Is film making anything like software development?
It struck me tonight that developing software is not dissimilar from making a film. Both are usually large, complex undertakings that come together under a team of people with varied skill sets. Directors are architects, project managers are producers and I suppose editors are somewhat like testers.
I can’t proclaim to be an expert on film making (I’m not even sure I can proclaim to be any sort of expert at developing software!) but as far as I understand it large film projects often fail before anything watchable is produced. Do they do this as often as large software projects fall apart before anything usable is created?
Is there anything to learn here? I’m not sure – it’s just an observation of some interesting parallels at the moment.
Perhaps there are some features or practices of successful film projects that we in the software world could adopt for our own sphere?
