An embarrassing experience on an overseas OSS project

The video below has been doing the rounds on LinkedIn lately. What is your key takeaway from the video?

Most would say the perfection, but for me, the perfection was a result of the hand-offs, which were almost immediate and precise, putting team-mates into better position. The final shot didn’t need the brilliance of a Messi or Ronaldo to put the ball into the net.

Whilst based overseas on an OSS project I played in an expat Australian Rules Football team. Aussie Rules, by the way, is completely different from the game of soccer played in the video above (check out this link to spot the differences and to see why I think it’s the greatest game in the world). Whilst training one afternoon, we were on an adjacent pitch to one of that country’s regional soccer teams.

Watching from the sidelines, we could see that each of the regional team’s players had a dazzling array of foot skills. When we challenged them to a game of soccer we were wondering if this was going to be embarrassing. None of us had anywhere near their talent, stamina, knowledge of the game of soccer, etc.

As it turns out, it WAS a bit embarrassing. We won 5-1, having led 5-0 up until the final few minutes. We didn’t deserve to beat such a talented team, so you’re probably wondering how (and how it relates to OSS).

Well, whenever one of their players got the ball, they’d show off their sublime skills by running rings around our players, but ultimately going around in circles and becoming corralled. They’d rarely dish off a pass when a teammate was in space like the team in the video above.

By contrast, our team was too clumsy to control the ball and had to pass it off quickly to teammates in space. It helped us bring our teammates into the game and keep moving forward. Clumsy passing and equally clumsy goals.

The analogy for OSS is that our solutions can be so complex that we get caught up in the details and go around in circles (sometimes through trying to demonstrate our intellectual skills) rather than just finding ways to reduce complexity and keep momentum heading towards the goals. In some cases, the best way-forward solution might not even use the OSS to solve certain problems.

Oh, and by the way, the regional team did score that final goal… by finally realising that they should use more passing to bring their team-mates into the game. It probably looked a little like the goal in the video above.