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Storyboards for the electronic age
The classical storyboarding approach involves posting your storyboards on the walls of a large conference room. The primary benefit of this approach is to be able to see the entire proposal. The user friendliness of this approach can’t be beat. Even approaching it online is extremely difficult. The closest most people get is to make the electronic file of the storyboard available online for viewing one at a time.
Rather than try to duplicate the “wall,” the use of electronic tools enables new approaches to the concept of storyboarding. Remember, the goal is not to create a storyboard, but to implement a step that ensure that a proposal’s planners know what is going to be written prior to committing the effort. Rather than developing storyboards as static documents that are left behind when it is time to write the first draft, electronic tools (especially web-based tools) can enable storyboards to become interactive.
Instead of thinking of a storyboard as a document, think of it as the transcript of a discussion broken down into granular topics. An electronic storyboard can implement the headings of a classical storyboard as topics. Each topic can start with instruction from the proposal manager. The proposal manager, or other reviewers, can suggest changes or elaboration. The development of the storyboard can go back and forth until the team understands what needs to go into the section and is ready to write the first draft.
For example, a proposal manager might start of a topic on section themes by providing instructions (what is a theme anyway), examples, and references to the evaluation criteria. The proposal team can then provide a first cut at some themes. The proposal manager (or other reviewers) can then recommend changes (while that is a good theme, taking this evaluation criteria into consideration perhaps we should emphasize this. Based on what you know about this customer and this technical subject, can you think of a theme to do that?). When the team is ready, and they start the draft, they can cut and paste from the discussion any relevant write-ups. The entire process can be monitored and participation is quite visible.
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