Over the years of working in the IT world, I have used many sports analogies to describe things that have happened. I have also noticed that the world of IT parallels in some weird way the sports world. Below are a few examples of my take on how they parallel each other.

Open source is intramurals for Developers

In college, intramural sports are typically late night basketball, volleyball, indoor soccer or etc… leagues for those people who want to get some exercise or fulfill the need for some level of competition. With-in the league people organize themselves by interest, skills and social circles.

Open source acts the same way for most of those how participate in open source, contributions are made late at night, people organize themselves in the same manner. The participation has many of the same benefits as intramural sports instead of exercising the body it’s the mind. Open source participants also can quench there thirst for competition and involvement in a team. One other thing that intramurals and open source have in common is the ability for those who excel and help out their teams or projects can gain a level of peer recognition that would not be achieved other wise.

Mulligan

In golf, a mulligan refers to the act of hitting an errant shot over again with out increasing your shot count or taking a penalty. Usually this happens when a player hits a drive into the water or trees. Other golfers playing in the group will sometimes allow the user to “Take a mulligan.” This is not always a philanthropic as it may seem, may times allowing the player to go into the woods and find the ball or go to the drop area just wastes time.

In technology, a mulligan refers to the act of releasing a patch or having a short release cycle after a major release. The purpose is usually to clean up the errant release by fixing any bugs that may have been known about but had no time to fix and complete any half finished features. When you hear “wait for the first patch” you know the companies planning on taking a mulligan.

Everyone loves a rivalry

In sports a rivalry can define a team, city, country or even an entire sport. A rivalry can start because of close geographic proximity of the teams, a series of tough games between them, personality clashes of the players or external forces. Sometimes watching the supports of either side can be even more enjoyable than watching the games. The supporter “battles” tend to last longer than the actual rivalry and can be set off by the mere presents opposing teams fan. The “battles” of the rivals are armed with stats, history and any other ammunition that can be thrown at the opposing team’s followers. These barbs can be as simple as stating the Yankees have won 27 World Series, in response to a Redsox fan reminding them about what happened in 2004. Other times it can shift from trading enlightening info nuegets (new-gets) to integrating ones mother into the conversation. There can never be a winner because the “battle” isn’t about the reality of who is better at any given moment but about the perceptions of the individuals.

Technology has the same sense of rivalries whether it’s AMD vs. Intel or Microsoft vs. (Netscape or Linux or OpenOffice or Mac or Sun or …). These rivalries are started the same way; maybe their CEO’s clashes or they keep battling for different customer opportunities. As soon as the rivalry is started the supporters will spring up and “battle” it out. Watching the people “battle” will almost always be more entertaining as the actual rivalry.

Take for instance; watching people with their Microsoft or Linux bumper stickers on Slashdot exchange barbs is as entertaining from a freak show perspective as a Junior / Gordon showdown in the parking lot of a NASCAR race.

Ajax has been used on massive scale for years

I can’t remember when exactly but around 2001 I was going to the same old sports sites: espn.com and sportsline.com to get real-time updates on sports scores. In the good old days pages that wanted to appear real-time would use annoying meta refresh pages. This design causes the pages to blink each time it is refreshed, which if you were in the middle of reading it can bring about a case of steroid rage.
Then one day I went back and the entire page refreshing nonsense was gone, instead was the line “(no page reloads needed)”. This was great; now the page would automatically change the scores with out refreshing; all the information was updated in real-time. I never was interrupted while reading and always new the page had the latest info. Today, looking back this probably one of the first massive scale usage of Ajax technology on the web.

The sooner you get behind the more time you got to catch up.

I have worked with many people in software and it always seems to come down to the need for a big kick at the end of a project to get to the project done on time. Not sure if most people in technology like the thrill of the pressure that comes with waiting to the end to get the project done on time or are just procrastinators. In the sports world it is similar to being a world class sprinter that relies on their kick to win the race or a basketball team relying on a second have push to tie up the score.

There are several problems with this though: 1.) the sprinters timing could be off and they wait to long 2.) Can’t overcome their opponents lead because of unforeseen obstacles or they have underestimated their opponents strength. Technology has the same problems for those how take up this strategy of relying on their kick to finish a project. Projects always have obstacle or hidden bombs that can make even the simplest task take days longer then expected. Also most companies have lots of things going on beside the current release that needs resources.

Eventually this tactic catches up with you and you will need one of those mulligan releases.