As described at the beginning of this series, I have a specific requirement for a Storyboard Designer application.  The specific requirement is to industrialize some level of the software development process used to design and construct business applications. The rational is that the end-user of a business application interacts with software through a GUI 100% of the time.  Therefore, provide a designer tool aimed at Power Users and/or Business Analysts (BA) who can quickly storyboard user interfaces, workflows and data access in the shortest time possible.  Storyboard Designer is not a traditional developers tool, but rather a visualization tool that can be used by a Power User and/or Business Analyst (BA) to quickly build scalable and robust business applications.

 

Think of it this way, senior management at FedEx, in the book, Reeenginering the Corporation, realized that the people actually performing the work on the shop floors knew their business processes inside and out.  And more importantly, knew what most of the solutions were to the problems they were encountering using traditional business applications and consequently, the business processes they imposed.  As a result of senior management listening to employees in the trenches, FedEx reengineered their way into an incredibly successful business.  In other words, they were the first to industrialize the way packages were shipped and delivered for a specific market.

 

Remember the introduction of FedExs online package tracking software?  So simple that anyone with some degree of being able to navigate the internet could use this tool.  Thats why it became #1.  Another example, closer to home in the software world, is MS Access and Excel, which are reasonably complicated software, but yet Power Users and BAs have developed an entire subculture of business applications running organizations today.

 

With respect to Storyboard Designer, a Power User and/or BA (the people that really know the business application in question), can create their own business applications in the shortest time possible.  The goal is to quickly create or reuse user interfaces, (composite controls and complete UIs from catalogs), plus being able to visually hook up the UI to a data source or workflow, with or without business rules and all without writing any a single line of code.  Is it possible? 

 

From a marketing point of view, all that is required is to put a usable storyboard designer tool in the hands of the people that know how their business works so they can build their own custom IT automation applications to suite their specific needs.  Just like how they build sophisticated Excel applications and Access database programs today, except I am hoping much easier using Storyboard Designer.  Thats the level of abstraction I would like to achieve.

 

As discussed in this series of posts, I came to the conclusion that XAML would be an excellent language to not only build a Storyboard Designer, but also have the output of the Storyboard Designer produce XAML as well.  XAML can be used to declaratively define user interfaces and workflows that run on WinFX without any further interpretation.  In other words, once compiled, it can be run directly on the OS.  This is very powerful.  Even more powerful is that fact that XAML is public specification and therefore portable language format that can easily be exchanged with our XAML enabled tools.  This means it is possible to create catalogs of real user interfaces and workflows that can be shared amongst people.  The specifications become the implementations using the designer tool.  This dramatically reduces the gap between requirements (i.e. intent) and deliverables (i.e. executables) that is so prevalent in the way we design and construct business software today.

 

Storyboard Designer will be a visualization tool in which Power Users and/or BAs can draw their business applications on a canvas using toolboxes of objects that they can drag and drop on the screen.  Objects will represent UI, workflow, data access. people and businesses all connected together and can be viewed all together.  This is a key design goal.  It is in someway like traditional architectural blueprints in the construction or manufacturing industry.  Think AutoCAD for designing business applications. 

 

So doesnt Cider, Expression Interactive Designer (which I am still evaluating), SharePoint Designer offer this already?  No, all of these (low level) tools require highly skilled developers and designers to be productive with these tools.   Storyboard Designer is aimed directly at the Power User and BA for an organization.  We are raising the level of abstraction in the designer tool itself so that a Power User and/or BA with minimal training or expertise can productively build their very own business applications.

 

Next post will describe some of the design details of Storyboard Designer and then we will wrap up this series of 10 posts.