The Phoenix Project: A Novel About IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win Paperback – 16 Oct. 2014

I'd bought a copy and put off reading it, being a little be sceptical of the novel format. Would it really be the best way to convey some of the ideas that are already floating around thanks to Gene and others?My interest was re-ignited after meeting Gene at the 2013 DevOpsDays un-conference in London. He's a really enthused guy and clearly spends a great deal of time thinking about how to fix the often dysfunctional world IT. His credibility was only cemented further for me when I saw the length of the queue for his books and the number of people forgoing lunch to lay their hands on a copy.Ok - so the book. Aside from a few sloppy typos, it's well written and I was quickly ensconced. To some extent it sucks you in at the beginning with your own sense of disbelief. Can this project get any worse? Why on earth hasn't Bill resigned? However, suspending incredulity at it's contrived nature and caricatures I found myself identifying with the chaotic state of IT and it's turbulent relationship to the rest of Parts Unlimited.It doesn't take an English degree to know that this novel will faithfully trace a comic curve and after the thrill of watching the plot plummet to rock bottom you're left with a worry. Will the bounce back up be as gripping?We jettison much of the schadenfreuder and the new kick comes from the appearance of Erik - our lean gene. Despite being something of a cliché, his sporadic and enigmatic advice risks being an annoyance but fortunately manages to be enough to leave me wanting to know more. A minor frustration is that as he drops in names of theories and their authors I kept wanting to go off and read up on Erik's suggestions. Lack of references and appendices put pay to that. However, knowing that Gene is an approachable chap, a quick email renders links to the IT Revolution Press blog.All in all, despite some of the frustrations, this book left me inspired and wanting to read more on the topics raised. With gentle caveats I'd certainly recommend it.I'm looking forward to The DevOps Cookbook - despite the cheesy teaser in this book.

The "DevOps" movement must have hit a new milestone with the publication of the first novel on the subject (yes as in an entertaining work fiction).To anyone familiar with the Eliyahu M. Goldratt's "The Goal", The Phoenix Project will feel pleasantly familiar.To anyone unfamiliar with The Goal, it is basically the crusade of a middle manager faced with the challenge of turning around a failing manufacturing plant to save it from closure. This challenge is supported by a quirky physicist adviser who uses the Socratic method to reveal how to apply scientific reasoning in favour of conventional manufacturing processes and economics. Throughout The Goal book, there are lots of simple models designed to explain the principles and teach you something. It makes you feel good whilst you are reading it, but at the end a little uncertain whether you've actually learnt anything.Modernise the hero and substitute their dysfunctional manufacturing plant for a dysfunctional IT Operations team, and you aren't too far off The Phoenix Project. In fact it is almost a sequel in The Goal series. A manufacturing plant which could easily have been from the The Goal is used heavily in The Phoenix Project to highlight what manufacturing can teach IT. - This is a great metaphor that I definitely subscribe to.So is The Phoenix Project entertaining and do you actually learn anything?I certainly found it highly entertaining, the observations were very sharp and definitely reminiscent of things I've seen. There are plenty of familiar examples of poor decisions about trying to go too fast at the expense of quality and stability, unpredictability and mayhem. All exciting stuff to a DevOps freak.Do you learn anything from the Phoenix Project? Perhaps mostly just through re-evaluating your own experiences. There isn't a huge amount of substance in the book and in fact, it appears to be a fairly shameless plug for the author's next book, the DevOps Cookbook:[...]In summary, personally I recommend reading either the Phoenix Project or the Goal and I eagerly await the Cookbook.

The book is a really novel approach to getting a strong, serious message across. I've been heavily involved in Dev and Ops IT for the best part of 25 yrs and I can see a lot of sensible advice hidden between the rather clunky and occasionally cheesy dialogue. For all you guys suffering in a corporate IT dept across the world - this really is a 'must and easy read' - if only to show you - that you are not alone in having to deal with the limitations of how the IT department has naturally evolved and how it has been hit sideways by the world of the mobile, cloud and big data, setting the outside world's new set of expectations. Whilst all the IT catastrophes that frame the first half of the book are over-egged and the inevitable neat resolutions to the mountain of problems way too clean, the approach and introduction of the 3 ways to DevOps - make perfect sense to me. I have already detected a more 'energised' me at work, and started thinking of how I start shifting our work practices to be closer aligned to the approaches highlighted in the book.For the struggling Development and Operations staff of today, its a case of get busy adapting to the new wave and watch your company grow and keep competitive or continue to accept tired and entrenched senior management thinking and find yourselves, ultimately out of a job - I cannot see any other way, apart from the 3 ways!