In Film production control is crucial, because although the returns might be huge, only control allows you to get the best out of a limited budget. Good control means also to know precisely where to leave creative freedoms, otherwise you will end up exactly with a bad version of what was planned.
Interesting comparison. With a film, you normally don't start production without a script. You also appoint a director that (hopefully) is fully responsible for the vision of the project.
In comparison, with software, we often don't know what we want to build except in vague terms. It's a bit like one of those failed movie projects where they know they want to make a Superman film, but they don't actually have a script and are constantly rewriting as they go. Also, unless you have a very enlightened group, usually there is nobody that is responsible for the vision of the project except in very vague terms. If you have a question, "Should we collect the user's login data before we allow them to see the welcome splash screen?" usually nobody knows. When someone makes a decision, it's not necessarily due to having an overall vision of how the product works, but more a random choice. Often the people making the decisions about how the product will work are marketing, sales or management figures, instead of people on the creation side of the equation.
I think the latter issue can be fixed and I think it would go a long way towards making better products. The former issue, though, I think is not fixable. We tried the "analysis upfront" approach for decades and it never worked well for software. Usually you can't tell what you need until after you built it at least once.
What? A script is exactly like a vague description at the start of a software project. It doesn’t detail what sets are built, costumes, who will star, how much it will all cost, who will be hired, where the lights go, the music, and a 1000 other things.
A script contains a description of exactly what will happen from the start of the movie to the end. It contains all of the dialog. It contains descriptions of the important interactions with external entities like the location and any props you will need.
I was suggesting that the script is a bit like what we used to do when we wrote requirements documents. I doubt many people do it any more, but a long time ago we used to describe all of the workflows for an application before we did any design even. It was a description of exactly what would happen in every scenario. Sometimes it would have UX descriptions, but often not -- those would come later. This almost always fails because usually people's initial ideas are poor and it takes iteration to come up with a product that actually works well.
I don't think it's too far of a stretch to compare a script to a requirements document. Of course apples aren't oranges even though they are both fruit. You can find commonalities in anything and also differences. My main thought was that the OP suggested that filming a movie required complete control over the process, even though it was a lucrative endeavour. I thought, what's the difference between a movie and a software project, then? Are we missing opportunities because we don't apply enough control?
I don't think so. I think a movie project has a lot more information about what they are building before they start than a software project. That's the reason that control works better for them. However, I do think that software projects often lack vision because often nobody is responsible for that vision. Interestingly, as I said, movies appoint someone to be in charge of the vision of the project. Would the same thing work on a software project? I think it would.
If you think that my comparison is silly, then how do you rationalise the OP's claim that control is necessary for making a movie, while it appears that control is something we want to avoid for software projects? Or do you believe that software projects do require control in the same way that film making does?
I always smile when I notice shots that look expensive and don’t seem to add much. It would have been a slam dunk for a bean counter to kill each one in isolation. But without any, it would be a much weaker film. Either directors have a lot of power or producers are remarkably sophisticated about leaving some “waste” on the table.
