The art of software development can be much more than accomplishing projects. Often the successful path begins by focusing beyond the project at hand -- you need to review everything you can think of: personalities, creative ideas, political issues, hidden agendas, insecurities, technical questions, doubts about the future direction of technology, everything.
You may find a need to be intensely aware of a company's culture. At other times it may appear that your real purpose is to change the culture, and your development project is just a means to achieve that end. You may also need to include a bit of an appraisal as to the strategic direction and positioning of your company: it might be wrong for you to try to turn your employer into the Nordstrom's of retailers if its intentions and strategy is to be the K-mart.
In some consulting environments your purpose is not to accomplish anything. Your project is actually an anti-project, the staff is against you, and you succeed by making the staff accomplish their own agenda. You must use grace to provide a backflow, purposefully pointing away from their objectives. Occasionally you can be successful overall (and act in the best interest of your retainer) even though your own personal accomplishments and monthly status reports might lack a certain luster.
Around one quarter of software design could be considered "art" in every sense of the word. Congruent to other creative arts a software designer encapsulates thought into both visual and written structures. Sometimes though the whole point of creating software is to go through the process of meeting with people and moving them from their preconceived positions to change the culture, nature, and very heart of your employer. So once in a while the parallels to art go deep down to its truer purpose: to move people's souls.
