While reading How Pixar Fosters Collective Creativity , I was struck by the similarity between movie making and building a Software product.
Here is a “product version” of one of the most compelling paragraphs in the stories with apologies to Ed Catmull.
A software product contains literally thousands to ten thousands of ideas. They are in the form of every service and interaction the product provides; in the design of interfaces, modules, interactions between functional units, every message the user sees, every key or link they need to click on.The product management does not come up with all the ideas on their own; rather, every single member of the product team makes suggestions. Creativity must be present at every level of every aspect of the product development. The product team sorts through a mass of ideas from the members, customers and find the ones that fit into a coherent whole – which is a difficult task.