Before COVID I had a plan with my 2005 Jeep TJ to make a trip to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska.
Unfortunately we all know what happened with that. But the idea spurned a fun project I did for work
that is carrying over into a new design with a hopeful new trip in 2023 or 2024 time frame.
In every software engineering career you will encounter a job that leaves a lasting
impression because things went well or you had good teammates. You will also encounter
jobs where nothing goes right, the manager is a pain, and nobody on the team pulls their wait.
Then there is the mythical unicorn. A beast that does not exist in software engineering but
I got to experience one time. Where the project was delivered ahead of time, hit all
quality metrics established by the contract, and under budget. You never get all three.
You typically on a good project will get two out of the three. The presentation below is
a presentation I gave at one of my jobs documenting this unicorn and the things I believed
were the reason for this encounter. Enjoy.