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The Unicorn Project QUOTES

The Unicorn Project QUOTES

1 " Trying to get a Phoenix build going is like playing Legend of Zelda, if it were written by a sadist, forcing her to adventure far and wide to find hidden keys scattered across the kingdom and given only measly clues from uncaring NPCs. But when you finally finish the level, you can’t actually play the next level—you have to mail paper coupons to the manufacturer and wait weeks to get the activation codes. "

― Gene Kim , The Unicorn Project

2 " There’s a very real cognitive and spiritual burden of having to carry so many unfulfilled promises forever into the future, where anyone can ask at any time “Where is my feature? "

― Gene Kim , The Unicorn Project

3 " Punishing failure and “shooting the messenger” only cause people to hide their mistakes, and eventually, all desire to innovate is completely extinguished. "

― Gene Kim , The Unicorn Project

4 " Simplicity is important because it enables locality. Locality in our code is what keeps systems loosely coupled, enabling us to deliver features faster. Teams can quickly and independently develop, test, and deploy value to customers. Locality in our organizations allows teams to make decisions without having to communicate and coordinate with people outside the team, potentially having to get approvals from distant authorities or committees so far removed from the work that they have no relevant basis to make good decisions,” he says, clearly disgusted. "

― Gene Kim , The Unicorn Project

5 " While the redshirts battle to contain the raging engine fire that is threatening the entire ship, the bridge officers continue to cover their asses, "

― Gene Kim , The Unicorn Project

6 " If there’s any time that deserves courage and relentless optimism, it’s now, "

― Gene Kim , The Unicorn Project

7 " Are we playing to win and to establish the technical supremacy we need to keep up with what the business needs, or do we just keep limping along, shackled to things built decades ago, and tell our business leadership to throw in the towel and stop having good ideas? "

― Gene Kim , The Unicorn Project

8 " Ward Cunningham in 2003. He said, ‘technical debt is what you feel the next time you want to make a change. "

― Gene Kim , The Unicorn Project

9 " The Fourth Ideal is Psychological Safety, where we make it safe to talk about problems, because solving problems requires prevention, which requires honesty, and honesty requires the absence of fear. "

― Gene Kim , The Unicorn Project

10 " every incident is a learning opportunity, an unplanned investment that was made without our consent. "

― Gene Kim , The Unicorn Project

11 " Good morning, and I’d like to just answer the question that you’re probably thinking. The answer is, yes, we’re the team that built the current mobile apps—both of them. We’re not proud, and we’re just glad users can’t rate an app with zero stars. "

― Gene Kim , The Unicorn Project

12 " They start making a list: Every developer uses a common build environment. Every developer is supported by a continuous build and integration system. Everyone can run their code in production-like environments. Automated test suites are built to replace manual testing, liberating QA people to do higher value work. Architecture is decoupled to liberate feature teams, so developers can deliver value independently. All the data that teams need is put in easily consumed APIs "

― Gene Kim , The Unicorn Project

13 " Innovation and learning occur at the edges, not the core. Problems must be solved on the front-lines, where daily work is performed by the world’s foremost experts who confront those problems most often. "

― Gene Kim , The Unicorn Project

14 " Microsoft, still has a culture that if a developer ever has a choice between working on a feature or developer productivity, they should always choose developer productivity. "

― Gene Kim , The Unicorn Project

15 " our competition is not the FAANGs—it’s the other horses in our industry and tiny little software startups that are encroaching on our market. "

― Gene Kim , The Unicorn Project

16 " technical debt’ is what creates hardship, toil, and reduces the agility of our software engineers, "

― Gene Kim , The Unicorn Project

17 " a joke: “A QA engineer walks into a bar. Orders a beer. Orders zero beers. Orders 999,999,999 beers. Orders a lizard. Orders negative one beer. Orders a ‘sfdeljknesv. "

― Gene Kim , The Unicorn Project

18 " Everyone around here thinks features are important, because they can see them in their app, on the web page, or in the API. But no one seems to realize how important the build process is. Developers cannot be productive without a great build, integration, and test process. "

― Gene Kim , The Unicorn Project

19 " what’s the plural of ‘developer’?” says Maxine. “A ‘merge conflict. "

― Gene Kim , The Unicorn Project

20 " It is ignorance that is the mother of all problems, and the only thing that can overcome it is learning. "

― Gene Kim , The Unicorn Project