What You Can Learn From Peyton Manning to Accelerate Your Software Development

At first glance, you likely may not notice many parallels between software development and dodging 300-pound men trying to tackle you. A closer look, however, reveals common elements between what Peyton Manning accomplishes for the Denver Broncos and what you can do to improve your software development.

The San Francisco Bay Area, from San Francisco to San Jose, is enchanted by Super Bowl 50 this Sunday – and the Polarion office in Alameda is no different, as we look ahead to Super Sunday. Before we jump into that, however, let’s take a brief look back at how the Broncos topped the Patriots.

Manning and the Broncos faced the New England Patriots in a high-stakes football game, with the winning team punching a ticket to the Super Bowl. The Broncos enjoyed home field advantage, and the crowd noise that came with it. With the raucous Denver fans cheering, the Patriots were unable to use their standard snap count, which usually consists of a series of verbal commands from their quarterback, Tom Brady.

The standard NFL practice in this situation was to switch to a “silent snap count” – or basically have the center hike the ball when he is ready, after a visual signal from the quarterback. The Patriots’ use of a silent snap count allowed the Broncos’ pass rush to predict when Brady would start each play. The defense could move as soon the ball was snapped, and get a brief but important head start on their attack of the quarterback.

In software, we must deal with similar challenges. One of the three core pillars of Polarion ALM is collaboration. Polarion enables teams to collaborate on shared assets easily, in a secured environment with robust configurable workflow automation. Manning was able to communicate with his players effectively when the home crowd quieted, which allowed him to make changes to the play. The opposite was true for the Patriots. Brady was isolated, his players were left working in silos and unable to know if there were updates to the plan they heard in the huddle or if there were any new developments. While your competition may not be standing just a few feet away from you, real-time and secure collaboration, will enable your team to communicate more often and effectively. Agility doesn’t apply to only football players.

To learn more, please read our “Accelerate Collaboration with Unified Requirements Management” white paper.

Final Thoughts

As you can see, many of the obstacles in the play-by-play life of a Peyton Manning are similar to the day-to-day challenges you face in software development. Core similarities between the way Manning handles the many variables in his job are reflections of how you can accelerate your development. QA, testing, change-, requirements- and Variants management are just some of the many facets that align your role with an NFL quarterback. If you utilize the same scheme as Peyton, you can be well on your way to your version of Super Bowl 50.