Gene Kim, The Unicorn Project (Book Review)

By jgn on Monday, January 20, 2020 in Reading, Reviews, and Technology

This is a companion novel to the earlier The Phoenix Project. The Phoenix Project was more about business transformation via reducing bottlenecks from a managerial point of view. This new one covers the same time period but is focused more on the engineering "red shirts" who deliver software. What is it about? A lead engineer teaches the software/hardware people to remove bottlenecks and create repeatable automated processes so that everyone can focus on value delivery. Technically, this means having a great continuous integration (CI)/continuous delivery (CD) platform. There is also a sub-theme in teaching people the values of creating modules with immutable state, as practiced in functional programming. A key character is shared from The Phoenix Project: Erik Reid, who pontificates a bit less here. I should also add that in the prior novel, there's a bit of an Ayn Rand edge to the heroism of the business turnaround: Much less of that here, which is kind of a relief.

I notice that my notes are almost completely in the last third of the book, where the team -- under financial pressure from management -- begins outsourcing all engineering products that are not in the "core." These strategies are the only way to get a company on the "growth" cycle, as opposed to selling off parts of the business to keep the books right. This is well-told and good guidance for any company that has lingering custom self-owned systems that can more easily now be delivered with various software-as-a-service solutions. In thinking about this, I think my own company has done a pretty good job of it within technology, but getting the entire company to think this would be a challenge.

However, the bad news, I'm afraid, is that I am not sure there is any audience for the book besides technologists. The Phoenix Project has proved to be of great use to executives and managers at many companies. The message of this book is critically important as well, but I am doubtful that other tech teams can "manage up" the way the protagonists of this one do.

Originally reviewed on Goodreads on 20 January 2020.