But first - disclaimer: I am talking about European football here (sorry, American folks).
Football is very similar to modern software businesses.
- Win the game - beat your competitor
- Win the league - dominate the market
- Recruit top players - get top talent
- Grow financially - grow financially
A football club is a complex organisation employing people in different roles. So as a software company building digital products on a big scale. Here's how roles compare.
- Football players - engineers, designers, product managers... (but also sales, cs, finance...etc)
- Coaches - group product managers, product / design / engineering leads
- Head coach - director of product
- Medical, pitch, stadium staff - product ops
- Director of football - CPO
- CEO / owner - CEO / owner
To become a successful football club, you need to recruit the right personnel in all roles, coach them in the right way and create an environment so everyone can show their best game. And even if you do all this right, success is never guaranteed, as you are competing with other clubs.
Start playing
Most young people start in football by playing it. They love the game, and they want to win. Similarly, in the business of creating software, a fresh PM wants to create cool products that people gonna love. What is the first big decision both a football player and a software PM need to take? What position should they play?All positions on the pitch are important, and all need to be at their best to win a game. Choosing your position usually comes down to your particular strengths, previous experience and the needs of the team. If you have quick reflexes, long arms and a commanding presence - you might be best suited to be a goalkeeper. But you might also play well upfront, it will be up to your coach to find the best position for you in their team.
Can you change your position?
Sure, and it happens in football all the time. David Beckham famously started as a defender, then he was moved to the right wing of attack and finally finished his career playing a holding midfielder. Sometimes it's a player's preference, most times it's a decision of a coach.Player or a coach?
It's very common in football for a player to become a coach after they retire from playing. Similarly, in software businesses, we have managers of product managers - ie coaches. Usually, those are former PMs themselves, but not always.
Can you be a successful coach with no player experience?
Yes, you can, both in football and in product management. It's much harder, and you'd face a lot of scepticism from colleagues. You'd need to study the game much harder and earn the respect of your teammates.Playing coach
At times, in teams with a smaller budget or due to some extraordinary circumstances, a player could become a playing coach. It's a very demanding role as you'd need to combine strong individual performance with the overall tactics and strategy for your club. Long-term, a playing coach will need to decide where they can bring the most value: on the pitch or on the sideline.Understand your position
Say you are a player and can choose any position, how do they differ? When I played football, I loved playing on the wings. You have quite a lot of freedom on the wings, and you can go deep both in attack and in defence. In the Product world, wingers are hyper-specialised PMs that work on distinct value streams or parts of the product. Their role is to create unique value for customers that will differentiate your product from the rest. Like football wingers, they meant to get the ball forward and create opportunities for their forwards.Your most advanced football players, forwards, usually have one thing and one thing only on their minds - scoring goals. In the product world, we have product people who are focused on unique selling points, on growth, on closing deals. They need to speak the language of the buyers, they need to articulate product value in their sleep, and they should be solution-oriented.
Just below a forward, on a football pitch, you'd see a playmaker. That's the key creative role in any team. This player usually has superb awareness and skills to open up the defence and create scoring opportunities for their teammates. On software teams, playmakers tend to be from a design or usability background. Those people understand the needs of the customers and can envision new creative ways to satisfy them, or even better - delight.
Now to defensive roles. Holding midfielders, wingbacks and centrebacks are the backbone of any good team. There's a saying in football: "attack wins you games, defence wins you titles." Same with digital products, especially in established companies, you need people to cover the bases, make sure everything works reliably, securely, consistently. It's not only lights on work, not at all. Often, the stability, performance and security of your service is the decisive factor in a client's purchasing decisions.
I just wanna play
A lot of us, PMs, don't think strategically about our careers. We're too busy working, we just wanna play. Like many footballers, too. And if you're lucky to get into a good team or work with a good coach, it might be fine. But if you're less lucky, you might struggle to progress your career and might even need to retire from the sport early.Understanding your current position, having an idea or two for the next one as well as having some contingency plan are the bare minimum to succeed, both in football and in the business of building software products.
On and off
When I started playing football as a kid, it was chaos; we were running around like headless chickens. It was a lot of fun. Same when I started as a junior PM. I've been given a little piece of the product no one particularly cared about, and I was allowed to "run with it." I loved it - the learning, quick iterations, experiments, specialising. It ended up being a key factor in several great seasons for our club.Then I moved to midfield as I thought I understood the game a bit better now. It was different; it wasn't anymore about making spectacular runs or flashy dribbles. Now it was about reading the play, breaking down opponents' attacks and setting up our forwards to score goals.
Later, I had a go at coaching. It was a different kind of fun. Watching your players struggle on the pitch was hard; my first instinct was to put my boots on and run to help them. But I had to suppress this as it would be against the rules. The coach needs to stay on the sideline. They need to prepare their team, make them understand the gameplan. They need to pick the right players for every match and make the right substitutions (pivots) to become victorious.
What will the next position be? Would that be a top league or a second or third division? They are usually more entertaining to watch. Or maybe I'll want to create my own club for a Sunday League? You should think about it as well, even if you don't like football. And maybe I'll see you on the pitch soon.