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122 reviews for:
The Unicorn Project: A Novel about Developers, Digital Disruption, and Thriving in the Age of Data
Gene Kim
3.86 AVERAGE
122 reviews for:
The Unicorn Project: A Novel about Developers, Digital Disruption, and Thriving in the Age of Data
Gene Kim
3.86 AVERAGE
This novel is mostly about a large company implementing new software and procedures to remove itself from a legacy system. I'm not really sure it had any meaningful message and the conflict didn't seem that interesting. I'm also just not that into fantasy.
Really enjoy the narrative approach to the book. Maybe too much narrative in this one though. Relatable. Recommended.
I wasn't a huge fan of The Phoenix Project but thought this was very good. If you want a great articulation of the challenges enterprises face in delivering software and how to solve them, read this book.
informative
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Like in [b:The Phoenix Project: A Novel About IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win|17255186|The Phoenix Project A Novel About IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win|Gene Kim|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1361113128l/17255186._SX50_.jpg|23848838], author Gene Kim shares about how DevOps, data, and leadership principles can lead to IT success.
Maxine, the protagonist, returns from an overseas vacation finding she is blamed for a major outage that impacts people all across the fictional company Parts Unlimited. In a clearly terrible management move, she is blamed for this issue and moved to a failing project, Phoenix Project, for a few months.
You then see how Maxine starts to figure out some basic IT challenges facing the project, and show her way-too-unrealistic-how-is-she-an-expert-in-everything knowledge. Her expertise in apparently almost everything gains her respect with some key people, and the rest of the book takes you through how they apply key principles (5 ideals) to optimize architecture, environment management, data hub, quality assurance, and how to lead people.
I appreciated the 5 ideals, and the problem solving energy of Maxine. The read felt at times too techspeak (when listing Maxine's many heroic past efforts, as an example), and the changes seemed so fast and too miraculous compared to the realities of technical debt and dependencies that most companies have to deal with - transformations like this take years! It does do a good job of explaining the WHY for DevOps concepts if you have a resistant stakeholder - just be realistic on the when and how!
Maxine, the protagonist, returns from an overseas vacation finding she is blamed for a major outage that impacts people all across the fictional company Parts Unlimited. In a clearly terrible management move, she is blamed for this issue and moved to a failing project, Phoenix Project, for a few months.
You then see how Maxine starts to figure out some basic IT challenges facing the project, and show her way-too-unrealistic-how-is-she-an-expert-in-everything knowledge. Her expertise in apparently almost everything gains her respect with some key people, and the rest of the book takes you through how they apply key principles (5 ideals) to optimize architecture, environment management, data hub, quality assurance, and how to lead people.
I appreciated the 5 ideals, and the problem solving energy of Maxine. The read felt at times too techspeak (when listing Maxine's many heroic past efforts, as an example), and the changes seemed so fast and too miraculous compared to the realities of technical debt and dependencies that most companies have to deal with - transformations like this take years! It does do a good job of explaining the WHY for DevOps concepts if you have a resistant stakeholder - just be realistic on the when and how!
Star Trek metaphors galore. Took me a while to get through after already reading The Phoenix Project, but it’s a great addition to the collection from IT Revolution. I think every developer should read this and every software manager should read The Phoenix Project to better understand how to build robust devops culture in their organization.
Have been looking forward to the chance to dive into this book since it came out and finally got the chance. Like it's predecessor, the Pheonix Project, and the Eliyahu Goldratt's The Goal (which I gather in some contexts helped inspire the Pheonix Project), it's a business improvement book masquerading as a fictional story - and I love it for exactly that. The story helps grab and engage people which in turn helps give the concepts, suggestions and ideas context and anchors in your brain. Some of the terminology is a little more dense and field specific - requiring at least a passing familiarity with IT and software development and DevOps, but I think honestly that makes it more useful rather than less. This was a fantastic read and one I'd recommend to anyone with even passing experience in IT, IS, software development, etc.
As with the Phoenix Project, this book packages up a central theme (in this case, the five ideals) in DevOps and presents them in the form of a story that, while somewhat contrived and overly-positive, nonetheless makes it easy to read through and understand the ideals that are the core "mission" of the book.
The Five Ideals themselves resonate strongly with me, and the story does make the book easier to read than a non-fiction presentation would be, so overall I'm willing to forgive the extent to which the story felt cheesy to me.
The Five Ideals themselves resonate strongly with me, and the story does make the book easier to read than a non-fiction presentation would be, so overall I'm willing to forgive the extent to which the story felt cheesy to me.
Like The Phoenix Project, but from a senior software developer's perspective, whom was at the forefront of the events. Honestly, I liked The Phoenix Project, but I preferred this one since I myself am a software developer, so it resonated more with me. I would recommend this story to anyone who is a software developer and/or is constantly looking for ways to improve life at a software development job.
adventurous
inspiring
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes