Productivity
The Unicorn Project Summary & Review: Give Developers a Local Path
The Unicorn Project summary: Gene Kim's developer-side sequel to The Phoenix Project. Five ideals so a change does not wait on a…
Read Summary →Gene Kim
"Researcher behind The Phoenix Project and the Three Ways of DevOps."
Gene Kim is a researcher and former Tripwire CTO who studies how technology organizations actually ship. He co-wrote The Phoenix Project and later The DevOps Handbook and The Unicorn Project, and helped build the DORA research that put deployment frequency and change-fail rate on executive dashboards.
2 books·DevOps novels and DORA research
Books by Gene Kim
Our in-depth summaries and reviews of his work
Productivity
The Phoenix Project Summary & Review: Stop the Firefighting
The Phoenix Project shows how unplanned work and a hidden constraint stall every project — plus the Three Ways and a 7-day…
Read Summary →Key Ideas & Recurring Themes
Unplanned work is a first-class type of work
Incidents and rework jump the line. If you do not count them, they silently make every project late.
The Three Ways
Flow, then feedback, then continual learning — in that order — turn a hero plant into a system that ships.
The Five Ideals
Locality and simplicity; focus, flow, and joy; improvement of daily work; psychological safety; customer focus — the developer operating system.
Locality beats the ticket queue
If a developer cannot build, test, and see a change without a week of approvals, the org does not own the software.
Notable Quotes
"Your job is to ensure the overall health of IT so the business can achieve its goals."— The Phoenix Project
"Bring joy back to technology work."— The Unicorn Project
Book Author Gene Kim
The Unicorn Project Summary & Review: Give Developers a Local Path
The Unicorn Project summary: Gene Kim's developer-side sequel to The Phoenix Project. Five ideals so a change does not wait on a ticket queue this week.
The Phoenix Project Summary & Review: Stop the Firefighting
The Phoenix Project shows how unplanned work and a hidden constraint stall every project — plus the Three Ways and a 7-day plan to make work flow again.