The Unicorn Project

A Novel About Developers, Digital Disruption, and Thriving in the Age of Data

By: Gene Kim

Narrated by: Frankie Corzo

The Phoenix Project wowed over a half-million readers. Now comes The Unicorn Project!

“The Unicorn Project is amazing, and I loved it 100 times more than The Phoenix Project…” (Fernando Cornago, senior director platform engineering, Adidas)

“Gene Kim does a masterful job of showing how … the efforts of many create lasting business advantages for all.” (Dr. Steven Spear, author of The High-Velocity Edge, sr. lecturer at MIT, and principal of HVE LLC)

“The Unicorn Project is so clever, so good, so crazy enlightening!” (Cornelia Davis, vice president of technology at Pivotal Software, Inc., author of Cloud Native Patterns)

This highly anticipated follow-up to the best-selling title The Phoenix Project takes another look at Parts Unlimited, this time from the perspective of software development.

In The Unicorn Project, we follow Maxine, a senior lead developer and architect, as she is exiled to the Phoenix Project, to the horror of her friends and colleagues, as punishment for contributing to a payroll outage. She tries to survive in what feels like a heartless and uncaring bureaucracy and to work within a system where no one can get anything done without endless committees, paperwork, and approvals.

One day, she is approached by a ragtag bunch of misfits who say they want to overthrow the existing order, to liberate developers, to bring joy back to technology work, and to enable the business to win in a time of digital disruption. To her surprise, she finds herself drawn ever further into this movement, eventually becoming one of the leaders of the Rebellion, which puts her in the crosshairs of some familiar and very dangerous enemies.

The Age of Software is here, and another mass extinction event looms - this is a story about rebel developers and business leaders working together, racing against time to innovate, survive, and thrive in a time of unprecedented uncertainty...and opportunity.

©2019 Gene Kim (P)2019 Gene Kim

Enjoyable, fast paced, Will re-listen to it again

Great book. Managed to be a sequel without being a sequel. Great listen. I hope this bit of fiction will continue to have a positive impact on our industry and the workforce. Be nice to people, remove obstacles, keep on learning.

Great Story, but Narrator was distracting.

overall it was a great book, but the narrator not pronouncing all of some words like "important" (she pronounced "impor-ent") was VERY distracting. Also, in a book about technology, the narrator not knowing the acronyms and terms of how to properly pronounce them was also distracting.

Even better than Phoenix Project

I love it! It’s like porn for DevOps/Lean/Agile people!
Compared to Phoenix project it takes the story a little bit further towards business agility. But both books are tremendous. And if you haven’t read it, try “The Goal” by Goldratt.

Excellen!

This is an accurate description of the Kafkaesque frustrations many of us work in, when companies grow and bureaucracy sets in. Fortunately it also shows how and what is needed to unleash an entire workforce.

Good Read

Very engaging with lessons applicable to individuals within Information Technology careers. I will be putting some of these lessons to use where I can.

Taking a step back is not the same as a step down

Victory story of how one developer's demotion led to a culture of learning and innovation. Enjoyed that this book was written through the lens of IT.

Revelatory and fun on technology and bureaucracy

Great buy and good listen. Recommend for anyone navigating large bureaucracies at any level of organization!

As a software architecture I approve this message

The store felt very true to life. I have experience this type of things happening plenty of times in my career. If you are going to work in software this is a must read/listen

Great for an Aspiring Developer

I prefer nonfiction and memoirs to fiction but this seemed like a valuable read as I’m studying to become a developer. It had some great tips on coding and architecture and helped me come up with some questions to ask (and red flags to look for) when I interview for jobs.
With that said, some parts seemed a little too perfect and that was kind of annoying to me. Like the mystical character Eric in real life would probably have been a book that Maxine read and that would’ve made way more sense. I also was confused and annoyed at how Maxine went from the new girl on the team to the center of everything just bc she’s the main character.
But I still enjoyed it overall.

A great fictional account of applied DevOps

I'm a huge fan of the original Phoenix Project novel. In it, we follow an IT department attached to a retail car parts supplier through their journey of total dysfunction to a solid partner with the business. The Unicorn Project takes us on a journey with the same company, and the same time-period, but instead of following along with the IT operations, we follow closely along with the development teams.
And like the Phoenix Project, this novel is full of all sorts of ideas and insights that are sure to inform the next generation of IT and Business leaders, because as the novel makes clear, there cannot really be a stark line dividing these two parts of the business body.