Storyboards: a pragmatic tool for coordination (Irrational Software)

Nearly a year ago, I wrote on our Wiki a piece (in Swedish) about the similarities between Extreme Programming and movie making. I had watched the extra material on the special edition DVD of Fight Club, which contains on-location footage and the complete set of storyboards.

It’s quite interesting how the storyboards are central (I believe) to the movie-making process: used to coordinate camera operators, set builders, electricians, lights people, etc. Although storyboard artists are very skillful, the storyboards are very simple compared to the end result – the final movie. Also, movies are very riskful financial endeavors. Clearly, storyboarding wouldn’t be used if it wasn’t an effective means of coordination.

Compare this with software production, which almost always are late and over budget, and where the demand therefore is high for processes and methodologies that mitigate risk. Often it seems that the buyers are content to spend a lot of time and money on meticulous documentation. When it comes to the “user story cards” in Extreme Programming, these are often dismissed as being too vague and capturing too little information. Of course they are, if you expect them to document stuff. But they are a means of coordination between buyer and producer.

If millions of dollars can be spent on a movie – which essentially is a high-risk bet that it will be popular enough to give return on investment – where the “process” uses as pragmatic a tool as the storyboards, how come we’re so afraid to use them in software projects? Even a three-minute movie project involves more people than your regular software project.