Prototyped App — Fast

It it a challenge to understand how our tribe works with information

We’re building a platform for football that helps coaches and players learn, visualize and discover. Every similar tool that existed had some big problems for our team. It ignored how a thing truly ‘fits’ in a coaches mind. As coaches ourself we knew what was needed and

- Had no language or examples to draw from.

- We knew we needed it to make sense for everyone. And

- We needed to have a great plan. Because data is hard. Development takes time.

The obvious answer is to build something people use. They can put thier hands on it. They can see if it makes sense.

It’s very easy to say “Cool! This sounds fun. I’ll build this.”

Which is exactly what you said you shouldn’t do. You told yourself you’d prove it works. You prove it does what you need it to.

Workiom

Right at that point we discovered workiom. You’ve probably heard of stuff like airtable and some other ones I’ve forgotten now. Build your own little app. Link data together, don’t kill yourself over if you can develop or not or even us a VLOOKUP

The number of features in workiom has changed how we plan our systems

In any domain peopl create useful ways to organize information, share plans, have the same mindsets. I didn’t know what TAM (total addressable market) was a few months ago (The team at workiom explained it to me actually…). By having a shared framework we can move faster. Plan. Create. Everything we found before was built without knowing how football thinks and the assumptions we make easily.

So a small backgrounf, understanding how most playbooks. Nearly any fan of football can tell you if you have a formation then 99.99% of the time you have the formation in an opposite way. If I have I formation Right, there is also left. And every playbook tool we found did not account for that. Further more, if I have a play… I can usually run that play out of 90% of my formations. If I have Power (run) then I right power. I left power. They are both in my playbook.

It goes further. I probably have ‘twins’, a word that is shared among coaches that tells me I have two players on the same side of the field when more often they would be on opposite sides. Now I have I right twins. And I left twins.

Not done… I add ‘tight’. Which generally means I have brought a player who was further away from the main group of players and is now closer. Tighter to the group

now I can have

Twins OR Tight Or Both at the same time…. Twins tight

I Right — I Right Twins — I Right Tight —I Right Twins Tight — I Left — I Left Twins — I Left Tight — I Left Twins Tight

Then add “Stack” “ Wide” “Weak” “Strong” “Split”

Every playbook we found had a coach enter those individually. Because everyone can make time to go through that painful process. I’m pretty annoyed I typed those out just then.

I can add more plays. So I had power…. I know have 8 plays…. each formation. + power…. and now I add slant…. generally a pass play where relievers run at an angle towards the middle of the field. (If you are somewhat of a football fan then you know this stuff, but some of the people reading this are outside of the US.) Add a Different pass rpotetction, tag something on the end, add a motyion.

I can Run Power to the Right and left….

As a kid I did a little math project in school for combinations. Our 11 year old team had over 3000 variations.

Our team has easily 30,000. Buried in there are some great plays. That I have never ever thought about because I dont have a list. And going back to the first problem…. I didn’t have am example. We didn’t have a framework.

As coaches we simply assume this stuff. Without thinking about it I know another coaches playbook has all these variations, and we don’t really keep words for it. Because it’s so simple… or it’s simple to our understanding of patterns. And not simple in a way that automatically does the work for us.

Workiom

We built a highly usable version on workiom in >4 hours. Coaches and developers could put thier hands on it before the end of one day. We learned how these things fit together and the words that make sense in how they fit together. Every playbook software had people making formations… when really they make a ‘stack’ of formations, each with a ‘base’ and ‘opposite — I R. I L. with ‘modifiers’ (tight, twins, stack, strong, pistol…. ) and they add concepts to produce plays. Before every software let you have a play. And a formation. And sometimes you could press a button to ‘flip’ and have the opposite. 2–4 plays. Out of 30k. In about 90 seconds per play.

By combining, linking, formulating — entirely in workiom — we found how we would would describe and create those 30k variations in 15 minutes. Faster. In sports we often say “Speed Kills”

4 hours of work to make a working version kills the ways we thought before.

And because of tools in workiom. We can keep stringing things together. How do people fit into this?

Make an entirely seperate app called, people. Use workiom to link those. For those with a tiny bit of football knowledge, people means coaches, players, staff. Players have positions, in formations, and in play and those change. Nearly everything we’ve done , a small working version has been built in Workiom first.

For the product managers, sales teams, support, and all the people who look at a code editor and think it’s a foreign language.

End the back and forth of trying to describe, and to talk through and meeting after meeting after revision after delay.

Go build your thing..

Take the app you made in a day and hand it to your teams.

Stop sorting through an unclear mess of notes, stories, pictures and screenshots of your ‘inspiration’ or the simple and easy thing to build in your head.

Hand people good working software and then make it great.