What Makes Football And App Development Similar?

Originally published on The Tech Brewery

The FIFA World Cup 2018 is well underway and with knockout stages just around the corner, the excitement is only going to go higher and higher. While everyone’s enjoying the game, we took a moment to strike a comparison between the Football and app development.

Yeah, you might think we’re off our trolley for a while, but hear us out before passing a judgment. Football is a team sport and similarly, mobile app development is a collective effort. So based on that assumption, we’ve tried to relate some of the crucial aspects of Football with App Development. The likeness is quite apparent to us. We hope you’ll feel the same after reading the blog:

1. Strategy Defines The Flow

Strategies are central to a game of Football. Enter a game without a strategy and you’ll find yourself chasing shadows within minutes and your opponent will hammer you whenever they get an opportunity. Based on who you’re playing, you must strategize as to what’s the best approach to face them. How should you attack, defend and keep the ball moving in the midfield? In much the same way, Mobile app development can’t be undertaken without a proper strategy. Do that and you’ll end up with something else than what you had in mind to start with. There are various kinds of apps and there’s no ‘one strategy fits all’ solution. You have to study, analyze, and think of the challenges and accordingly come up with a strategy to overcome them. Challenges could be anything from the unique platform requirements, version updates or even unattempted app ideas that call for more creativity.

2. Time Is Always Moving

In Football you get 90 minutes to settle the score with your opponent. In case of a stalemate, an additional time of 30 minutes are added and beyond that, there is the dreaded penalty shoot-out. The game needs a winner and you either lose or win. Same could be said of the app development process, where just like the referee, the client is in your face all the time, letting you know that the time is running out. You must develop the app and complete the project within the allotted time or risk losing the project.

3. Fouls, Warnings, Penalties

Forceful tackles, warning, penalties, yellow and red cards are part and parcel of Football. All these events add to the entertainment we derive from the game and can realistically change the course of the match. For someone who’s involved in mobile app development, fouls, warning and penalties would ring bells with app bugs, crashes, client’s choice words and in some unfortunate cases fines. So both scenarios call for a calculated and sensible approach. You have a better chance of achieving something if you keep your head strong and in the right direction. 

 See how we develop apps at Code Brew Labs

 4. Team Work & Organization

Football, as we all know is a team sport and you want everybody to contribute for the team to succeed. Mobile app development is not much different. You have Developers, designers, QA specialists and business experts all working to make the project a success. Everyone has to be on the same page for the team’s efforts to be worthwhile. In Football, as one often sees, the whole team from the defense, midfield to strikers passing the ball around to create an attack and score a goal. Things are quite similar in app development; every member has to keep feeding the information to one another and ensure it’s deciphered as intended. When the team’s chemistry is right, the goals are bound to happen or should we say app development should proceed without any hiccups?

5. Skills Determine The Outcome

Yes, you need the passion to play, but it’s the skills in the end that determine your fate in Football- it’s that simple. Same can be said of app development. As a developer without necessary coding skills can’t hope to build an app. In Football, you need goalkeepers with agile and quick reflexes, defenders who can time their tackles at the right time, midfielders with a vision to give create an attack and feed the ball to the strikers, who have to be swift on their feet to score the score when the ball does come to them.

In app development, things aren’t much different. You need visionaries in the form of project managers who know how to go about building the app, coders who can execute that vision and designers who can infuse creativity into the app. The outcome always depends on their skills.

Convinced?

That concludes the blog. We hope you enjoyed reading it. Have we convinced you to believe that Football and App Development are somewhat similar? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.