Creative Software Development with Team Boundary Management

ABSTRACT

The practice of software development continues to evolve in the composition of development teams and the cross-functional nature of software. Managing the boundaries of the team is difficult under cross-functional requirements while at the same time retaining effective processes to arrive at creative systems. We employ boundary spanning theory to develop a model of activity for communications internal and external to the development team that effectively delivers a creative software product. Strengthening the boundary can improve both creativity and effectiveness, although with different activities. Spanning the team boundary promotes creative outcomes but impairs the effective performance of the project. The results show the importance of developing a comprehensive strategy for boundary management as activities can be either complementary or contradictory.

KEYWORDS:

• Software development
• creativity
• boundary management
• team communication
• mutual support

Additional information

Funding

Jamie Y.T. Chang gratefully acknowledges the sponsorship of the Ministry of Science and Technology of Taiwan, ROC, under the projects MOST 108-2410-H-029 -053 -MY2. The work of Xiaosong (Jason) Wu was supported in part by the National Science Foundation of China under Grant 71731009, Grant 72032006, and Grant 71722014.