Susan Jones had been the CEO of Investments Unlimited, Inc. (IUI) for five years, a financial institution that has successfully navigated their digital transformation. She is quick on her feet and is trusted by the board. But right now?although you can't tell from her demeanor?she was panicking.

Today, IUI received notice from bank regulators concerning their unsatisfactory audit and compliance practices. If they failed to address the regulators' concerns within the year, the company could go up in smoke.

She didn't understand. How had her team let this happen? How had she let this happen?

Over the past several years, IUI had executed a digital transformation strategy following the business accelerating principles of Agile and DevOps. By any metric they had seemingly done things right. Feedback from customers was astounding and conversion rates for new accounts was growing faster than ever. But along the way IUIs manual governance process had become inundated with friction, frustration, and failure for the teams attempting to deliver value for their organizations.

Now, it's all hands on deck for a cross-functional team of executives and engineers to develop a modern automated governance process that satisfies regulators without slowing the company's ability to meet customer demands and compete in the market.

In the vein of bestselling titles The Phoenix Project and The Unicorn Project, Investments Unlimited helps organizations radically rethink how they handle audit, compliance, and security for their software systems. By introducing concepts, tools, and ideas to reimagine governance, this book catalyzes a more humane way to enable high-velocity software delivery that inspires trust and is inherently more secure.

Helen Beal is a DevOps and Ways of Working coach, Chief Ambassador at DevOps Institute, and ambassador for the Continuous Delivery Foundation. She is the Chair of the Value Stream Management Consortium and provides strategic advisory services to DevOps industry leaders. She is also an analyst at Techstrong Research, hosts the Day-to-Day DevOps webinar series for BrightTalk and the Value Stream Evolution series on TechStrong TV. She currently lives in the UK.

IT governance in the enterprise is hard. Regardless of the reaction you have to the concept itself, there is a great deal of difficulty in doing governance well. Like any process, governance seeks to provide controls to safeguard the treasures that a company holds of value, which includes people, data, brands, and products. Sadly, the execution of governance in practice often creates massive friction, frustration, and failure for the teams attempting to deliver value for their organizations. This book tells a story about a fictional company named Investments Unlimited, Inc. (IUI) in the financial sector. But the same tale can be told about any industry or enterprise that deals with governance. The goal of this book is to radically rethink governance. By introducing concepts, tools, and ideas to reimagine governance, we seek to catalyze a more humane way to enable high-velocity software delivery that inspires trust and is inherently more secure. As you travel through this narrative, we hope you pick up modern ways to view, deploy, use, and survive governance in a fun way that helps deliver organizational objectives. And ultimately, what you take away makes it easier for you to deliver business value faster, easier, safer, and happier.