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

CloserQ readers, I just finished reading (listening to on Audible) The Phoenix Project: A Novel About IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win by Gene Kim.   As a sales manager, Project Phoenix is not a typical read for me, as I usually focus on my reading on sales, executive management, biographies, and bubble gum fiction.  However, Project Phoenix was so strongly recommended by Mike ‘’Oakie’ Oakman, our VP of Delivery, so based on his raw enthusiasm, I downloaded the Phoenix Project on Audible. 

While listening to Project Phoenix, I first called Mike to thank him for pushing me to read, then we discussed the different strategies to increase DevOps effeciencies. With this novel, I have a better understanding of the challenges of other departments exceeding their objectives, particularly software development and IT deployment teams. 

The Project Phoenix is a fictional business novel that tells the story of Bill, an IT manager, who gets a battlefield promotion (aka his boss was fired) to Interim CIO.  Bill has only ninety days to rescue an over-budget IT department, including the overdue and high profile IT initiative code named, The Phoenix Project.  This project is so important the CEO wants Bill to report directly to him and to fix the entire mess in ninety days or else Bill’s entire department will be outsourced. 

With the help of a sage board member, with a vague socratic teaching style with cryptic messages, Bill starts to see that IT work has more in common with a manufacturing plant work than he ever imagined. The board member, teaches his mysterious philosophy of The Three Ways, that leads Bill to organize the work flow of his departments to resemble a highly functioning assembly line, to save both his job and the company.

One of the enlightening parts of the novel is ‘The Theory of Constraints’ aka the bottle neck.  That unless you improve the efficiency of the bottle neck, all other improvements are moot.  Additionally, the book highlight the value of planned work and the challenges of unplanned work, which I would equate to Stephen Covey’s time management strategy of focusing on what is ‘Important but Not-Urgent’ versus the Urgent, if you want to make real productivity gains.  

The novel is current day version of The Goal: An Ongoing Process ofImprovement by Eliyahu Goldratt.  The Goal is a legendary business novel written 30 years ago on implementing process improvements for business and manufacturing, through a fictional story.  I enjoyed The Project Phoenix so, much that I downloaded The Goal on Audible. 
  

Below is a link on amazon.com.

http://www.amazon.com/Phoenix-Project-DevOps-Helping-Business/dp/0988262509/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1447781731&sr=1-1&keywords=phoenix+project

Good Reading / Listening!

Reader Feedback, please click the ‘comments’ below to give your feedback on 'The Phoenix Project'. Shaun Priest aka CloserQ. Have fantastic day.