m1es

The Unicorn Project

What an inspiring book The Unicorn Project is! After recently having read its predecessor, The Phoenix Project, which I thoroughly enjoyed, I’m a bit stunned to conclude that I think I like The Unicorn Project even more.

The novel is centered around the same story as its precursor, but this time it’s told from the eyes of an experienced software developer. Being a developer myself, the journey of Maxine resonates even more than the inspiring path that Bill trailed in The Phoenix Project, which was angled from a DevOps perspective.

The five (developer) ideals that run like a common thread through the book weren’t as known to me as the concepts in the earlier book.

Individually these are familiar topics, but thinking about it in a packaged way, like it’s done in the book, was new to me, I guess. What this does to me is that it shows that all these ideals working together is where the real strength is. That one ideal enables the other, but also that one weaker link troubles the other four.

Next to the ideals there’s a lot to be inspired by. Sometimes it’s just through a fun quote that makes you wish you have the same optimism as Maxine has.

“She opens her mouth, but nothing comes out. “This is...incredible,” she says at last, with apoplectic horror and disbelief. She closes her eyes, trying to summon some relentless optimism, thinking of the Hoare principle: “There are two ways to write code: write code so simple there are obviously no bugs in it, or write code so complex that there are no obvious bugs in it.”

“Gentlemen, we are going to clean up all this crap”, Maxine says, with a level of confidence that she realizes may be foolhardy.

Other times it’s practical wisdom.

She’s always been a prolific notetaker. She remembers reading somewhere, “In order to speak clearly, you need to be able to think clearly. And to think clearly, you usually need to be able to write it clearly.” Which is why she takes the time to write out the document, so that people can understand what she observed.

The ideal that stuck with me the most after reading the book is The Third Ideal. That’s probably because I find it easy to neglect in busy times. I’ll remember it now by this simple oneliner: elevate the improvement of daily work over daily work itself. It’s funny how a book like this can truly inspire.