To my surprise, among the top questions I’ve been asked about The Unicorn Project is, “When will the audiobook be available?” I've been so excited that the audiobook version of The Unicorn Project will be launched at the same time as the hardcover and ebook—and it’s been soooo difficult to not tell everyone about something cool that we were planning, just because there were sooooo many things that could go wrong… But, thanks to the hard work of the amazing IT Revolution publishing team, I can … [Read more...]
The Fourth Excerpt from The Unicorn Project is Now Available!
Hello! The fourth excerpt from The Unicorn Project is now available, in which Maxine succumbs to what has plagued the rest of the organization, starts to suspect where a massive investment in speed is needed to achieve the goals and aspirations of the organization, brings the Data Hub technical practices into the current century… ...and meets Maggie, the brilliant and formidable mind who wants to reimagine how Parts Unlimited engages with their customers… Here’s the link where you’ll find … [Read more...]
Love Letter To Clojure (Part 1)
In this blog post, I will explain how learning the Clojure programming language three years ago changed my life. It led to a series of revelations about all the invisible structures that are required to enable developers to be productive. These concepts show up all over The Unicorn Project, but most prominently in the First Ideal of Locality and Simplicity, and how it can lead to the Second Ideal of Focus, Flow, and Joy.Without doubt, Clojure was one of the most difficult things I’ve … [Read more...]
The Third Excerpt From The Unicorn Project Is Now Available!
I’m delighted to announce that we just posted Excerpt #3 of The Unicorn Project here! (You will also find Excerpt #1 and #2 at the same location.) In Excerpt #2, our hero Maxine meets a mysterious group of rebels who are out to overthrow the ancient, powerful order, seeking to enable developers to be productive and recreate engineering greatness within the organization. They, along with everyone else, are soon thrown into the chaos caused by the catastrophic Phoenix release. In its aftermath, as … [Read more...]
Gene Kim Q&A with the Authors of Team Topologies
Gene: Every company loves an org chart, but why are they really so misleading Matthew and Manuel: Org charts are management-focused constructs, meant to funnel lines of reporting from the bottom to the top—the typical hierarchical pyramid. The fundamental problem is extrapolating this construct and assuming it actually represents the lines of communication in the organization, alignment of business goals and decision making power. This misinterpretation still happens in most … [Read more...]
The Second Excerpt From The Unicorn Project Is Now Available!
I’m delighted to announce that we just posted Excerpt #2 of The Unicorn Project here! (You will also find Excerpt #1 at the same location.) In Excerpt #1, we met our hero Maxine, a developer and architect with nearly unmatched skills and experience, who is blamed for a payroll outage and is exiled to the Phoenix Project. There, she discovers endless tundras of technical debt and architectural coupling that prevent developers from doing even the most basic things, such as performing builds. She … [Read more...]
Announcing The Unicorn Project, Availability of First Excerpt, And The Five Ideals!
I’m so pleased to announce that The Unicorn Project will be released in all forms (hardcover, ebook, and audio) on November 26, 2019. I’m so excited that over the next couple of months I’ll be posting at least weekly on topics covered in the book or topics that have intrigued and captivated me over the last 2+ years. In this post, I’ll cover the following:What is The Unicorn Project and why should I read it? The Five Ideals Availability of the first excerpt!What is The Unicorn Project and … [Read more...]
Go Beyond Team Structures for Software Delivery Success
Guest Post from Matthew Skelton, co-author of Team TopologiesKey Takeaways: 1. New team-based organizational designs are proving valuable across the IT industry. 2. Adopting new team structures is only part of the picture: it’s the interactions between teams that really counts. 3. Since 2013 many organizations have used the DevOps topologies patterns to explore different team models. 4. The new book Team Topologies by Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais addresses important organization dynamics … [Read more...]
Q&A with Mark Schwartz and Gene Kim
Recently, Gene Kim had a chance to speak with Mark Schwartz about Mark's new book, War and Peace and IT, Business Leadership, Technology, and Success in the Digital Age:Gene Kim: What inspired you to write a book about IT management for business leaders?Mark Schwartz: I meet with executives from over a hundred large enterprises each year. It’s amazing how patterns emerge: so many of them are trying to transform digitally, trying to find new sources of growth and to survive disruption—and … [Read more...]
Project to Product: How Value Stream Networks Will Transform IT & Business
The following is an excerpt from a presentation by Mik Kersten, CEO of Tasktop, titled "Project to Product: How Value Stream Networks Will Transform IT & Business."You can watch the video of the presentation, which was originally delivered at the 2018 DevOps Enterprise Summit in Las Vegas.For my entire career, I've been on this journey to help transform how software is built.I spent the first ten years of that journey, as a developer, writing a ton of code. I thought the … [Read more...]
