tuesday, august 23, 11 - drupal · hollywood screenwriting and the drupal development process...

Tuesday, August 23, 11

DRUPALCON LONDON 2011

Hollywood Screenwriting and the Drupal Development Process

George DeMet


Managing audience expectations


Photo by Joe Meyers

Managing audience expectations


The cost of failure• Budget: $115 million

• Box Office: $10 million

• Production began before the script was finished.

• Bankrupted Carlco Pictures.

• Deprived audiences of pirate movies for almost a decade.


The Hollywood Storytelling Formula


The Three Act Hollywood Structure (Syd Field, 1979)


The Three Act Web Development Cycle?

Discovery and Design

Development Quality Assurance

Beta ReleaseFunctional Spec and Design


Act One: Discovery, Strategy, and Design• Listen to the client; involve all stakeholders

• Develop a feature narrative

• Wireframe

• Style Guide

• Key personnel: Strategist, Tech Lead, Designer (or UX), Project Manager


Feature Narrative

• Narrative document that outlines site functionality and the technical approach to implementing it in Drupal

• List of all the features associated with the project, with level of effort associated with each one

• Key decision-making tool for clients when prioritizing features against budget and timeline

• Tool for developers to understand the project


Wireframes• Helps the designer understand what functionality

will be on the site and how it will work

• Helps the developer understand the context for the site’s functionality

• Helps the themer understand what regions will be used on the site before they start building


Style Guide• Key design deliverable

• Annotated document that describes:

• Layout

• Branding

• Typography

• Navigation

• Media and other elements


Act Two: Development• Progressively build out features and functionality in a version-

controlled development environment.

• Leverage base installations (“distributions”) and theme frameworks (like Zen).

• Iterate frequently, push code to client staging environment on a pre-determined schedule.

• Daily project scrums, (at least) weekly client status reports with burn rate.

• Key personnel: Tech lead, front-end developer(s), project manger (strategist and designer are still involved).


Act Three: Quality Assurance• Populate content, continue to refine front and back-

end, based on feedback

• Validate that site meets design, functionality, and business goals

• Provide client with orientation, training and documentation

• Move the authoritative copy of the site to the staging environment

• Key personnel: Tech lead, strategist, designer, project manager


So, this is all awesome, but ...

... life is more complicated in reality than it is in the movies


The Sleeper Curve (Steven Johnson, 2005)


Photo: www.loremipsum.com

Non-Submersible Units• Technique pioneered by Stanley

Kubrick, also used by Tarkovsky and Tarantino

• Narrative is boiled down to 6-8 essential story parts.

• Units are strung together in a logical order; audience is trusted to make connections


NarrativeFlow


In a good agile process• Tasks are broken down into tickets, which are

worked on in a logical order.

• Features are released progressively in cycles.

• Each release cycle builds on the work that came before it.

• Work is done by small, collaborative teams


Every James Bond Movie in 30 Seconds


Why does Bond work?• New characters, settings, and situations can easily

be added to the formula.

• The Bond films change over time to mirror real-life events in our own world.

• The formula isn’t set in stone and can still deliver twists and turns.

• The Bond franchise delivers an experience that meets audience expectations


Elements of a successful Drupal platform• It can be customized to meet specific use cases.

• It can be added to and extended over time.

• It can be used in non-obvious ways.

• It delivers a consistent experience that meets user expectations.


Thanks!George DeMet@gdemet

Palantir.net@palantir

Any questions?


THANK YOU!

What did you think?Locate this session on the DrupalCon London website:http://london2011.drupal.org/conference/schedule

Click the “Take the survey” link


http://london2011.drupal.org/conference/schedule

http://london2011.drupal.org/conference/schedule

tuesday, august 23, 11 - drupal · hollywood screenwriting and the drupal development process...

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