Some thoughts on The Phoenix Project
Tags: books, devops
Published: 2021-10-17 20:16:00

"The Pheonix Project: A Novel About IT, DevOps, And How To Help Your Business Win", a novel written by Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, and Geroge Spafford.

This book follows Bill, an IT manager at Parts Unlimited, he gets an unexpected promotion and the responsibility of successfully implementing a huge and ambitious project. He quickly notices the mess that Parts Unlimited's IT department is, therefore, with the help of a prospective board member, he will begin a learning journey that will help his team achieve all of the company's goals. .

I was intrigued by the idea of ​​there being an IT novel written by a devops expert, so I bought The Phoenix Project with high expectations and let me tell you, I recieved more than I was expecting for.

Before reading the book I thought that maybe this would be a useful but boring lecture, to my surprise, the first few chapters hooked me very easily. Who doesn't love juicy business gossip? I liked all of that, and I really enjoyed the constant drama of the company through nightmare meetings and rude political emails. I know that is not the point of this book, but I would say that this narrative would entertain a regular reader (not involved in any aspect of the world of information technology).

The first chapters are about a payroll troubles generated by the IT System that is going to cause a lot of problems. As a software developer, I was oddly stressed from similar situations, but I was also impressed with how the authors set the tone and responsibility for IT in a large company.

Like I said, I'm a software developer, so a little note here: There are some rants about programmers like "Developers are even worse than networking people. Show me a developer who isn't crashing production systems, and i'll show you on who can't fog a mirror. Or more likely, is on vacation" That's just the protagonist ideology only at the beginning, so be patient and don't be offended. Actually, while reading these rants, I was thinking that maybe the development team is also blaming IT Ops for their failures and I would say that is very common. The only bridge between these two teams is a smart guy named Brent, and he's the only one with a lot of vital insight into the company's workflow. If you work or have worked in an IT department, I can assure you that you have met a Brent, in fact, Brent was inspired by a real person according to the authors and it really feels real. In many real life situations, a problem can occur with a Brent, and the team leader may not have a strategy when the most valuable asset disappears, this book have this covered for the reader.

If you read the description in this book, you will realize that manufacturing plant processes are a huge thing, and indeed it is. For me it was very interesting to have these references that I certainly did not know, concepts like WIP (Work In Progress) units or some important book references like "The Goal" by Dr. Eli Goldratt are nice to have.

If I led an IT team, I would certainly reread The Pheonix Project and The DevOps Handbook in addition to other resources of course. These are very useful lectures and, to my surprise, very entertaining.