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The Phoenix Project: A Novel about IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win

October 24th, 2016

phoenixproject The Phoenix Project is a tech novel. Yes, a fictional novel about an IT manager in a technology company, fixing the way IT works and saving the day.

Bill is an IT manager at Parts Unlimited. It’s Tuesday morning and on his drive into the office, Bill gets a call from the CEO.

The company’s new IT initiative, code named Phoenix Project, is critical to the future of Parts Unlimited, but the project is massively over budget and very late. The CEO wants Bill to report directly to him and fix the mess in ninety days or else Bill’s entire department will be outsourced.

With the help of a prospective board member and his mysterious philosophy of The Three Ways, Bill starts to see that IT work has more in common with manufacturing plant work than he ever imagined. With the clock ticking, Bill must organize work flow streamline interdepartmental communications, and effectively serve the other business functions at Parts Unlimited.

In a fast-paced and entertaining style, three luminaries of the DevOps movement deliver a story that anyone who works in IT will recognize.

I never had imagine there would be any fictional novel about IT. When I was recommended to this book, what I had in mind was some technical books like The Project Management Tool Kit – Tom Kendrick.
When I eventually got told that this is a novel, it intrigued me even more, and let me assure you that it is as interesting as watching a hacker movie.

While it doesn’t goes into details about technologies, gave the typical bad impression about developers and the glory of its Operations/Support manager (the protagonist – Bill), it had a good storyline of a wrecked company because of its mismanagement of IT department and how it went through a major revamp with emphasis on DevOps.

In a nutshell, I had higher expectations of this book especially about DevOps being the buzzword in recent years. However, I think in general it is good for managers or senior management who would like to learn how IT can be run better in an agile/Kanban/Toyota Way to deliver results. It highlights concepts for you to delve deeper if it makes sense for your organization and would definitely give traditional waterfall way of software development another fresh start.

Books, Technology