In part 3, I discussed using storyboarding as a way to help industrialize the software development process.  Business users interact with software 100% of the time through a user interface.  If we as software developers focused our effort developing storyboards for a business software application, this would result in a complete specification of what the business user wants without writing any code.  It also dramatically reduces the tremendous gap between requirements (i.e. intent) and executables (i.e. what is delivered).  Further it industrializes the way we develop software from a mostly trial and error approach to one that is repeatable and predictable, thereby reducing project/product risk substantially, reducing the cost of the project and minimizing schedule overruns.

 

This storyboard approach is not novel as it is tried and trued in the film industry.  Whats novel is that it is rarely done in the software development world.  As software developers, we spend so much time under the technical covers of applications we forget that business users do not care, the business user is only interested in their data as represented in a user interface and what they can do with that data.

 

Imagine if we had a catalog o