Parts Unlimited is a large American car parts company with stores across most of the United States, millions of loyal customers, and 7,000 employees. These numbers, however, had started to decline rapidly over recent years. With the introduction of Uber and other similar companies, the younger generations often choose not to own their own cars, and if they do, they very rarely repair them themselves. So, it does not take a strategic genius to realise that, in order to ensure its long-term success, Parts Unlimited needed to come up with something new and original.
The story starts in early September, just after the summer holidays, as the company found itself facing an unexpected and serious problem, after a payroll outage temporarily left thousands of employees without their wages. The blame for the technical failure fell on Maxine Chambers, a developer and engineer who had worked in the company’s IT department for eight years and who was renowned for her technical expertise. Everyone in Maxine’s department knew that it was not her fault.
In an effort to keep the staff calm, and to prove that something was being done about the situation, Maxine was sent by her boss, Chris Allers, to work on the Phoenix project for a few months, a project that had been operational for years, but that had so far produced nothing but a long line of mistakes and failures. Maxine would have rather worked in the company cafeteria than on this project, but she had no choice, so she packed up her things and moved into her new office, which was fittingly located in one of the ugliest buildings on the entire company premises.
Here, the staff, contractors, and consultants worked in a large room divided into cubicles, and Maxine quickly realised that something was wrong. Everyone worked on their own, but without constant feedback from a central structure, a test system, and integration, no one had any idea what would happen when their work became combined with everyone else’s. She then opened her new work computer and noticed that no development tool had been installed in it. This was another serious issue, because it meant that each developer was working with their own tool, whereas teams within a company should always use the same tool, to ensure they are as efficient as possible.
Maxine knew that, more than anything else, developers need a system that allows them to be productive, to write high quality code quickly and safely, and to solve important issues. Yet, these criteria were totally absent from her new office.