed, you might want to be able to reinvent it and do a much better job as well by doing so, to innovate the wheel.
The reality is that 80% percent of the work done in software development is the result of technical prowess and experience, as well as solutions available online for the same problems with minor tweaks, work that doesn’t really require much creativity on the development side. However, the rest, the 20% of development work, is where creativity is really the factor that makes the difference between a mediocre solution and a stellar solution.
