Book notes: The Unicorn Project
Tags: books
Published: 2020-04-01 06:22:32

---
title: Book notes: The Unicorn Project
canonical_url: https://danlebrero.com/2020/02/05/the-unicorn-project-summary/
published: true
tags: books
description: Book notes on Gene Kim's "The Unicorn Project"
cover_image: https://danlebrero.com/images/blog/the-unicorn-project/the-unicorn-project.jpg
---

These are my notes on [Gene Kim](https://twitter.com/RealGeneKim)'s [The Unicorn Project](https://itrevolution.com/the-unicorn-project/). 

Note that this is not your usual IT book, but a novel about it (or IT). Nonetheless there is a lot of practical advice, as Gene Kim is one of the authors of [Accelerate](https://itrevolution.com/book/accelerate/) and [The DevOps Handbook](https://itrevolution.com/book/the-devops-handbook/). 

Being a novel makes it a more enjoyable and easy read, one that even your pointy-haired boss could enjoy!

The Unicorn Project is a self-contained book, but related to [The Phoenix Project](https://itrevolution.com/book/the-phoenix-project/), which I would also be happy to recommend.

*Tip*: Each chapter has a bunch of very interesting references!

*Tip 2*: Gene Kim did three "Ask Me Anything" on the IT Revolution Book Club. You can watch them [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReROx9-68V8), [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQktlXp_Y3g) and [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmzFLhapI2o).

# Key Insights

As Gene Kim is also the author of Accelerate, a lot of the key insights from Accelerate can be found in The Unicorn Project. See [my Accelerate notes](https://danlebrero.com/2020/01/22/accelerate-high-performing-technology-orgs-summary/#content) for completeness.

- Is not small vs big, but fast vs slow.
- Developer productivity should be the concern of the most senior developers.
- To speak clearly, you have to think clearly. To think clearly, you have to write clearly.
- Employee engagement and customer satisfaction are the only things that matter. The rest will take care of itself.
- Five ideals:
    - Locality and simplicity.
    - Focus, Flow and Joy.
    - Improvement of Daily Work:
        - Elevate improvement of daily work over daily work itself.
    - Psychological Safety:
        - Safety is a precondition of work.
    - Customer Focus.
- People are trying to help. It is the process that is helpless. Reminds me of [Gerry Weiberg's Becoming a technical leader](https://danlebrero.com/2019/11/27/becoming-a-technical-leader-book-notes/#content). 
- When engineers think of "the customer" in the abstract instead as a real person, you rarely set the right outcomes.
- CEO keeps reminding of who the customers are and the vision/mission.
- Architecture is about enabling Focus, Flow, Joy and Fast feedback.
- Transformational Leader:
    - Expects excellence.
    - Pursuit of perfection.
    - Urgency to achieve mission.
    - Dissatisfaction with status quo.
    - Zeal for customers.
- Geoffrey Moore's [Three Horizons](#ch-16):
    - Horizon 1 - Cash-cows. Needs bureaucracy.
    - Horizon 3 - Future growth ideas. Needs speed.
- Geoffrey Moore's [Four Zones](#ch-17):
    - Invest in Core, outsource Context.
    - Rack funerals:

![Rack funerals](https://danlebrero.com/images/blog/the-unicorn-project/rack-funerals.jpg "Rack funerals")

<span style="background-color: #ecf0f1"><small>Image from Gene Kim's presentation [The Unicorn Project And The Five Ideals](https://youtu.be/M6JGdF9XC7g?t=1846).</small></span>
              
# TOC

* [Part One: September 3-September 18](#part-one)
    * [Chapter 1](#ch-1)
    * [Chapter 2](#ch-2)
    * [Chapter 3](#ch-3)
    * [Chapter 4](#ch-4)
    * [Chapter 6](#ch-6)
    * [Chapter 7](#ch-7)
* [Part Two: September 23-November 9](#part-two)
    * [Chapter 8](#ch-8)
    * [Chapter 11](#ch-11)
    * [Chapter 12](#ch-12)
    * [Chapter 13](#ch-13)
* [Part Three: November 10-Present](#part-three)
    * [Chapter 15](#ch-15)
    * [Chapter 16](#ch-16)
    * [Chapter 17](#ch-17)
    * [Chapter 18](#ch-18)
    * [Chapter 19](#ch-19)
    * [Epilogue](#epilogue)

# <a name="part-one"></a>Part One: September 3-September 18
## <a name="ch-1"></a>Chapter 1

- Mistakes and entropy are a fact of live.
- Culture of fear (reference to Westrum org):
    - Kills innovation.
    - People are careful on how they phrase things.
    - Avoid "forbidden words".
- The Phoenix Project building is silent. Immediate sign that there is something wrong with the development teams.

## <a name="ch-2"></a>Chapter 2

- Maxine, the hero, keeps a daily work diary: 
    - What and how long work takes, and lessons learned.
- Time tracking systems are useless.
- When engineers think of “the customer” in the abstract instead as a real person, you rarely set the right outcomes.
- CEO keeps reminding of who the customers are and the vision/mission.
- Safety is a precondition of work.

## <a name="ch-3"></a>Chapter 3

- Busy != productive != effective.
- People are trying to help. It is the process that is helpless. Reminds me of [Gerry Weiberg's Becoming a technical leader](https://danlebrero.com/2019/11/27/becoming-a-technical-leader-book-notes/#content).
- Small changes == more productive.
- Program state is the enemy.
- Change is a fact of live.
- Changes should be done easily, quickly, safely.
- Agility is never free.
- Focus, flow, joy. Fast feedback. Thanks to architecture.
    
## <a name="ch-4"></a>Chapter 4

- How can you create anything of value if you don't have feedback on how it is used?

## <a name="ch-6"></a>Chapter 6

- Too much information makes every thing slow down.
- Coordination, communication, approvals maybe more expensive than redundancy and duplication.

## <a name="ch-7"></a>Chapter 7

- Dev productivity as a main theme of the book.
- Complected. Sensei Rick Hickey.
- Dev productivity should be the concern of the most senior devs.
- Pay down technical debt as part of daily work.
- First ideal: Locality and simplicity.
- Second Ideal: Focus, Flow and Joy.
- Third Ideal: Improvement of Daily Work:
    - Elevate improvement of daily work over daily work itself.
- Forth Ideal: Psychological Safety:
    - Safe to talk about problems.
    - Solving problems requires prevention, which requires honesty, which requires lack of fear.
    - Ask "what caused a problem" instead of "who".
- Fifth Ideal: Customer Focus
- Technology is too often a caste system ( Arch > Dev > QA > Ops)

## <a name="ch-8"></a>Chapter 8

- Before: Leader roles was to design and decompose work and verify it was done by armies of interchangeable workers, who were paid to user their hands, not their heads.
- Now: Leaders should be guiding, enabling and removing obstacles.
- Toyota Andon cord: people are thanked for raising problems, so they can be solved and daily work improved.
- Servant Leadership != Transformational Leadership.
- Transformational Leadership:
    - Understand the org vision.
    - Question how work is performed.
    - Inspirational communication.
    - Personal recognition.
    - Supportive leadership.
    - Characteristics:
        - Expects excellence.
        - Pursuit of perfection.
        - Urgency to achieve mission.
        - Dissatisfaction with status quo.
        - Zeal for customers.

## <a name="ch-11"></a>Chapter 11

- You build it, you run it
    
## <a name="ch-12"></a>Chapter 12

- Lead time of ideas: 2 years
    - Small features, rolled up to larger ones than then need to be approved and specced

## <a name="ch-13"></a>Chapter 13

- Blameless postmortems:
    - Rule: you cannot say "I should have done" or "If I have known about that, I would have done Y".
- Disconnect between Product Development and front-line users.
- To speak clearly, you have to think clearly.
- To think clearly, you have to write clearly.

## <a name="ch-15"></a>Chapter 15

- Monitoring FTW!
- Graceful degradation is hard.
- Synthetic traffic for Load testing is very hard.
- Customer focus:
    - Improve customer's live.
    - Create value for them.
    - Whether they will pay for it
        - If not, we shouldn't be building it.
- Trust.

## <a name="ch-16"></a>Chapter 16

- Employee engagement and customer satisfaction are the only things that matter. The rest will take care of itself.
- Only one in three strategic ideas have a positive outcome. And only a third of those have a big enough impact.
- Goofrey Moore - [Four Zones](https://medium.com/@frankdiana/competing-in-the-age-of-disruption-e2187d2ad9d8) and [Three Horizons](https://www.infoq.com/articles/visual-portfolio-management/):
    - Horizon 1 - Company’s cash-cow.
    - Horizon 2 - High growth. Next cash-cows.
    - Horizon 3 - Pool of ideas to explore. Need to find asap:
        - Market risks: does the idea solve a real customer need?
        - Technical risk: Is it technically feasible?
        - Business model risk: Is there a financially feasible engine of growth?
- Horizon 1 needs:
    - Consistency.
    - Compliance.
    - Bureaucracy.
    - Rules.
- Horizon 3 needs:
    - Speed.
    - Experimentation.
    - Fast feedback.

## <a name="ch-17"></a>Chapter 17

- Moore’s [Four Zones](https://medium.com/@frankdiana/competing-in-the-age-of-disruption-e2187d2ad9d8). Core vs Context:
    - Core: what the customer is paying for.
    - Context: everything else. What is needed for operate (cafeteria, HR, email, …).
    - Context is a burden.
    - Invest in Core, outsource Context.
    
## <a name="ch-18"></a>Chapter 18

- Blameless post-mortem even without an outage: they are the best opportunity to learn.

## <a name="ch-19"></a>Chapter 19

- Teaching Thursdays is 2 hours. 
- Leaders must model the behaviours that they want.
- Adults hide the fact they are learning because they don’t want to be seen as incompetents.
- Event sourcing FTW!
- ["Rack funerals"](https://youtu.be/M6JGdF9XC7g?t=1846)  

## <a name="epilogue"></a>Epilogue

- Technology needs to be embedded in the business, not merely "aligned with it."
- Small does not beat big. Fast beats slow. Fast and big win almost every time.