The Unicorn Project Page 10

  Everyone chuckles, and Cranky Dave raises his glass, shouting with a laugh, “To the overthrow of the Empire!”

  Confused, Maxine looks around the table. These are people from Dev, QA, Security, and Ops—a very unlikely group of people to be socializing, let alone working together. And she notices that everyone has a small sticker of the Rebel Alliance from Star Wars on their laptop, just like the X-Wing pilots wore on their helmets. She grins at their subtle but subversive badges of solidarity.

  Seeing Maxine toast with an empty hand, Kurt jumps up. “What do you want to drink?”

  “A pinot noir, please.”

  Kurt nods and heads toward the bar, but before he can take three steps, a tall and somewhat overweight man with graying hair walks up to him and gives him a big hug. In a loud and boisterous voice, he says, “Kurt! Good seeing you again, my young friend. What do you need?”

  Noting the attention that Kurt’s group gets from the bar staff, Maxine guesses they must come here often. She smiles. For the first time since her move to the Phoenix Project, she feels like she’s in the company of kindred spirits.

  “Who are you people? Why are you all are here? What are you possibly trying to achieve?” she asks quickly, while Kurt is at the bar.

  Everyone laughs. Dwayne says, “As you know, we’re a huge Kumquat database shop, which is what I cut my teeth on. I want to migrate us to MySQL and open-source databases wherever we can, because I’m tired of sending millions of dollars each year to an abusive vendor. We’re figuring out how to engineer our way there.”

  Looking around, he says to everyone, “Other companies have done this already. I think that anyone who is still paying Kumquat database maintenance fees is simply too dumb to migrate off it.”

  Maxine nods in approval. “Smart thinking! We’ve saved millions of dollars in my old group doing this, which we can now spend on innovation and other things the business needs. And it’s been fun. But why this crusade for open-source software?”

  “I’ll tell you why,” Adam says. “For almost five years, back when I was in Operations, I had a team that kept getting pager alerts at two in the morning for some middleware we used. In almost every case, it was because of their database driver. I was the guy who had to generate a binary driver patch! After all that work, the problems started happening again six months later, because when the vendor released their patches, they didn’t integrate my fixes into their code. Next thing you know, we’re all up at two a.m. doing the same thing over again.”

  Maxine is impressed. Adam has great kung fu too. And so does everyone else here.

  Cranky Dave frowns. “I’ve been at Parts Unlimited for almost five years, and I can’t believe how the bureaucracy and silos have taken over. You can’t do anything without first convincing a bunch of steering committees and architects or having to fill out a bunch of forms or work with three or four different teams who each have their own priorities. Everything is by committee. No one can make decisions, and implementing even the smallest thing seems to require consensus from everyone. Almost everything I need to do, I have to go up two levels, over two levels, and down two levels just to talk with a fellow engineer!”

  “The Square!” cries out Adam, and everyone laughs.

  Dwayne chimes in. “In Ops, we often have to do the return path—up, over, down, and then back up, over, and down before two engineers can finally work together to get something done.”

  “I want to bring back the days when a developer could actually create value for someone who cares, easily and quickly,” Cranky Dave says. “I want to build and maintain something for the long haul, instead of shipping the ‘feature of the day’ and dragging all this technical debt around.”

  Cranky Dave is on a roll. “This company is run by a bunch of executives with no clue about technology, and project managers who want us to follow a bunch of arcane processes. I’ll scream at the next one who wants me to write a Product Requirements Document.”

  “The PRD!” everyone shouts, laughing. Maxine raises her eyebrows. Those made sense decades ago, when you wanted written justification before you wasted a bunch of developers’ time. But now you can prototype most features in the time it takes to even write one page of a PRD. One team can now build things that used to require hundreds of people.

  Kurt sits next to Maxine, putting a glass of red wine in front of her. “We’re like the redshirts in Star Trek who actually get the real work done.”

  “I was literally thinking that earlier,” Maxine says, smiling.

  “Right? You’ve seen firsthand the reality bubble the bridge crew is in,” Kurt says. “They know the Phoenix Project is important, and yet they couldn’t have come up with a worse way to organize everyone to achieve it. They outsourced IT, brought it back in, outsourced one piece, maybe two pieces, shuffled them around … In many areas, we’re organized as if we’re still outsourced, and nothing can get done without permission from three or four levels of management.”

  “Kurt’s right,” says Cranky Dave. “We’re just another cost center, little cogs in a big machine that can be easily outsourced to some random corner of the globe. We’re viewed as replaceable and fungible.”

  “That’s why I’m here, Maxine,” Shannon says. “We could build a world-class technology organization and create an engineering culture. That’s how we survive and innovate for our customers. And my dream is that everyone is the custodian of company data. It’s not just the job of one department.

  “In Steve’s Town Hall, he talked about how we’re being disrupted and how we need to compete with the e-commerce giants,” she says. “Well, we can only win by innovating and understanding our customers, which we can only do by mastering data. I think the capabilities we’re building are the future of the company.”

  Everyone cheers and hoists their glasses.

  After everyone is done toasting each other, Dwayne turns to Kurt and asks, “So, how did the meeting go with your boss? You said you pitched William on funding an automated testing pilot.”

  Everyone leans in.

  “You know, I really thought he was going to go for it. I had testimonials from two of the Dev managers and a product owner about how great it would be. One of them had this great line: ‘Without automated testing, the more code we write, the more money it takes for us to test.’ Ha! I really thought that would scare the pants off of William!” Maxine can feel the mood deflate around the table.

  “Don’t keep us in suspense, Kurt. What did he say?” prompts Dwayne.

  “‘Son, let me explain something to you,’” Kurt says, in a shockingly good impersonation of William. “‘You’re young. You clearly don’t understand how this game works. We’re QA. We protect the organization from developers. It sounds to me like you’ve been hanging around too many of them. Do not trust them. Do not get chummy with them. You give developers an inch, and they’ll take a mile.’”

  Maxine laughs at Kurt’s uncanny impression.

  “‘Son, you’re a pretty good QA manager with a half-million-dollar budget.’” Kurt’s on a roll. “‘If you do your job well, you can be like me with a three-million-dollar budget. And if I do my job well, then I’ll get promoted and have a $20 million budget. You go around automating your QA, your budget shrinks instead of grows. I’m not saying you’re stupid, son, but you sure don’t seem to understand how this game works.’”

  Maxine laughs with everyone else. She is sure Kurt is exaggerating.

  “William is like a union leader, not a business leader,” Shannon says. “He only cares about growing his union membership dues, not about what’s right for the business. You see the same thing inside Ops and even Infosec.”

  A frown crosses Dwayne’s genial face. “Trust me, it’s way, way worse in Ops. At least Development is seen as a profit center. In Ops, we’re a cost center. The only way to fund infrastructure is through new projects. If you don’t find new funding sources, you’re screwed. And if you don’t spend your whole budget, they’ll take the
money away from you next year.”

  “Ah, the project funding model … Another big problem here at Parts Unlimited …” Kurt says, as everyone groans in agreement.

  “So, what’s your plan now, Kurt?” Dwayne asks.

  “Don’t worry, Dwayne. I’ve got another plan,” Kurt says, confidently. “We’re going to lie low and keep doing what we’re doing, looking for new potential customers and recruits. We keep our eyes and ears open for opportunities to get in the game.”

  “Oh, that’s a great plan, Kurt,” Dwayne says, rolling his eyes. “We hang out at a bar, complain, and drink beer. Brilliant.”

  Dwayne leans over to Maxine, explaining, “It’s actually not that crazy. It’s like in that movie Brazil, where the number-one fugitive is the rogue air conditioner repairman who fixes people’s air conditioners because Central Services never gets around to it. That’s us. We’re always on the lookout for places we can help. It’s a great way to make friends and find potential new recruits for the Rebellion.”

  “What?” she says in disbelief. “That can’t work, can it?”

  “Well, it’s how we got you here, isn’t it?” Dwayne says with a big smile.

  “I’m working all the angles,” Kurt continues. “I’m even thinking about asking William if I can have a meeting with him and his boss, Chris. I’d tell William that it’s really important to me that Chris hears my proposal and that I want him there.”

  Wow, Maxine thinks. That’s pretty gutsy, maybe savvy, and probably fatal.

  “I’ll keep you posted,” Kurt says. “Okay, who has new information or intelligence to share?”

  Shannon updates everyone on a nascent data analytics group in Marketing she’s been working with and how she’s setting up a meeting between them and Kurt. “They’re working on a bunch of projects to increase customer promotion conversion rates, and boy, they really need help. They’re not even using version control! They’re struggling with basic data engineering problems, and they’re still trying to get what they need from the data warehouse people,” she says, visibly bothered by their suffering. Kurt quickly pulls out an org chart on his laptop.

  He asks her, “Another data analytics project? Who’s funding it? How much budget do they have? Who’s leading it?” As she talks, he takes notes.

  When it’s his turn, Dwayne says, “I’ve got bad news. The Phoenix release caught everyone in Ops flatfooted—no one had it on their radar until last week. No budget was assigned to support it. Everyone’s scrambling to find enough compute and storage infrastructure. This is the biggest launch we’ve done in almost twenty years, and everything we need, we don’t have enough of. It’s bad.”

  “Holy shit,” says Adam.

  “Yep,” Dwayne says. “I’ve been trying to tell everyone for months, but no one cared. Well, now they do, and everyone’s dropping everything to support the Phoenix launch. Today, I heard someone trying to work with procurement so they can break the rules and order outside of the annual ordering process.”

  Despite the crisis, bean counters are still bean counters, Maxine thinks.

  “Everyone is still scrambling to get environments ready for the release tomorrow,” Dwayne says. “No one has any build specifications that Dev and Ops both agree on. I gave them the ones we wrote, and they pounced on them and started using them right away. But still, this release is going to go real bad, real fast.”

  “I think you’re right,” Maxine says. “I’m really, really good at this stuff, and I spent nearly a week trying to get a Phoenix build going. If it weren’t for the environment that Kurt gave me, I’d still be at square one. With the release team only starting today and the launch tomorrow, they are in big trouble.”

  Kurt leans forward, a serious look on his face. “Tell me more.”

  Suddenly, Maxine realizes why she was invited and that Kurt is no dummy after all.

  Over the next twenty minutes, Maxine describes her experiences, reading from her work diary, which she can access from her phone. She mentally kicks herself again for not bringing her laptop. Everyone takes notes, especially Brent when he returns. He and Adam pepper her with questions as if she were a captured secret agent being debriefed by the CIA. Everyone’s interested in how she was able to piece together the Phoenix build puzzle faster than anyone else had done. They ask lots of questions about who she talked to, what teams they were on, where she got stuck, and so forth.

  “That’s really impressive, Maxine,” says Cranky Dave. “Years ago I put together a build server that my team could use on a daily basis. But that was when Phoenix only had two teams; now we have over twenty. The build team is completely out of their league, with people who, I’m sorry to say, are the people who didn’t have enough experience to be application developers.”

  Adam says, “We’re really close now. I think we’re down to just one missing signed certificate for the payment processing service.”

  “He’s right,” Brent says. “Maxine, can you show me the build logs? I bet we can create that certificates ourselves—it wouldn’t actually be valid, but it would be good enough for a Dev or Test environment.”

  Maxine curses, mentally picturing her laptop still on her desk. “I can show you first thing tomorrow,” she sighs.

  “This is great, people. Here’s what we still need: we need an automated way to create environments and perform code builds,” Kurt says, counting off on his fingers. “We need some way to automate those tests and some automated way to get those builds deployed into production. We need builds so that developers can actually do their work.

  “So, who’s willing to volunteer some of their time to help Maxine get those Phoenix builds going?” Kurt asks. To Maxine’s surprise, all hands shoot up.

  “Maxine, would you be able to lead this effort, with the help of any or all of these willing and talented volunteers?” Kurt asks.

  Maxine is overwhelmed by the sudden support of all these people. Last week, she was unable to get help from anyone and was thinking about interviewing at other places. Suddenly, she’s not so sure.

  She takes a moment to collect herself and says, “Yes, I’d love to. Thank you, everyone. I look forward to working with you all.”

  Maxine is excited. She’s genuinely amazed at what this group has been doing and that she’s been chosen to help. I’ve finally found my tribe, she thinks. And this is what an effective network is all about—when you can assemble a group of motivated people to solve a big problem, even though the team looks nothing like the official org chart.

  I’m pretty sure I’ll learn and achieve more with this group then I would by having lunch with Sarah, she thinks. She wonders if she’s being small-minded and petty. She still wonders if she should take the meeting or just wait for Sarah to forget about her.

  “Excellent! Let me know if you need anything from me,” Kurt says to the table. To Maxine, he says, “We try to meet every week. We typically have only two agenda items. First, we share intelligence on who needs help and other people to potentially recruit. After that, we usually share about something we’ve learned lately or new technologies that we think could change the game here at Parts Unlimited. I propose we add a third agenda item, which is discussing the progress of Phoenix builds, yes?”

  Everyone nods.

  Kurt looks at his watch. “Folks, one more thing before we adjourn. I’m starting a betting pool on when the release team will have the Phoenix application successfully running in production.”

  The most optimistic bet comes from Cranky Dave, who guesses Saturday at two a.m., fully eight hours after the deployment starts. Most bets are scattered between three and nine a.m., with Maxine betting six a.m.

  “After all,” she says, “the in-store point of sales systems need to be up by eight on Saturday morning.”

  To everyone’s surprise, Dwayne bets Sunday evening, “You people have no idea how unprepared we really are for this release—this one will go down in the record books.”

  From:

  A
lan Perez (Operating Partner, Wayne-Yokohama Equity Partners)

  To:

  Dick Landry (CFO, Parts Unlimited), Sarah Moulton(SVP of Retail Operations)

  Cc:

  Steve Masters (CEO, Parts Unlimited), Bob Strauss (Board Chair, Parts Unlimited)

  Date:

  3:15 p.m., September 11

  Subject:

  Maximizing Shareholder Value **CONFIDENTIAL**

  Sarah and Dick,

  Thanks for the call today, and for walking me through the strategy and the Phoenix Project. I agree that an omni-channel strategy is required for any retailer to survive these days, especially given the e-commerce threat. And selling products manufactured in-house with low cost of sales is intriguing.

  However, I’m concerned at how much cash you’ve diverted from Manufacturing ($20MM) to invest in Retail over the last three years, with no obvious return. The question becomes what return you could have gotten if this were invested elsewhere in the business or just returned to shareholders. As of right now, investing in lottery tickets would have made more economic sense.

  Stories about innovation and omni-channel are nice, but the board needs more than stories and PowerPoint slides.

  Good luck with the Phoenix release tomorrow. I know a lot rides on it.

  —Alan

  CHAPTER 6

  • Friday, September 12

  Friday goes by in a blur for Maxine as the emergency release preparations continue. She sees endless mayhem as Dev, QA, and Ops try to line up hundreds of moving pieces for the deployment. Dwayne was right, she thinks. And it’s too late to change her bet to Sunday in the betting pool.

  At five p.m. the release starts on schedule. There are rumors of last-ditch attempts to call it off, because William, Chris, and Bill are nowhere to be seen. These hopes are crushed when an email comes out from Sarah and Steve, making it very clear that the release is to proceed as scheduled.