Choose your Creativity: Why and How Creativity in Requirements Engineering Means Different Things to Different People

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.