By author Dominica DeGrandis. When Demand is Greater than Capacity Rarely do I use the word always, except when it comes to requests on my time. Requests always exceed my capacity to meet the demand. As I write this blog post, two other blog requests sit idle, along with two workshops to prepare for, and three books to read. They all need to be completed in the next two weeks. But, I am not alone in this regard. Surveying Parts Unlimited, one of the top replies as to why work isn’t completed on … [Read more...]
Agile Conversations at Parts Unlimited
By authors Douglas Squirrel and Jeffrey Fredrick. Over the past year Parts Unlimited has been busy seeking out consultants who are experts in their fields to help them address major issues within their organization. And it just so happens that we have access to four of those video calls. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkhS6hGIr9w&feature=youtu.be Download the slides here. Our first contact with Parts Unlimited came when Erik Reid emailed us and asked if we were available for a … [Read more...]
Resource Guide To The Unicorn Project (Part 1)
First off, I want to thank everyone so much for all your support, encouragement, teachings, stories, and enthusiasm for The Unicorn Project. I am so delighted that we hit #2 on the Wall Street Journal bestseller list for hardcover business books on the week ending November 30, 2019! I hope that having The Unicorn Project show up alongside other business books shows that the technology challenges we face today are genuine business challenges that cannot be delegated away to “those … [Read more...]
#TBT – The Three Ways
Hello! As you may know by now, The Unicorn Project will be released next week on Tuesday, November 26. We are very excited to share this highly anticipated follow-up to the bestselling book The Phoenix Project. In The Unicorn Project, we once again visit Parts Unlimited, but this time from the perspective of rebel developers and business leaders who work together as they race against time to innovate, survive, and thrive in the marketplace. This book is a story about how a thoughtful, dedicated … [Read more...]
Announcing The First Audio Excerpt of The UnicornProject! (…it’s when I finally stopped worrying, because it’s when I learned that I really love this book!!)
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...]
