{"id":58,"date":"2024-06-09T06:55:04","date_gmt":"2024-06-09T04:55:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stefanescu.lu\/?p=58"},"modified":"2024-06-18T18:40:15","modified_gmt":"2024-06-18T16:40:15","slug":"the-unicorn-project","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stefanescu.lu\/?p=58","title":{"rendered":"The DevOps adventure &#8211; my review of &#8220;The Unicorn Project&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"768\" src=\"https:\/\/stefanescu.lu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Pasted-image-20240608151431-1-1024x768.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-61\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stefanescu.lu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Pasted-image-20240608151431-1-1024x768.png 1024w, https:\/\/stefanescu.lu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Pasted-image-20240608151431-1-300x225.png 300w, https:\/\/stefanescu.lu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Pasted-image-20240608151431-1-768x576.png 768w, https:\/\/stefanescu.lu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Pasted-image-20240608151431-1-1536x1152.png 1536w, https:\/\/stefanescu.lu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Pasted-image-20240608151431-1-2048x1536.png 2048w, https:\/\/stefanescu.lu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Pasted-image-20240608151431-1-400x300.png 400w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h1 class=\"wp-block-heading\">#devops #agile #lean<\/h1>\n\n\n\n<p>Subtitle: A Novel about Developers, Digital Disruption, and Thriving in the Age of Data<br>Authors: Gene Kim<br>Bought: 30 July 2020<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><br>Another book from Gene Kim,&nbsp;<em>The Unicorn Project<\/em>&nbsp;continues to promote DevOps and agile methods as the solutions to the world&#8217;s IT (and corporate) ills, similar to the other books by the author. Besides&nbsp;<em>The Phoenix Project<\/em>, Gene Kim is known (at least) for&nbsp;<em>The DevOps Handbook<\/em>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<em>Accelerate<\/em>&nbsp;(written together with Nicole Forsgren and Jez Humble).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The book re-uses the novel format introduced by&nbsp;<em>The Phoenix Project<\/em>&nbsp;to trace the archetypal trajectory of a DevOps transformation\u2014the enterprise being the fictional &#8220;Parts Unlimited&#8221; company (another reference to&nbsp;<em>The Goal<\/em>?)\u2014a company that displays all the evils of a big &#8220;legacy company&#8221; in which words like ITIL and TOGAF have replaced the beating entrepreneurial heart and poisoned the spirit of the good IT people (\/insert sad violin\/).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The book is split into three parts:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Part 1 (Chapter 1 \u2013 Chapter 7) presents the state of crisis in which &#8220;Parts Unlimited&#8221; finds itself: losing market share, an IT culture dominated by bureaucracy in which the actual IT specialists (Dev, Ops, QAs) have become mindless zombies accepting the absurdity of corporate decay: infinite request chains, roadblocks, pervasive blame games, etc. In these dark times, there is a light of hope: a few engineers that have refused to sell out their dreams and that are organizing &#8220;the resistance&#8221; to defend IT ideals.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Part 2 (Chapter 8 \u2013 Chapter 13) shows the resistance becoming visible and being embraced by (some) management; the new hope spreads.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Part 3 (Chapter 14 \u2013 Chapter 19) depicts the final battle and the happy aftermath.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>The DNA of the change (and of the perfect organization) consists of &#8220;The Five Ideals&#8221;:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Locality and Simplicity<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Focus, Flow, and Joy<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Improvement of Daily Work<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Psychological Safety<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Customer Focus<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n<p>What shocked me is the total dedication that the Devs, Ops, and QAs have to this failed company: Maxine and her co-conspirators spend almost 100% of their (diminished) waking hours working to transform Parts Unlimited, to take responsibility for production deployments, to set up (in rogue mode) servers and deployment processes alike. Maxine&#8217;s family is presented as a passive background actor: something that is happening around her while she toils at the corporate laptop to improve the corporation&#8217;s IT.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The story brushes off, without much consideration, the security and compliance implications of direct production deployment by the DevOps team. It minimizes the human and logistic cost of operating and supporting high availability services: in&nbsp;<em>The Unicorn Project<\/em>, the DevOps team is happy to take responsibility for maintaining and supporting the services themselves\u2014no worry for the on-call requirements, for wearing a pager (without any compensation).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the end, the &#8220;rogue&#8221; aspect of the corporate transformation and especially its dependency on the employees&#8217; readiness for seemingly endless sacrifice of self and of family time is the most puzzling and self-defeating aspect of the (assumed) objective of promoting the DevOps transformation path.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>On one side, it makes the whole story less relevant to anybody looking for ways to start on the DevOps transformation path: any change is viable if you have access to the best people and if these people are willing to provide you endless time and effort\u2026 but this is never the case. In my experience, in a company like &#8220;Parts Unlimited,&#8221; you&#8217;ll soon discover that the best people have already left; those that stay around are mainly there because they have concluded that the way things are is\u2026 acceptable for some reason: job security, predictability, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>On the other side (and in my view, this is the worst part of&nbsp;<em>The Unicorn Project<\/em>): this is not needed. The &#8220;DevOps transformation&#8221; is possible by setting clear intermediary steps\u2014steps that have an immediate advantage for the people involved and the company (e.g., fewer incidents in production, thus less personal impact).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>By clear communication of the thinking behind the decisions, transparent tracking of the results to grow confidence, and by showing the team a sustainable path towards balancing private life and professional excellence, you don&#8217;t need a war\u2014you need diplomacy, leadership, and knowing what you are doing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>#devops #agile #lean Subtitle: A Novel about Developers, Digital Disruption, and Thriving in the Age of DataAuthors: Gene KimBought: 30 July 2020 Another book from Gene Kim,&nbsp;The Unicorn Project&nbsp;continues to promote DevOps and agile methods as the solutions to the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/stefanescu.lu\/?p=58\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,14,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book","category-lean","category-process"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefanescu.lu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefanescu.lu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefanescu.lu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefanescu.lu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefanescu.lu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=58"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/stefanescu.lu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65,"href":"https:\/\/stefanescu.lu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58\/revisions\/65"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefanescu.lu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefanescu.lu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefanescu.lu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}