The Phoenix Project

Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, & George Spafford

ISBN13: 978-0-9882625-9-1

The Phoenix Project is the latest book from the trio of authors Kim, Behr, and Spafford. Ardent students of IT may recognize them as the authors of the Visible Ops Handbook¹. Their new book is a very entertaining story rather than a staid handbook. The Phoenix Project is a narrative on project management being reborn within a fictional company. Published recently the book delves into a fairly new area of Information Technology (IT) named Development Operations often referred to simply as DevOps. This marriage of operations and development improves operational efficiency and cross-functional collaboration between business units if done right.

In the book we follow Bill Palmer, a freshly minted Vice President of IT Operations, as he transforms a dysfunctional IT group into the key driver for the company. Bill is mentored throughout the book by Erik Reid, a guy who embraces the principles of Lean Manufacturing and how they apply to DevOps. The book is a very entertaining read with thoughtful commentary peppered throughout.

At the beginning the company is in a sharp decline. The IT unit in charge of launching the new product that will save the business, project Phoenix, is a wreck and the IT boss just got fired. Bill is asked to complete project Phoenix. He doesn’t quite know what he is getting into but he knows it is a mess. The project until this point has been managed in a waterfall project management style and the deliverables have been delayed until everything is complete. Immediately Bill sees this as a problem as no one really knows how complete Phoenix is, no testing has been done, and they have to launch in just a few weeks; on top of that normal operations must continue as well.

Through meetings cast in a sardonic light we are shown there are few processes in place and the ones that exist are not followed by anyone. By adopting agile software development practices the team slowly starts to turn the project around. Following a disastrous launch of Phoenix, a wake-up call resonates throughout the team. They start to give the processes an honest chance and again, the workflow improves and the subsequent releases are less challenging. However, the company is still tanking. Bill gets approval to speak with the heads of other divisions to determine what they need Phoenix to do now, rather than when it was first dreamt up. Gathering this data allows Bill to pivot, to borrow a term from the Lean Startup². They reprioritized their backlog and started producing software that provided immediate value to those using it. I feel that is the key take-away from the book, identifying the business goal of the organization and then ensuring that the work is always striving to move the company towards that goal. The authors really drive the point home by having the company software security officer John shaken to his very core when his work is swept under the rug by auditors. After a hiatus from work he returns ready to make sure the security issues that are prioritized are ones that help the business achieve their goals, rather than stopping them from doing so as had been his previous modus operandi.

Eventually Bill helps transform the company from within. The CEO Steve Masters comes to realize the importance of IT in his company. At the beginning of the book IT was thought of as a necessary component to be dealt with, not the core asset that it is for any operation in any industry.