The Unicorn Project: A Novel about Developers, Digital Disruption, and Thriving in the Age of Data

by Gene Kim

“You can choose to build new features or you can choose to pay down complexity debt. When a fool spends all their time on features, the inevitable outcome is that even easy tasks become difficult and take longer to execute. And no matter how hard you try or how many people you have, it eventually collapses under its own weight , forcing you to start over from scratch.”

rearchitect their systems so that all data and functionality are provided through services.

They lacked the conviction to rebuild the foundations of their software systems.

The literature suggests that in general, only one out of every three strategic ideas has a positive result, and only a third actually move the needle in a material way.

“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.”