Making movies: Plan, Lights, Camera, Action.

Blockbuster movies are a major project

The process of making a movie is remarkable. The idea is often years in gestation. It gets the green light from the backers who are taking a major risk, bearing in mind blockbuster movies have budgets of more than $100m. The huge cast and crew are all self-employed. And often the scenes are shot out of sequence, so all the shooting at each location can be done at the same time.

But how they were planned, directed, and filmed is driven by the Director. And to a certain extent the actors. Some actors follow the script but others use the script as a set of guidelines – for example, Jim Carrey.

A tale of two approaches

You would expect every film to be meticulously planned, with so many moving parts, so that it doesn’t go wildly over budget.

Christopher Nolan, who directed Oppenheimer (just outside the top 20 highest-grossing films) is known for his highly detailed and complex narratives, and he meticulously plans every aspect of his films. James Cameron directed Avatars 1 & 2 and Titanic, which all made over $2bn at the box office. He is renowned for his innovative and meticulous approach to filmmaking, often pushing the boundaries of technology. Clint Eastwood is so well regarded for making films under budget, that film companies never intrude on his directing or production. They just let him get on with it. He is also famous for filming scenes in one take. Spielberg has his sets so well organized and planned that whilst filming, he asks questions like ‘How much would it cost us to reset and film that scene from this angle?’ His team knows and he makes judgments on the impact vs the cost, there and then. A main part of his ability to do this is that everyone is so well prepared with what needs to happen and when, that they make full use of the whole team and sets, so they rotate through all planned scenes without constantly resetting and trying to improve.

So there are successful film Directors who love improvisation and filming in the moment. They are reactive. Some may say chaotic. Examples are Terrence Malick, who directed The Thin Red Line which made nearly $100m, and Robert Altman who directed MASH and Gosford Park, both of which made $80m+. A notoriously challenging director is Ridley Scott, who gets huge leeway because of his creative talent, but has a chaotic approach with set plans literally drawn on sheets of paper, at the start of a session. As a result, the timeframes and costs nearly always balloon and create tension with the crews, film companies, and all the associated support staff. What could be achieved in a day by rotating through planned scenes takes much longer. Props are made and not used. Money is spent on accommodation and other expenses. A lot of film is cut in post-production and ends up on the (digital) cutting-room floor and is never used.

A clear storyline

The success of a movie is not guaranteed. Just because it is a big budget doesn’t mean it will be a hit. There are plenty of high-profile, high-budget films that “went straight to streaming”. But the data is very clear. At the end of this article, are tables with the 20 top-grossing films by Directors who are known to be “organized,” compared with the top 20 films for Directors with an “improvisational” style. 

The highest-grossing films are those that are planned and organized. They have 10-30x higher revenues than those born from an improvisational approach. The highest revenue organized-approach film is 30x greater than of the highest improvisational-approach.

Also, those with the highest budgets are planned and disciplined. The only time we see the improvisational style Directors getting to the top of the list is if we look at the profitability ratio (revenue vs cost). But of course, we don’t know what the budget for these films was, and whether improv equals overrun. In general, disciplined filmmaking is more profitable. No surprise there.

IT projects: a disaster movie

There are strikingly strong parallels with IT implementations. The success rate of IT implementations is just 30%. And this has not gotten better over time. This data is from a 2020 report by McKinsey. And it is backed up by other reports:

• 87.5% of projects fail to meet objectives – from the “3 Stages of a Successful Digital Transformation” report in 2022.
• 69% wasted spend – from the “Digital Transformation Is Not About Technology” report in 2019.
• 50% of all custom objects are never used  – from the “Change Intelligence Research Report” in 2023.

But what is also clear is that a planned approach is more likely to achieve a successful result. The idea of an improvised IT project is ridiculous. But whilst this is not intended, the evidence is that many projects end up being run this way under the guise of agile. This was never the intention of agile. Agile is “small, planned sprints or releases,” so that the project stays aligned with the changing business user requirements. But agile is often reframed as “keep iterating ‘til we get it right,” with related cost overruns, user frustration, and lack of ROI. This is not agile.

A strong story

What is clear is that detailed planning, before you start building, is the path to success. This is true for movies and IT projects. It looks like you are not making progress because nothing is being developed. But taking shortcuts in the analysis and rushing into the build phase leads to it taking longer and costing more with all the rework you incur. It also erodes trust with the business users who grow weary of the cycles of functionality that are delivered but don’t meet their needs.

What business users probably don’t realize is that they are getting what they deserve. Their demand to see rapid delivery of functionality, along with fairly loose ideas of what they need vs what they want, all contribute to the rework. They balk at the detailed questioning and analysis, and the time spent doing documentation. But they need to commit to a more rigorous implementation process. “Take time to deliver faster”.

There is plenty of evidence of the cost of incomplete planning. The Change Intelligence Research Report uncovered some staggering data on the levels of technical debt and wasted development effort. The report is based on metadata analysis by Elements.cloud: 50,000 orgs and 1.3 billion metadata items analyzed per month. The results are worse than Friday 13th:

• 51.26% of all custom objects are never used
• 43.08% of custom fields on standard object are never populated. And this rises to over 50% for the core standard objects like Account, Contact and Opportunity
• Page layouts are confusing with too many fields. The Opportunity has over 150 fields, so half of these are never populated
• 40.78% of custom fields on custom objects are never populated.

This is wasted implementation effort: meetings and Slack messages to discuss needs and argue over label names and positions on screens, development of the fields, and related functionality, like validation rules and automation, testing, and deployment. But it wastes users’ time navigating these complex page layouts and it impacts data quality with users entering incorrect data, just to be able to get out of a screen.

Enter a new more demanding star: Data Cloud

Data Cloud requires meticulous planning. Salesforce is saying that it is 80% planning, 20% development. We’ve experienced it firsthand. Without this level of planning, nothing will get delivered. If you get any step of configuration wrong, you have to unpick it all and start again. If you do not understand the source data models or analyze the data volumes, then you cannot predict the cost because Data Cloud is consumption pricing. And the planning documentation is critical because you implement one use case at a time. Each use case builds on the earlier ones. So you will rely on the documentation to understand what you need to reuse. Again, with Data Cloud you should not duplicate objects (DSO DLO, DMO). This tech debt carries the highest level of interest. The power of Data Cloud is populating objects with the source data so that they can be reused.

This may feel like a huge change from the current way you develop in Salesforce. But this is actually how you should have developed Salesforce all along if you wanted the fastest delivery time and greatest ROI. And this has become more and more true as the scope and complexity of Salesforce has grown in organizations. When you had a 10-20 user implementation, you got away with a loose approach. No longer.

The new way

We’ve talked about rigorous business analysis. What does that mean? In the diagram below it means going through each of the purple boxes in detail, so that you are certain you have bottomed out what the business users need, not want they thought they wanted. 

Capture and validate requirements

• Manage a list of requirements, with all the related notes and documentation, through a lifecycle.
• Validate the requirements by mapping out a business process with the business users. These can be auto-generated from text by AI as a starting point.
• Validate the requirements by understanding the underlying architecture documented as ERD (Entity Relationship Diagrams) and DFD (Data Flow Diagrams).

Create user stories

• From each process step in the process map create user stories. These can be auto-generated by AI, including user acceptance criteria.
• Manage user stories through their lifecycle.
• Add information to “complete” the user story including risk, links to process maps, ERD, DFD, and other documentation.
• Identify potential solutions and the metadata impacted. AI can auto-generate recommendations.
• Sync user stories with Jira or your ticketing solution.

Assess the impact of changes

• For each user story look at the impact of changing the metadata by considering all the dependencies.
• Consider the business implications by looking at the process maps.
• Evaluate any regulatory considerations by looking at the process maps.
• Sync the user stories with the DevOps solution.

The final scene

As the data from the movie industry shows, you can get away with an improv approach for a low-budget indie film. But the big-budget blockbuster hits must be planned.

Every IT project needs to treated like a big-budget blockbuster hit – even if it is low budget.

Elements.cloud supports the new way of managing the business analysis by providing a platform where all the documentation is managed and connected, and it is powered by AI. This accelerates the time to value without compromising the analysis. To discover the benefits a Change Intelligence Platform can bring to your organization, reach out to to our team today.

The data

Below is a list of the top 20 grossing films by Directors who are known to be organized, compared with the top 20 films for Directors with an improvisational style. The first table is sorted by total box office receipts. The second table is ordered by profitability ratio.

List of the 40 films ordered by total box office revenue

Film name	Director name	Director style	Receipts ($M)	Cost ($M)	Profitability ratio
Avatar (2009)	James Cameron	Organized	2847	237	12.01
Avengers: Endgame (2019)	Anthony and Joe Russo	Organized	2798	356	7.86
Titanic (1997)	James Cameron	Organized	2202	200	11.01
Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015)	J.J. Abrams	Organized	2068	245	8.44
Avengers: Infinity War (2018)	Anthony and Joe Russo	Organized	2048	325	6.30
Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)	Jon Watts	Organized	1921	200	9.61
Jurassic World (2015)	Colin Trevorrow	Organized	1672	150	11.15
The Lion King (2019)	Jon Favreau	Organized	1662	260	6.39
The Avengers (2012)	Joss Whedon	Organized	1519	220	6.90
Furious 7 (2015)	James Wan	Organized	1515	190	7.97
Frozen II (2019)	Chris Buck, Jennifer Lee	Organized	1450	150	9.67
Barbie	Greta Gerwig	Organized	1446	128	11.29
Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)	Joss Whedon	Organized	1403	365	3.84
Black Panther (2018)	Ryan Coogler	Organized	1347	200	6.74
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 (2011)	David Yates	Organized	1342	250	5.37
Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017)	Rian Johnson	Organized	1332	317	4.20
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018)	J.A. Bayona	Organized	1310	170	7.71
Frozen (2013)	Chris Buck, Jennifer Lee	Organized	1290	150	8.60
Beauty and the Beast (2017)	Bill Condon	Organized	1263	160	7.89
Incredibles 2 (2018)	Brad Bird	Organized	1243	200	6.22
The Thin Red Line (1998)	Terrence Malick	Improvised	98.1	52	1.89
Gosford Park (2001)	Robert Altman	Improvised	87.8	19.8	4.44
MASH (1970)	Robert Altman	Improvised	81.6	3.5	23.31
The Grandmaster (2013)	Wong Kar-wai	Improvised	64.1	38	1.69
The Tree of Life (2011)	Terrence Malick	Improvised	61.7	32	1.93
The Player (1992)	Robert Altman	Improvised	28.9	8	3.61
The Elephant Man (1980)	David Lynch	Improvised	26	5	5.2
Mulholland Drive (2001)	David Lynch	Improvised	20.1	15	1.34
2046 (2004)	Wong Kar-wai	Improvised	19.3	12	1.61
In the Mood for Love (2000)	Wong Kar-wai	Improvised	12.9	2.4	5.38
Blue Velvet (1986)	David Lynch	Improvised	8.6	6	1.43
Eraserhead (1977)	David Lynch	Improvised	7	0.1	70
A Woman Under the Influence (1974)	John Cassavetes	Improvised	6.1	1	6.1
Short Cuts (1993)	Robert Altman	Improvised	6.1	12	0.51
Inland Empire (2006)	David Lynch	Improvised	4	3	1.33
Days of Heaven (1978)	Terrence Malick	Improvised	3.4	3	1.13
Badlands (1973)	Terrence Malick	Improvised	2.9	0.45	6.44
Happy Together (1997)	Wong Kar-wai	Improvised	2.2	4.2	0.52
Faces (1968)	John Cassavetes	Improvised	1.3	0.275	4.73
Chungking Express (1994)	Wong Kar-wai	Improvised	0.6	0.6	1

List of the 40 films ordered by profitability ratio

Film name	Director name	Director style	Receipts ($M)	Cost ($M)	Profitability ratio
Eraserhead (1977)	David Lynch	Improvised	7	0.1	70
MASH (1970)	Robert Altman	Improvised	81.6	3.5	23.31
Avatar (2009)	James Cameron	Organized	2847	237	12.01
Barbie	Greta Gerwig	Organized	1446	128	11.29
Jurassic World (2015)	Colin Trevorrow	Organized	1672	150	11.15
Titanic (1997)	James Cameron	Organized	2202	200	11.01
Frozen II (2019)	Chris Buck, Jennifer Lee	Organized	1450	150	9.67
Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)	Jon Watts	Organized	1921	200	9.61
Frozen (2013)	Chris Buck, Jennifer Lee	Organized	1290	150	8.60
Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015)	J.J. Abrams	Organized	2068	245	8.44
Furious 7 (2015)	James Wan	Organized	1515	190	7.97
Beauty and the Beast (2017)	Bill Condon	Organized	1263	160	7.89
Avengers: Endgame (2019)	Anthony and Joe Russo	Organized	2798	356	7.86
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018)	J.A. Bayona	Organized	1310	170	7.71
The Avengers (2012)	Joss Whedon	Organized	1519	220	6.90
Black Panther (2018)	Ryan Coogler	Organized	1347	200	6.74
Badlands (1973)	Terrence Malick	Improvised	2.9	0.45	6.44
The Lion King (2019)	Jon Favreau	Organized	1662	260	6.39
Avengers: Infinity War (2018)	Anthony and Joe Russo	Organized	2048	325	6.30
Incredibles 2 (2018)	Brad Bird	Organized	1243	200	6.22
A Woman Under the Influence (1974)	John Cassavetes	Organized	6.1	1	6.1
In the Mood for Love (2000)	Wong Kar-wai	Organized	12.9	2.4	5.38
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 (2011)	David Yates	Organized	1342	250	5.37
The Elephant Man (1980)	David Lynch	Improvised	26	5	5.2
Faces (1968)	John Cassavetes	Improvised	1.3	0.275	4.73
Gosford Park (2001)	Robert Altman	Improvised	87.8	19.8	4.44
Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017)	Rian Johnson	Organized	1332	317	4.20
Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)	Joss Whedon	Organized	1403	365	3.84
The Player (1992)	Robert Altman	Improvised	28.9	8	3.61
The Tree of Life (2011)	Terrence Malick	Improvised	61.7	32	1.93
The Thin Red Line (1998)	Terrence Malick	Improvised	98.1	52	1.89
The Grandmaster (2013)	Wong Kar-wai	Improvised	64.1	38	1.69
2046 (2004)	Wong Kar-wai	Improvised	19.3	12	1.61
Blue Velvet (1986)	David Lynch	Improvised	8.6	6	1.43
Mulholland Drive (2001)	David Lynch	Improvised	20.1	15	1.34
Inland Empire (2006)	David Lynch	Improvised	4	3	1.33
Days of Heaven (1978)	Terrence Malick	Improvised	3.4	3	1.13
Chungking Express (1994)	Wong Kar-wai	Improvised	0.6	0.6	1
Happy Together (1997)	Wong Kar-wai	Improvised	2.2	4.2	0.52
Short Cuts (1993)	Robert Altman	Improvised	6.1	12	0.51