What if we made software the same way they make movies?
Having studied film in college and having made a few short films, the thought has crossed my mind once or twice, what if development shops made software the same way they make movies? Imagine this scenario:
1. Assign a director, find the right writer
Today’s software has so many owners that the end result is often a muddled mess. A product owner is the closest thing the software industry has to a director, but the product owner is often not intimately involved with every aspect of the process nor given the same kind of ownership as the director of a movie.
After the software director is chosen, they would then find the right writer, which in the software world would be the right interaction designer.
2. Pre-production, 3-6 months
After hiring the right Interaction Designer, begin the following tasks:
- Requirements gathering
- Conceptualizing
- Wireframing
- Site maps and flow charts
- Prototypes
- Usability Labs
2. Production, 2-4 months
This would be the development phase. Notice the development phase is much less than the pre-production phase. What would a product be like that spent more time nailing down the particulars of the design than time spent developing?
3. Post-Production, 6-8 months
This is the QA phase, the loop of finding bugs and polishing them. Notice this is the longest of the phases. And appropriately so, because this is where the software would be polished as close to perfection as time and money would allow.
Summary
The software industry can stand to learn a thing or two from the movie industry. Unless you’re a Microsoft or an Apple, software today is often very messy, made by messy processes. What would it be like if the software industry followed a similar process to the the process of making a movie? I’d be willing to bet that the end product would be much more well conceived and executed, just as the majority of movies are today.
