Storyboard

A Storyboard is a narrative description of a series of steps involving some exchange of information between different participants to achieve the objectives of a healthcare business process. The list of steps can be in generalized, abstract terms, or in the form of a real-world example. A Storyboard is intended to illustrate the basic path, simple path, alternate, or error path and intended primarily from the stand-point of the Domain Experts.

See also: Storyboard names, the names of the actors that should be used in storyboards.

Guidance

• Storyboards should be written using business terminology. They may be imprecise. The goal is to illustrate the business context for the message exchange.
• The content of the initial Storyboards should primarily be representative of normal business processes. Avoid exception cases. Attempting to document all the exception cases in a business process can be an exhaustive task that diverts focus from the typical case, particularly at this early stage of the requirements process.
• A Storyboard may be imprecise, incomplete, etc., particularly in its initial draft. It may be revised over time if that is deemed important. They typically have no branching or options (e.g. if this condition occurs, then …). The information in a Storyboard will typically be made more precise and more general when the corresponding Activity Diagram is created in the next activity.
• The Storyboard should include actual names of people, organizations, systems, etc. and data values as appropriate. This guideline helps to make the Storyboards illustrative of the real work and also to make clear that items of interest may be of different types than assumed (e.g. that a patient in some cases may be an animal, that a guarantor may be an organization).
• In the text, avoid acronyms, abbreviations, etc., because the intended audience is a diverse group, some of whom would likely be confused. If acronyms and abbreviations are deemed important for the intended audience, they can be included in parentheses after the term. For example, Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV).