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

This book is timely and helping to drive a movement in Business IT operations. I witnessed it once and am doing so again. In 1986 I started out work in one of the production plants of a global consumer goods business. Being an engineer but new to production control I had to learn through APICS MRP (Material Requirements Planning) and MRP 2 (Manufacturing Resource Planning). I got first hand exposure to the then horrid current state. We had over 20 000 hours of WIP and it took an average of 20 weeks lead time to get jobs through the shop. Urgency and fire fighting missed deadlines was the way of working. It was untenable as we were killing ourselves. I was fortunate to be assigned to start work on an improvement initiative. I came across and read a book that was just staring to sweep the manufacturing world at the time - called the Goal. We implemented these principles on Theory of Constraints over a period of months and eventually we reduced the WIP to 3000 hours and throughput to less than 4 weeks. It was mostly practices and understanding, advanced software sophistication like automatic schedule optimisation came only as we cleaned house and wanted further optimisation.Capitalising on this early success and riding the evolving ERP wave, I went on to eventually run global business and technology transformations. Getting to grips with building mission critical systems and delivering them for operations then updating them I always innovated and used what principles from this early learning I could to improve success and results in what limited way I could and it always worked. The issue was always a means to get broader understanding and buy in, as its "not the way it's done". I witnessed and helped the rise of the Waterfall Method with ERP and helped to necessarily transform it with hybrid agile on EPM/EDW transformation programs. I embraced the lean movement in software as an evolution to agile, and again the ground swell from the movement really helps delivering transformation program's.But still up to today broadly speaking we are missing the big picture. Seeing at least 3 distinct functions and phases from Business need, a big slow transformation delivery team - then weak hand off to operations having consumed all time and budget - to either put in lock down and eventually redo again, there has to be a better way. Business never stops, as survival depends on it, and waits for nothing. Like water, business will find a way round every obstacle and in the process the business will succeed or not. We saw the start of this block and circumvention a few years back to current time with earlier and continued adoption by business bypassing IT ops and governance with business procured Cloud solutions like CRM as corporate IT is in lock down. Often for very good and valid reasons from IT perspective. But at a real overall cost and risk to business in the big picture this is no longer an option.With the necessary formation of new organisation structures to enable fast competitive advantage, the growth of new data types and innovation everywhere - and the possibilities enabled by new technologies, it's truly necessary time to bring corporate - Enterprise IT and Business back together. Its imperative to create a true collaborative value added partnership - together. Business does need IT as everything is becoming digitised and IT must support and enable business to achieve its objectives. You don't and cannot outsource or lock down your means to innovation and you need technology to succeed. It's that simple.As with the Goal and OPT movement almost 30 years ago this book is a clever pointer to the way forwards - starting from where at least many firms would recognise today they are at. Manufacturing firms would never go back to the days of MRP and push schedules and neither would Firms already reaping advantage of this path. The book points to the future orientation of the only way strategic IT and Business will function, actionable today. The book will stimulate thought and conversation with small teams sharing a common problem of finding a way forward, and start to introduce a common language and ideas in principle that can understood discussed aligned met and experimented with small focussed steps. We now implement many of these things into our programmes and operations and seek continuously to improve further. The process works. The quicker firms and teams and new transformation programmes wake up to this, surely the better off they will be.If you are from the business or IT side of the equation, feeling stuck, pressed to do something, or just wondering what you could do or should do, and want to bring a team along with you by starting a conversation, you could do worse than circulating a copy of this book around the team and leaders - and scheduling a follow up meeting for a gentle brainstorm. You may be pleasantly surprised where you end up!

I bought this book for my husband at his request. He is an IT manager at a major pharmaceutical company. His job consists of many facets including "putting out fires" - managing the tools that monitor servers and working with an engineering team when there is an outage to bring the servers back up in a timely fashion. He works on collaborative projects with the engineering team to streamline the tools that are used to issue tickets to cut down on response time, create accountability, and raise the percentage of success in closing tickets. He is also responsible for the successful deployment of these tools the world over (meaning a lot of business trips). I know this probably sounds like gibberish to a lot of people, but those with an IT background probably know what I'm referring to.He asked me to download this book for him because it was relevant to his job. (Hence the reason for the background I included.) He absolutely loves the book and uses all his free time to read it. This review is therefore courtesy of my husband.This book tells the story of an IT Manager, Bill, who is over budget and late on delivering his project, code-named "The Phoenix Project". The book tells Bill's story, how he overcame his challenges, and what he learned along the way. Being in IT, my husband has often experienced the frustration of being overbudget and delivering projects - sometimes years - late. Often, the frustration and project delays are due to ineffficient communication between his team and the engineering team. This is where part of the book comes in play. A component of this book talks about DevOps. DevOps aids in managing releases of software/tools by standardizing methodology to allow for rapid development and deployment of secure, quality-tested products as well as aiding in automation of these products/software. It teaches strategies for better communication and collaboration between software developers and IT personnel. Therefore, DevOps becomes especially relevant when he is clashing with the engineering team over the development of a new tool.This book is essential for IT organizations as it uses real examples to show the problems IT groups face, how to overcome those challenges, and how to learn from them for the benefit of the company and the individuals who work there. Real-life examples make the book relatable. The humor interspersed in the book makes a subject that can easily turn dry into an entertaining read instead. My husband has learned strategies from this book that he can implement for peak efficiency - both with the tools he manages and the people he manages. If you work in any part of IT, this is a must read that will show you how to effectively cope no matter what is thrown your way.

I'm a career technical writer with a lot of IS/IT experience, currently writing IT policies for a fortune 500 company. The CISO recommended this book to me, and I will now recommend it to anyone working, or especially managing, in IT!The book applies lean, agile principals to a DevOps nightmare scenario in a humerous fashion where the protagonist has a mentor and good people around him and can step through illustration after illustration of improving workflow, quality, security, etc., etc.It is written in an engaging fashion which is hard to put down. There is a large element of vicarious pain and frustration, but the doses are followed with quick wins and encouragements which maintain the readability.

En primer lugar aclarar que es una novela no un manual, para aquellos que desean leerlo, yo lo adquirí sabiendo esto y me resulta una lectura muy interesante y dinámica, que ayuda a conocer la cultura DevOps y comprender cómo esta cultura sirve para mejorar en muchos aspectos la TI así como muchos procesos de la operación y por ende del negocio en las compañías donde es implementada.

This book presents stories and lessons very familiar to those who work with IT, either in big or small and medium companies.Addicting to read in its romance format, no matter in which area of IT you work on, frontend, backend, or something more "scientific" as developing AI models, you will absolutely learn something new and important!Apresenta histórias e lições muito familiares para quem trabalha com TI, tanto em empresas grandes quanto pequenas ou de médio porte.Viciante de ler em seu formato de "romance", independente da área de TI que você trabalha, seja no front, no back, ou até mesmo com atividades "mais científicas", como desenvolver modelos de IA, você irá aprender algo novo e importante com certeza!

Ouvrage simple de fiction permettant d'appréhender transition agile avec exemple pris dans l'environnement industriel. La base reste Scrum dans environnement informatique mais on élargit vite très au-delà permettant de comprendre l'impact ...

I could hardly stop reading! Great book.

Lectura muy interesante, el libro nos muestra el muro que existe entre Dev y Ops, y cómo poder afrontarlo, así como disfunciones del equipo.