rossbm's review against another edition
3.0
I read the Pheonix project a few years ago and enjoyed it. Thought I would listen to The Unicorn Project on Audible. It’s not bad, but far from a “page turner”.
Like The Phoenix Project, The Unicorn Project is a clunky novel that is written in order to pread the gospel of devops and similar practices. Compared to the Phoenix Project, The Unicorn Project focuses more on data and smaller teams. It is told from the point of view of a senior engineer, Maxine, who is “exiled” to The Phoenix Project. After valiantly trying build a development version of the Phoenix Project, she joins “The Resistance” and is off to the races, initiating a radical reimagining of how IT operates in “Parts Unlimited”, the fictional company where Maxine works.
It’s a nice fairy tale, but it’s definitely a fairy tale. Radical transformations happen overnight, with very little explanations of how things are actually accomplished. Still, it’s a decent book.
Like The Phoenix Project, The Unicorn Project is a clunky novel that is written in order to pread the gospel of devops and similar practices. Compared to the Phoenix Project, The Unicorn Project focuses more on data and smaller teams. It is told from the point of view of a senior engineer, Maxine, who is “exiled” to The Phoenix Project. After valiantly trying build a development version of the Phoenix Project, she joins “The Resistance” and is off to the races, initiating a radical reimagining of how IT operates in “Parts Unlimited”, the fictional company where Maxine works.
It’s a nice fairy tale, but it’s definitely a fairy tale. Radical transformations happen overnight, with very little explanations of how things are actually accomplished. Still, it’s a decent book.
jt_earl's review against another edition
informative
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
1.0
aterp's review against another edition
4.0
A (very) niche fictional story about the trials and tribulations of the software department within a car parts retail and repair company. The story exists as a conduit for the lessons that the author is trying to impart onto the reader, and this expectation needs to be set before reading, as the story and characters themselves are not the focus nor the stars of the book.
Some disbelief is also required - we're expected to believe that some of these senior engineers, who've been in the industry for decades, don't even have or value fundamental things like code version control. But see past that, and realize that the author is simply trying to teach good software engineering practices from the basics, up to mastery.
I liked The Phoenix Project and this book for similar reasons - they're very unique and niche, but as someone in this industry, it's quite interesting and I enjoy the lessons communicated throughout!
Some disbelief is also required - we're expected to believe that some of these senior engineers, who've been in the industry for decades, don't even have or value fundamental things like code version control. But see past that, and realize that the author is simply trying to teach good software engineering practices from the basics, up to mastery.
I liked The Phoenix Project and this book for similar reasons - they're very unique and niche, but as someone in this industry, it's quite interesting and I enjoy the lessons communicated throughout!
zolama's review against another edition
1.0
There are no real humans in this book. It reads like a Business Operations handbook or something, except that it doesn't really do any super engaging examples. Dropped.
booksemmahasread's review against another edition
informative
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
madar1a's review against another edition
2.0
The Phoenix Project was interesting, full of valuable information, well written. The Unicorn Project is definitely not. Very repetitive and the sensei quotes killed me. I took a few breaks from it hoping I would finish it eventually. I can't. Life's too short.
jacalata's review against another edition
4.0
This was a fun read with occasional monologues from the guru insert that I skipped. I’ll have to check out the first one, Phoenix project.
jmcphers's review against another edition
3.0
This book wasn't quite as fun to read as the Phoenix Project. No one actually learns anything; every character is a one-dimensional Genius, full of breathless new ideas for the future, or a zero-dimensional Villain, intent on maintaining the status quo and squashing innovation. Needless to say, the book is one triumph after another for the Geniuses, whose gravest error is a screwing up a SQL statement.
That said, there is a lot to like. Parts Unlimited (or as I will call it here, Struggling Corporation) has evolved into an unpleasant bureaucracy, but the author must have seen exactly how this happens, because it rings very true: there is (generally) no malice or ill intent or even incompetence, just a series of totally understandable decisions made by people trying their best. And, as a software engineer myself, I was delighted and refreshed by the accuracy with which they are portrayed; if the author is not himself a programmer, he must have spent weeks consulting with them to get the lingo and tech right.
The author lays out 5 Ideals for software development:
The First Ideal—Locality and Simplicity
The Second Ideal—Focus, Flow, and Joy
The Third Ideal—Improvement of Daily Work
The Fourth Ideal—Psychological Safety
The Fifth Ideal—Customer Focus
These are all unquestionably important, and in my career I've seen projects go south when they miss one or more of them. "Improvement of daily work" is perhaps the biggest one; engineers tend to think that time not spent writing shipping code is time wasted, but effective companies tend to put their finest engineers to work on internal tools.
I could have gone without the constant advertisements for functional programming and Clojure; these are wonderful tools but aren't exactly silver bullets.
And I was put off a lot more by my distaste for the end goal of all of the sweat and labor expended by the hard-working folks in this story. What are these genius engineers doing to turn around big ol' Struggling Corporation? All the new systems built over the course of this tome work together to achieve the holy grail of ... TARGETED ADVERTISING. That's right. They've got to assimilate data from all over the company to build disturbing profiles on their customers and push notifications to their phones attempting to sell them high-margin items. Their app even (I am NOT making this up) alerts store managers when "high value customers" enter the store.
Needless to say, the customers in this work of fiction do not uninstall the app in disgust when it starts blaring creepy notifications, or grow suspicious that it is broadcasting their exact location and income bracket to salespeople so that they can be aggressively and personally marketed to. Instead, of course, they stampede to the website, so eager to order new fuel filters that they bring down the system.
Promotions all around!
That said, there is a lot to like. Parts Unlimited (or as I will call it here, Struggling Corporation) has evolved into an unpleasant bureaucracy, but the author must have seen exactly how this happens, because it rings very true: there is (generally) no malice or ill intent or even incompetence, just a series of totally understandable decisions made by people trying their best. And, as a software engineer myself, I was delighted and refreshed by the accuracy with which they are portrayed; if the author is not himself a programmer, he must have spent weeks consulting with them to get the lingo and tech right.
The author lays out 5 Ideals for software development:
The First Ideal—Locality and Simplicity
The Second Ideal—Focus, Flow, and Joy
The Third Ideal—Improvement of Daily Work
The Fourth Ideal—Psychological Safety
The Fifth Ideal—Customer Focus
These are all unquestionably important, and in my career I've seen projects go south when they miss one or more of them. "Improvement of daily work" is perhaps the biggest one; engineers tend to think that time not spent writing shipping code is time wasted, but effective companies tend to put their finest engineers to work on internal tools.
I could have gone without the constant advertisements for functional programming and Clojure; these are wonderful tools but aren't exactly silver bullets.
And I was put off a lot more by my distaste for the end goal of all of the sweat and labor expended by the hard-working folks in this story. What are these genius engineers doing to turn around big ol' Struggling Corporation? All the new systems built over the course of this tome work together to achieve the holy grail of ... TARGETED ADVERTISING. That's right. They've got to assimilate data from all over the company to build disturbing profiles on their customers and push notifications to their phones attempting to sell them high-margin items. Their app even (I am NOT making this up) alerts store managers when "high value customers" enter the store.
Needless to say, the customers in this work of fiction do not uninstall the app in disgust when it starts blaring creepy notifications, or grow suspicious that it is broadcasting their exact location and income bracket to salespeople so that they can be aggressively and personally marketed to. Instead, of course, they stampede to the website, so eager to order new fuel filters that they bring down the system.
Promotions all around!