The Phoenix Project: A Novel about IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win by Gene Kim and Kevin Behr

(Portland: IT Revolution, 2013), 382

  • The Three Ways (356)
    • The First Way: left-to-right flow of work from dev > operations > cusotmer
      • you need small batch sizes and intervals of work
      • never pass defects downstream
      • optimize for global goals
    • The Second Way: fast feedback from right-to-left
      • stop the production line when things fail
      • improve daily work
      • create fast automated test suites
      • create shared goals and pain
    • The Third Way: foster continual experimentation, and mastery only comes through practice
      • high trust
      • allocate 20% to non-functional requirements
  • The Four Types of Work (362)
    • Business Projects
    • Internal IT Projects
    • Changes
    • Unplanned Work
  • “Knowing is always better than not knowing.” (76)
  • change management: "a change is any activity that is physical, logical, or virtual to applications, databases, operating systems, networks, or hardware that could impact services being delivered" (81)
  • “A great team doesn’t mean that they had the smartest people. What made those teams great is that everyone trusted one another.” (184)
  • the interest on technical debt is unplanned work (195)
  • "In ten years, I'm certain every COO worth their salt will have come from IT. Any COO who doesn't intimately understand the IT systems that actually run the business is just an empty suit, relying on someone else to do their job." (332-333) ^461fa6
  • he gives an interesting definition of science: "The goal of science is to explain the largest amount of observed phenomenon with the fewest number of principles, and to reveal surprising insights." (366)
  • Recommended reading:
    • The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt
      • The Logical Thinking Process by Dettmer
    • The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Lencioni
      • lack of trust
      • fear of conflict
      • lack of commitment
      • avoidance of accountability
      • inattention to results
    • Toyota Kata by Rother
    • Continuous Delivery by Humble and Farley
    • Release It! by Nygard
    • Visible Ops Handbook and Visible Ops Security
    • Personal Kanban by Benson and Barry
    • Kanban by Anderson