Comments on: Film Making: A Better Software Development Metaphor

By: Swapnil Bhavekar

Swapnil Bhavekar — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 04:21:00 +0000

thanks for this information ! it helps

By: Caladin

Caladin — Wed, 19 May 2010 21:54:31 +0000

The Games industry has been using the Film model for at least 20 years, to describe what they do, it’s an even better fit there.

Cal-

By: Peter

Peter — Sun, 16 May 2010 23:07:48 +0000

Great analogy! I really like it!
Recently I started posting interestnig analogies I found on the web on blog.ygolana.com. I thought it could be a good idea to create a place where people can share useful analogies such as yours.

By: John

John — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 13:33:23 +0000

I still prefer the gardening one.

By: BjartN

BjartN — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 06:39:40 +0000

The problems with metaphors it that people get to caught up in them. It often causes more problems than it’s worth.

However, I think a metaphor like this can be valuable when explaining the software development process to non-technical people.

I don’t think it’s a good tool to use for evolving the software development process. We should focus on actual software development, look at our goals and see how we best can achieve them.

By: David Alpert

David Alpert — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 01:02:23 +0000

I must say how excited I am to see someone making the analogy between software development and film making. There are many valid parallels that can be drawn from this analogy and I look forward @Ron to see where you will take it.

@Chris, I think the point about films being static once released (mostly) while software continues to evolve is valid, but with respect to your first point, if most software projects are not made under the assumption of failure, then perhaps they should be, given our industry’s track record of success.

The first place that I read of film making as a metaphor for software development was actually in User Experience literature.

Consider: when you are using well-designed software, you actually look through the software to focus your attention on the problem at hand or the data with which you are working. when software designs fail to provide a good experience, you wind up spending more energy and attention on “tool time”, or thinking about how to use the software tool. When you watch a badly produced movie you get distracted by all the details that aren’t working, while with a good movie you look right through all the details to focus on or be moved by the story.

By: Chris Tavares

Chris Tavares — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 04:30:23 +0000

My only concern is due to another strong resemblance between software development and filmmaking – in film, they make the majority of their projects under the assumption that they will fail. They only need one or two big hits to carry the rest of the stable.

Also, the other thing to worry about is that films don’t live on – they’re made, they’re in the can, you don’t go back and keep working on them (unless you’re George Lucas, and we all know how *that* turned out.) What is the film equivalent to “V2″? I don’t think it’s a sequel.