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  • The Unicorn Project

  • A Novel About Developers, Digital Disruption, and Thriving in the Age of Data
  • By: Gene Kim
  • Narrated by: Frankie Corzo
  • Length: 12 hrs and 24 mins
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars (693 ratings)
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The Unicorn Project cover art

The Unicorn Project

By: Gene Kim
Narrated by: Frankie Corzo
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Summary

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

What listeners say about The Unicorn Project

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To realistic to be a unicorn!

Another amazing book by Gene, the characters are too realistic. Anyone reading this book will resonate with the story and how the art of the possible can play out. Everyone from CEO’s to Developers should read this book.

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Perfect intro to DevOps for developers

If you are tired of people using DevOps as a buzzword, and not really knowing that it really means to developers then this book is the perfect intro. The novel genre is so much better than a regular text book at communication the DevOps mindset in a way that you can relate to if you are in software development. I often found myself laughing are the tragic situations describing unrealistic deadlines, kafkaesque processes and top management visions having lost touch with reality - so easy to relate to from my 12 years in software development.

Note of caution: once you get your DevOps-Aha-moment you will have a hard time going back to your silo.

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Thought provoking

Could benefit from more facts on the situations arrived at and how these become outputs.

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Phenomenal follow up to 'The Phoenix project'

A must read if you enjoyed the Phoenix project. This follow up remains faithful to the Phoenix project, but is written in a way that you don't need to have read it first to get the context of where the project originated. It remains faithful to the themes in Phoenix, albeit with a new cast of characters. They too work through the many operational and technical woes, learning and improving as they go.

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A worthy sequel to the Phoenix Project

A great read (listen) and a worthy sequel to the Phoenix Project and maybe even more important for developers. Very interesting if embarking of CI/CD.

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Couldn’t stop listening.

Better than any modern software engineering text book. You’ll learn loads about software development, operations and good business sense.

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Good, but not as good as Phoenix project

It's is a nice story, but the characters and the turn of events doesn't seem as realistic as in the original plotline. Seems too good to be true.

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A decent follow-up to the Phoenix project but not quite as good

Overall I think I enjoyed the book about the same as the Phoenix project however the content is a little bit more thin on the ground with regards to practical or pragmatic insights to Software development transformation in the new disruption business spaces.
Things like this don’t normally bother me but the narrator Seems to have the inability to pronounce the T which I found quite distracting given a lot of keywords & phrases used in this book like the word ‘important have that letter quite a bit!
Definitely worth a read and a good companion for Phoenix project

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Inspirational - great way to visualise DevOps

A great follow on the The Phoenix Project. Probably needs to be listened to twice to catch all the details.

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digital Journey

I nice exercise on a company digital Journey, we can all see lots of tangents with our professional experiences, past and future

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