Name: BC Hark's review of The Phoenix Project by Gene Kim
Item: The Phoenix Project
Rating: 0.5
Author: BC Hark

Gene Kim

George Spafford

Kevin Behr

Bill has 90 days to fix a behind-schedule IT project, or his entire department will be outsourced. Fortunately, he has the help of a prospective board member, whose "Three Ways" philosophy might just save the day.

A Novel about IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win

The Phoenix Project

Natalie

Annotation Bill is an IT manager at Parts Unlimited. It's Tuesday morning and on his drive into the office, Bill gets a call from the CEO.The company's new IT initiative, code named Phoenix Project, is critical to the future of Parts Unlimited, but the project is massively over budget and very late. The CEO wants Bill to report directly to him and 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 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.

I decided to read this book out of supreme error. I would say don't read it unless you're forced to. The book is just the tale of an IT boss that is stressed out of his ever-loving mind. People will tell him to take the job, not take the job, then when he has the job and hates it and can't even be a good father, the conclusion is to keep the job, because wife doesn't want to move and is actually enjoying the newfound wealth. In fact, the protagonist's issues are so bad at one point he rage quits from the job altogether. 

An Oogway/sensei will poke his head out of his cave from time to time and give sage advice in the form of a koan, which our protagonist will discover the validity of only after the pooch has already been screwed. The company perpetually fails and loses millions of dollars. Sounds like this book is a modern day Dante's Inferno, but no it's just describing the hellscape of IT. Another garbage heap of a trope is relating all of management and how things are managed to the military. I'm not sure who told folks that the military is the bastion of all management capability, maybe it is, but it's a different ball field with different rules, so the perpetual intercourse is a little bit disgusting from my vantage point. 

Of course, the takeaways are that certain things will make things better, but also in the book, make things worse for a time as well. To be perfectly honest, I found myself pondering, "Why am I reading this book? What am I gaining from it?" The answer is that I am wasting a large portion of time on a book I do not enjoy and with an overly dramatic character base full of assholes that couldn't give 2-shits about each other most of the time. 

I did not finish the book, but it would be unfair to not say I did after wasting my way more than half way through it. 

The key takeway from this book is this: Do not be like Brent. But also do be like Brent.

No matter what you do, do not read this book. Your life will be better off, fuller, more vivid and better without it. Should someone force you to read it for some reason, find a concise summary of it and move on with your life. 

BC Hark

I decided to read this book out of supreme error. I would say don't read it unless you're forced to. The book is just the tale of an IT boss that is stressed out of his ever-loving mind. People will tell him to take the job, not take the job, then when he has the job and hates it and can't even be a good father, the conclusion is to keep the job, because wife doesn't want to move and is actually enjoying the newfound wealth. In fact, the protagonist's issues are so bad at one point he rage quits from the job altogether. 

An Oogway/sensei will poke his head out of his cave from time to time and give sage advice in the form of a koan, which our protagonist will discover the validity of only after the pooch has already been screwed. The company perpetually fails and loses millions of dollars. Sounds like this book is a modern day Dante's Inferno, but no it's just describing the hellscape of IT. Another garbage heap of a trope is relating all of management and how things are managed to the military. I'm not sure who told folks that the military is the bastion of all management capability, maybe it is, but it's a different ball field with different rules, so the perpetual intercourse is a little bit disgusting from my vantage point. 

Of course, the takeaways are that certain things will make things better, but also in the book, make things worse for a time as well. To be perfectly honest, I found myself pondering, "Why am I reading this book? What am I gaining from it?" The answer is that I am wasting a large portion of time on a book I do not enjoy and with an overly dramatic character base full of assholes that couldn't give 2-shits about each other most of the time. 

I did not finish the book, but it would be unfair to not say I did after wasting my way more than half way through it. 

The key takeway from this book is this: Do not be like Brent. But also do be like Brent.

No matter what you do, do not read this book. Your life will be better off, fuller, more vivid and better without it. Should someone force you to read it for some reason, find a concise summary of it and move on with your life. 

Bill is an IT manager at Parts Unlimited. It's Tuesday morning and on his drive into the office, Bill gets a call from the CEO. The company's new IT initiative, code named Phoenix Project, is critical to the future of Parts Unlimited, but the project is massively over budget and very late. The CEO wants Bill to report directly to him and 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 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.

Pierre

Good attempt at making this subject palatable and teaching these principles. The rest I otherwise quite mediocre. Treat like a textbook, not like a good read

Bulkan Evcimen

Every single character in this novel is a bad caricature of people in IT. Most of them are toxic and don't know how to remain professional in a work environment. If people talked to each other in the same capacity as Steve, Wes, Sarah, John and Dick in real life, it wouldn't gel and would be having conversations with HR.

If you've worked in IT in the past 5-10 years this book isn't that informative or entertaining either.

Mark Gibaud

Entertaining novel about life in IT hell, perfectly describing why I don't work at big companies anymore!

marc

An amazing novel about IT management and more generally all the non-manufacturing divisions of a modern company (Development, Product, Marketing, Sales, QA, Compliance...): 
>> this book is totally digestible and you end up reading it like a breeze, passionated by the endeavours of the phoenix team.
>>The storytelling is a bit candid in the way the main character learn about the modern management theories through his "Sensei" but it helps the general understanding of those theories.

A great lecture that I would recommend to anyone who works with any kind of IT department/team.

Jowanza Joseph

This book started off on the wrong foot but recovered in style. By the end, I felt pretty motivated to do my best in my own position and to spend some more time documenting my experiences. 

There is a lot of corniness in this book but overall, it's a fun read and one that got me thinking.

Arturo Hernández

If you are part of a Product, Operations, Engineering, Marketing, Sales... If you are part of a startup and it’s part of your job to make something happen with the help of technology, this is a book you MUST read.

The reality for tech related companies is chaotic quite often and on a daily basis it’s hard to know what to prioritize when everything blows out. This book paints that picture beautifully and provides a lot of great insights to help you understand what’s going on and what can you do to make it better. 

I bought the related book “The DevOps Handbook” and I’m really excited to read it after finishing this. Amazing read :)

Wenny

It's the Hallmark Christmas special of the IT world. Straightforward with a happy ending, this is a light yet lengthy read. This would make a good bedtime story for the budding ops-littleperson.

Great operations, language used already feels insensitive and dated

Steve C

Pratul

Consider this book as an easy introduction to the value of DevOps in the “software eats everything” world we live in — a valuable read for those who are at organisations that use technology on a regular basis (pretty much everyone?) but don’t consider themselves as a primarily “technology company”. (Even though I understand the DevOps movement and principles, I did not know of its strong relationship to manufacturing processes. After reading this book, that makes so much more sense!)

Alex bell

Great books, illustrates many real life issues with corporations and IT. Found many examples that matched my real life experiences.

Stephanie Gamble 

A must read for anyone in tech. I found the book so relatable and helpful when maneuvering through my own work challenges. 

Omar

I never thought I'd have this much fun reading a novel about a recently promoted IT manager trying to salvage a badly run department, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. 

Tara King

I wasn't able to get past chapter 3. 

The narrator is dismissive of almost everyone he encounters, though he particularly dismisses the women in the book in a way that feels....gross. There has to be a better way to improve my devops knowledge, so I'm gonna just stop and switch to something else.

Les Reynolds

Interesting and inspiring. Don’t think I’m exactly the target audience.

Jose Quaresma

This is a great business parable book. It is a great starting point for anyone wanting to learn more about IT value stream optimization and DevOps. The revised version provides a good resource guide with suggestions on which books to read next in order to continue expanding the knowledge on this area.

Tyler Jefford

Super interesting book about IT project management and devops. There are a lot of lessons and strategies wrapped into a story, which make it more interesting to read. Would recommend to anyone who is in or around technology development at all.

Artas Bartas

This is a great book explaining how corporate IT departments evolve to be organizational bottlenecks despite admonitions of the top management and the best intentions of IT managers. Recounted from the perspective of a hapless project manager put in charge of an underperforming IT department, the book initially dwells on the soul-crushing reality of a badly-run IT department and then offers a step by step guide to turning the situation around. 

What made this book a cult classic in the consulting circles is the fact that its recommendations are underpinned by some hardcore management theories. Gene Kim and the gang draw on Goldratt's Theory of Constraints, the principles of the lean production championed by Toyota, the Total Quality Management approach, and the more recent DevOps movement that promotes automation of typical IT admin tasks.

The book uses analogies with manufacturing to illustrate the self-defeating nature of traditional fixes and to justify the solutions proposed by Bill, the main protagonist of the book. By infusing the plot with the psycho-drama of working in a dysfunctional corporation, flanked by A-class assholes, the authors managed to turn a dull management case study into a fun - at times even gripping - read. 

The biggest asset of this book, however, lies in the fact that it manages to identify destructive management patterns business people engage in and shows how such behavior cripples the capacity of even the best IT departments out there. And for those of you hoping to sell to big corporate customers, the book holds some brilliant passages summarizing the fears and concerns that keep corporate chieftains awake at night. Make sure you study them carefully before sending your first sales proposal.

Natalie &
The Phoenix Project by Gene Kim

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Natalie &The Phoenix Project by Gene Kim

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Natalie &
The Phoenix Project by Gene Kim