20+ lessons learned from “The Unicorn Project” by Gene Kim- Part-3
Storyline of a novel about developers, digital disruption and thriving in the era of data.
This blog is in continuation to Part-2 of my learning from “ The Unicorn Project”
20+ pointers I wrote down in my diary and are taken from this book
18. TWWADI: The Way We have Always Done It
Each plan or process adds to the coordination cost for everything we do and drives our cost of delay. And because the distance from where decisions are made and where work is performed keeps growing, the quality of our outcomes diminish.
19. Rethinking leadership
For the leaders, it is no longer about directing and controlling, but guiding, enabling and removing obstacles. Leaders getting more involved with the team and collaborating closely is the need of the hour for effective results.
20. Not delivering what’s needed
When the teams work away from the customer focus, they often “assume” things will work in a certain way when released to the customers. Which leads to releasing things which might not even be what customers need right now or too complex for them to use. We are not delivering what’s needed and when we find something wrong, there’s not enough time to fix it.
21. Dev teams becoming prisoners of what business teams need
Development teams are expected to be guards of what they develop. They should know how to optimize it, make it stable and effective with time and to avoid technical debt. But, gradually as the product progresses, they get overburdened by the business teams and try to keep up with the pace of changing requirements from the business and marketing teams. That’s where they stop being the guards, in fact they start to love being prisoners so much, that they just think the bars are keeping them safe.
22. Incorporating feedback early to the process.
The book shares a situation where Maxine understands the gravity of the product. For something this important, she finds that the company wasted 2 years. In the ideal, they should have just assigned a team that included developers to explore the idea & build a solution together. Instead of one product manager working on this the entire time, they could have 5 people working on it. And they could have been learning the whole time.
23. Sharing goals with the team
When everyone knows what the goals are, teams will organize to best achieve these goals. We often limit the information passed on to the team, in order to prevent confusion and wastage of time. But sharing the essence of goals will give everyone a taste of “what achievement looks like” for a product team, which will help them understand the goals and become self-sufficient to manage a lot of things without superior interference.
— — The End — —
This book has tons of pointers and I am sure this is not the exhaustive list that I have shared 😊. If you have also read this book and got something to share, feel free to drop your comments.
The Unicorn Project is something that you can always share while you work, you can quote its examples and discuss about it. Might be possible that you are not in such a situation as The Unicorn project right now, but can be in future.
Wish you the best!
Also read about The Phoenix Project by Gene Kim
Like what you read? Oh! I deserve a clap then.
