I've always said that there is no customer problem so bad that I couldn't come in and make it worse. The Unicorn Project, while an entertaining business novel, is chalk full of coding and other technical references that go right over my head. That being said, I still heartily enjoyed the book and learned a tremendous amount from reading it. In The Unicorn Project, Gene Kim retells The Phoenix Project story of IT and corresponding business transformation at the struggling auto-parts store giant, Parts Unlimited, but from the completely different perspective of Maxine Chambers and the IT staff. An hoc team, The Rebellion, fights back against the bureaucracy, waste and, most importantly, technical debt inherent in the 100-year old company. The mysterious Yoda-like tech guru, Erik (also featured in The Phoenix Project) explains, “There are many definitions, but my favorite is how it was originally defined by Ward Cunningham in 2003. He said, ‘technical debt is what you feel the next time you want to make a change.’” Given the recent release of the final Star Wars saga, The Unicorn Project’s rebellion is particularly timely. And Gene includes plenty of fun Star Wars trivia subtly embedded throughout the book. Business philosophy worthy of a Naval Ravikant is scattered throughout The Unicorn Project such as this gem, "Every tech giant has nearly been killed by technical debt. You name it: Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Google, Microsoft, eBay, LinkedIn, Twitter, and so many more." IT guru, Erik, chimes in with observations like, "Interestingly, Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, still has a culture that if a developer ever has a choice between working on a feature or developer productivity, they should always choose developer productivity." The Unicorn Project also includes practical snippets for non-IT workers such as when an executive reminds employees at a celebratory meeting, "Uh, just a reminder, this is insider information. If you use this information to trade Parts Unlimited stock, you can go to prison. Dick Landry, our CFO, told me to tell you that he will assist in your prosecution as per your employment contract." The book even highlights a very relevant word for IT, "Complect." Erik explains, "It's an archaic word, resurrected by Sensei Rich Hickey. 'Complect' means to turn something simple into something complex." He makes sure to call out One of the passages resonated personally: “Maxine thinks with a grin, “We’re racking up a heck of a bill with the cloud computing providers, but absolutely no one in Marketing is complaining because the business benefits are so spectacular.” I spend a good deal of my time explaining how cloud is an operating model, not a destination, and that an enterprise cloud model can bring enable the business benefits of public cloud combined with the much lower cost and greater control of on-prem. In fact, Gene even includes a reference to the Nutanix Workshops website. Heroin Maxine says near the end of the book, "Technology needs to be embedded in the business, not external to it or merely aligned with it.” The wonder of The Unicorn Project is that by the end of the book, Gene has not only convinced his readers about the truth of this declaration, but he’s helped them experience second-hand why it’s so.

Having read "The Unicorn Project," I found it to be a solid resource in the realm of technology and business. Gene Kim, the author, weaves an informative narrative around Maxine, a protagonist navigating through a stifling corporate landscape. The journey she undertakes represents a familiar struggle for many in a similar position. The book's main principles are embodied in the Five Ideals: Locality and Simplicity, Focus, Flow and Joy, Improvement of Daily Work, Psychological Safety, and Customer Focus. Through these, I got a comprehensive understanding of what it takes to implement change in a rigid system. Maxine's journey in redefining the errors of 'The Phoenix Project' showcases the interconnectedness of business and technology. It underlined the significance of balance and harmony within an organization's different functions. "The Unicorn Project" extensively covers DevOps, presenting it not just as a toolset or process, but as a culture and philosophy that promotes constant learning, collaboration, and innovation. However, the frequency of technical jargon used may make it challenging for those not deeply entrenched in the tech field. Despite being heavily rooted in technology and software development, the book carries a broader appeal due to its engaging narrative style. Even though the extensive use of technical terminology might pose a slight barrier, it's still a worthwhile read for anyone interested in understanding the digital landscape of modern businesses.

Good little novel that does a good job of showing what working at an absolute shitshow of an IT org can be like.

Imagine you get blamed by management, you personally, for some systemic issue that caused widespread disruption. They're looking for a scapegoat - someone to fire so the negative focus gets sucked out in the wake of that person's departure - but in this case you were lucky enough to have a friend in high places. So you get reassigned, sent to a cumbersome impossible trailing-edge project where no one will notice you. Maybe your growing anger and resentment will finally make it possible for you to seek revenge, to pay them back? Maybe you can teach them all a lesson? But there's something about you that just can't go there - you don't create problems, you solve them! And despite your worst intentions, you find yourself getting curious about this back-water project - why is it so broken? Where do I get started, figuring it all out? Who can help and how did it get this way? What value could customers get if we could just find a way to deliver results?  This is the opening setup for Maxine Chambers, development leader and software architect at Parts Unlimited, Inc., in The Unicorn Project, Gene Kim's follow-up to The Phoenix Project. As stated in its subtitle, The Unicorn Project is "a novel about developers, digital disruption, and thriving in the age of data." Kim brings together key concepts from Geoffrey Moore, Jez Humble, Donald Reinertsen, Mik Kersten, Mark Schwartz, Peter Senge, and stories from the trenches of transformation from the DevOps Enterprise Summit conference series to capture a blueprint for transformational success that's based on the perspectives and efforts of software engineers. Not many novels bring to life the daily struggles of software engineers, so this comparatively rare mirror placed in front of us offers a welcome chance to reflect on a large set of key questions, such as: • How close are we to the results of our efforts? Do we get to see our customers' delight? • Can we execute quick experiments, get rapid feedback, and iterate? • Are we fans of pragmatic programming, functional programming? • How often are we bitten by mutability in our code? • Are we satisfied in our work? If not, what might be some systemic causes of our dissatisfaction? • Do our systems enable us to focus or are we continually context-shifting? • Are we able to collaborate easily across functions and teams? • Even better, have we reduced interdependencies to the absolute minimum? • When things go wrong, does the organization focus on blame or on systemic corrections? • Are we generating technical debt faster than we're paying it down? • How much toil do we face every day? Unplanned work? Internal work? • How do we carve out time for improvement, or even time just to think? • What's the relationship between engineering and "the business" really like, here? But despite all the instructional value in this book, it's very easy to get caught up in the drama of the story. Parts Unlimited is a very large, traditional enterprise that must transform to survive. The legacy of complex and entangled architectures, out-of-date processes, methods, and tools have generated a context in which innovation dies long before it can complete its journey to customers. A brave group of engineers form a "rebellion" to confront this legacy and create a lasting business transformation, both technological and cultural. To organize the dramatic principles at work in the story, Gene Kim came up with The Five Ideals of DevOps: 1. Locality and Simplicity (reduce interdependency, own your code in production, microservices architecture) 2. Focus, Flow, and Joy (limit work in progress, make work visible, see the value of your contributions) 3. Improvement of Daily Work (pay down technical debt, streamline the architecture) 4. Psychological Safety (blameless culture, systems thinking, shared context) 5. Customer Focus (core vs. context, feedback) Elements of the storyline are adeptly woven through these five ideals, clarifying each one and giving them practical weight. Plot twists, setbacks, sudden breakthroughs, a major RIF, taking a sledgehammer to old server equipment, and C-level treachery make this a very compelling read. One of my favorite parts involves a QA joke Bill Sempf shared on Twitter: "QA engineer walks into a bar. Orders a beer. Orders 0 beers. Orders 999999999 beers. Orders a lizard. Orders -1 beers. Orders a sfdeljknesv." Although the speed at which certain miraculous improvements happen defies belief at times, the novel is full of inspiring tales of software engineers getting excited about better methods, shaking off the shackles of the status quo, and getting it done right.