The Unicorn Project
- Published2019
- Read in 2021
- Genre Fiction
- Related to The Phoenix Project
Synopsis
A team of developers gets frustrated about how stuck their company is concerning software projects. The protagonist is a competent developer who takes a blame for a bug she solved and sent to 'The Phoenix Project', which is a bin project that top management state will save the company. She finds devs and operational software engineers that want to have better practice. They manage to work as an invisible rebellion by not following the managers, and save their company doing so.
My take
It's a nice follow-up to the Phoenix project, following the actors that are not top management. The key ideals defended by the book are:
- Locality and Simplicity
- Focus, Flow, and Joy
- Improvement of Daily Work
- Psychological Safety
- Customer Focus
Those are the ideals that devs and their managers should always strive for. Then top management should always think of the 3 horizons.
- Horizon 1: Mature businesses
- This is what most companies concentrate their focus on
- Horizon 2: rapidly growing businesses
- This is either the innovation of processes in horizon 1
- Or the clear adoption of horizon 3
- Horizon 3: emerging businesses
- These are tests businesses -- start-up like attempts
All in all, it's a fun and good book to learn how some companies ( like adiddas ) have adapted to changes within the world