Five years after this sleeper hit took on the world of IT and flipped it on it’s head, the 5th Anniversary Edition of The Phoenix Project continues to guide IT in the DevOps revolution. In this newly updated and expanded edition of the bestselling The Phoenix Project, co-author Gene Kim includes a new afterword and a deeper delve into the Three Ways as described in The DevOps Handbook.
Bill, an IT manager at Parts Unlimited, has been tasked with taking on a project critical to the future of the business, code named Phoenix Project. But the project is massively over budget and behind schedule. The CEO demands Bill must 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 …
Five years after this sleeper hit took on the world of IT and flipped it on it’s head, the 5th Anniversary Edition of The Phoenix Project continues to guide IT in the DevOps revolution. In this newly updated and expanded edition of the bestselling The Phoenix Project, co-author Gene Kim includes a new afterword and a deeper delve into the Three Ways as described in The DevOps Handbook.
Bill, an IT manager at Parts Unlimited, has been tasked with taking on a project critical to the future of the business, code named Phoenix Project. But the project is massively over budget and behind schedule. The CEO demands Bill must 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 a 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. Readers will not only learn how to improve their own IT organizations, they’ll never view IT the same way again.
A good (though old) message wrapped in a bad novel
2 stars
As a novel, this is as bad as it gets. The dialog is awful, the plot is nonsensical, and the characters are like bizarre cardboard cutouts; totally one-dimensional, yet totally unrealistic.
The message that the book is trying to get across may have been more impactful in 2013, but it feels like ancient history now in 2023. There are better books about DevOps that don't spend hundreds of pages telling a hokey story about why it's important.
One step above the typical corporate training video; sort of a casual primer on lean thinking and DevOps. Michael Crichton would’ve made it a lot more interesting.
An IT tale that everyone in the industry can relate to
5 stars
Reading this book felt like a dejavu. So many situations the authors describe have happened almost exactly as they describe them. We've made the same mistakes and hopefully have learned from them. It's very well written and relatable. Especially people who've not have worked for 20 years in the industry might find this an interesting read to possibly understand certain situations and avoid some of the mistakes we all use to make along our way.
The Phoenix Project is a seminal read on the accumulation of thoughts and processes surrounding DevOps as we know it today. The story is a fictional take on a workplace that is rife with unplanned work and misuse of the process. You might find it similar to something you see in your organization. It has some great insights and relevant stories you can apply to your own practices. In 2020, these things should be less and less relevant, but in fact, they seem to be more relevant than ever with COVID-19 and companies shifting more and more to the cloud with their digital transformation, demanding quicker time to market, just like Parts Unlimited in the book. The characters used in the book are great, and the protagonist gets the shake at the end. I can't help but think one of the characters, Wes, is a bit over the top. To …
The Phoenix Project is a seminal read on the accumulation of thoughts and processes surrounding DevOps as we know it today. The story is a fictional take on a workplace that is rife with unplanned work and misuse of the process. You might find it similar to something you see in your organization. It has some great insights and relevant stories you can apply to your own practices. In 2020, these things should be less and less relevant, but in fact, they seem to be more relevant than ever with COVID-19 and companies shifting more and more to the cloud with their digital transformation, demanding quicker time to market, just like Parts Unlimited in the book. The characters used in the book are great, and the protagonist gets the shake at the end. I can't help but think one of the characters, Wes, is a bit over the top. To summarize, it's a great read on how you and your organization can start thinking about bringing Development and Operations people closer together and get their decisions aligned, ultimately leading to more quality output and faster.
Hokey. Two stars because it's slightly less than "good."
A terrible novel. A pretty good allegory for how to get work done.
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Edit:
The more I think about this book, the more unfair I think it is to judge it as a novel, because it is so obviously not that. What it is, is a business book wrapped up in come kind of a fable or allegory. Like other good business books, this one drops a lot of authors' names and a lot of book titles, and a lot of models and lists like "The Three Ways Of Business."
Once finished with the fictional narrative part of the book, which was the most annoying part, I wanted to go back and reflect on the lessons of the book, maybe look up some of the other works mentioned, but the lack of an appendix or even a bibliography made that …
Hokey. Two stars because it's slightly less than "good."
A terrible novel. A pretty good allegory for how to get work done.
---
Edit:
The more I think about this book, the more unfair I think it is to judge it as a novel, because it is so obviously not that. What it is, is a business book wrapped up in come kind of a fable or allegory. Like other good business books, this one drops a lot of authors' names and a lot of book titles, and a lot of models and lists like "The Three Ways Of Business."
Once finished with the fictional narrative part of the book, which was the most annoying part, I wanted to go back and reflect on the lessons of the book, maybe look up some of the other works mentioned, but the lack of an appendix or even a bibliography made that impossible without flipping back through the pages, which is a difficult thing to do with an ebook.
