While some might think of developers as highly analytical code machines, there's an element of creativity and inspiration that goes into every great coding project.
So how can technical
Clockwise from top left: Ryan Nelson, Tapio Tolvanen, David McCann, Chalmers Brown, Ashley Saddul, Mark Papermaster, Pedro Bizarro, Jose Giammattei, Alexander Kharlamov, Erik Gustavson, Marcin Kleczynski, Chris Kirby, Venkat Rangan, Marc Jensen, Alan Dillman. All photos courtesy of the individual members.
1. Lots of Training Opportunities
At Grow.com we encourage as much exploration as possible by our engineers. We do small trainings every day after morning scrum, with everyone getting a chance to train. We also encourage online training with accounts from places like Pluralsite.com. We also do a "Work on What You Want Wednesday," where anyone can work on anything that benefits the application. – Ryan Nelson, Grow
2. An Open Culture
Create an open culture that allows plenty of idea generation. Hear everyone out. The best results happen when there is a framework where the team can be creative problem solvers with enough room to have a voice, adapt to new challenges, and come up with innovative solutions. – Tapio Tolvanen, BetterDoctor, Inc.
3. Everyone Having a Voice
I actively solicit ideas at every level, taking action on those ideas, creating a fail forward culture, and challenging employees to try new technologies outside the core platform choices. Recently, we moved to a Dean Leffingwell’s SAFe -- the Scaled Agile Framework -- that unifies all of our technology teams under a common set of operating principals and focuses on value streams. – David McCann, CLEAResult Inc
4. Ownership and Freedom
A very effective way to get the most creativity out of developers is to give them the freedom to build what they think is best for small portions of a product. This allows your teams to collect the most amount of ideas and iterate faster on existing products. Company or team hackathons are the best way to get these creative juices flowing. – Chalmers Brown, Due
5. Allocated Time for Experimentation
When our projects permit it, we allow 10% of each person's time in a given week for experimentation, innovation or doing something "cool." Developers are encouraged to play with new technologies. We'll often end up with a new widget that makes it easier to surface useful information to our users, or an internal tool that saves us time and makes us more productive. – Ashley Saddul, Recruiter.com
6. Alignment for Creativity and Innovation
Creating an environment with collaboration and highly effective communication is paramount to creativity and innovation. We strive for clear alignment on what problem are we solving, how it can add value, and ask ourselves what it takes for it to be a great product. When you have that alignment with the right mix of skills and a will to win, innovation and success follows. – Mark Papermaster, Advanced Micro Devices
7. Collaboration and Team Work
We have an environment where people are expected speak up and question the norm. I try to remove myself as a bottleneck by encouraging autonomy and collaboration, all in a fun environment. We acknowledge team failure and successes as a team effort. To do this, we strive to hire employees who work well with their respective teams. Also, we follow the "no jerks rule." – Pedro Bizarro, Feedzai
8. Inspirational Challenges
There are a few key ingredients that can get a team motivated toward a desired result. Driving a team though inspirational challenges always plays a key role in a fantastic product. – Jose Giammattei, Applaudo Studios
9. Storyboarding Solutions
Creativity and innovation need to be focused on solving the client's challenge, not the next "shiny" technology that comes out. Storyboarding solutions through joint sessions with client staff creates an avenue for creativity and innovation to take place, yet focused on valuable results. Letting developers lead wireframe or user-story development fosters relational development and creative results – Alan Dillman, Marbaloo Marketing
10. The Right People
You often hear that to innovate you need to "fail fast and fail often." And it's true. But you must do something else before you embrace this: hire the right people. Our best people work here because they're genuinely interested in destroying convention and doing things differently and better. Our best people are curious and are always learning and experimenting both at and outside of work. – Marc Jensen, Space150
11. Outside of the Box Thinking
Creativity and innovation is a combination of beauty and design, which is more art than science. We encourage creativity in our teams by constantly pushing them to think outside of the box. Our company values embody a garage state of mind, representing our nimbleness in trying out different things, being agile in execution and dreaming big. – Venkat Rangan, Clari Inc.
12. Involvement of Developers
For everyday matters, make an effort to involve your developers in the early planning stages of any new project, typically when you are still just scoping out the problem. It gives your team an opportunity to understand the problem and suggest creative, innovative solutions long before any particular course of action is suggested or constraints proposed. – Chris Kirby, Voices.com
13. A Passionate Community of Customers
We are fortunate to have a community that is passionate about what we’re building. Their feedback and support is a core source of encouragement. This has been key in inspiring the development team to continue to improve our products. – Marcin Kleczynski, Malwarebytes
14. Transparency
Be transparent with your team that part of their job as an engineer is to innovate and evangelize new ways of doing things. – Erik Gustavson, Bitium
15. No Micromanagement
Nothing kills creativity and enthusiasm faster than having no authority to make decisions. You've hired great people -- now learn to let go. Do not review every line of code, let them use whatever tools they want, and don't enforce decisions from up top. Let them come up with their own solutions. You will find that talented, creative people flourish when they feel trusted and valued. – Alexander Kharlamov, Madison Square Garden Company
