Software Developer's Journey A Story-Driven Approach to Support Software Practitioners

Abstract

Agile development requires a highly iterative and collaborative design process, which relies on the successful interpretation of software development activities amongst team members throughout the overall process. However, contemporary methods and tools that support agile efforts provide little help in addressing context-specific tacit knowledge, which is difficult to externalize without a shared method of interpretation. Without a continuously updated interpretation of the project vision, it is difficult to claim a shared mental model, while this is actually vital for the success of an agile process. In this paper, we address this issue and seek guidance in an approach that is commonly used in film storycraft. Film production has ample experience with externalizing experiences with the help of visual planning tools and related techniques to orchestrate the creative efforts of vast interdisciplinary production teams. We therefore propose that methods and tools from visual storycrafting can be adapted to assist software developers, not only with externalizing and discussing context-specific tacit knowledge but also to keep them creatively engaged in the development process.