The Phoenix Project: A Novel about It, Devops, and Helping Your Business Win

If you work in IT (heck, even if your business has any IT - so that's all of you), then you should read this book. Regardless of your specific role, I'm certain that you'll learn something useful (and more importantly, actionable). I've changed my approach to doing a few things already based on lessons I've taken from the book and I still need to process some more ideas around how to do stuff better. I expect that I'll be reading it at least one more time through so that I don't miss anything that I could make use of. One month ago, I'd never heard about this book. Of all the interesting and useful things that I took away from the Microsoft Global MVP Summit this November, I suspect that this will have the greatest impact. Fellow PowerShell MVP Steven Murawski often talks about DevOps and recommends this book in his presentations. He's such a fan of the book that he brought a bunch of copies to give out and I was very glad to receive one after hearing him extol its virtues. Having read the first few chapters on the flight back from Seattle, on landing I purchased the Kindle edition from Amazon UK so that I could carry it around on my Kindle and phone in order to reduce the barriers to being able to consume it! Personally, I love the approach that this book takes. By encompassing so much useful information about ITSM, DevOps methodologies and much more in a novel with an engaging storyline, I was able to read it much more easily and quickly that many of the dry technical texts that bog down our industry. I think that it also helped me to digest the information and apply it to my work situation more easily, even though I work in a significantly different type of organisation to that in the story. The bottom line is that this isn't just a good book, it's an important book. You should read it at the first available opportunity. We'll all be the better for it.

Let's face it - we're all in the middle of a new Industrial Revolution - only this time it's about the automation of information processing. As with the original Industrial Revolution, the impacts of automation on people and skills needed are profound. People who don't understand what's happening will be at a disadvantage. Yet people who have read and understood the implications of this book will have insights into the parallels between what happened with manufacturing automation and what will inevitably happen with the automation of information processing. Only people who have this insight are in a position to identify the root causes of many of the world's cirrent social, political and economic challenges. Simply trying to maintain inefficient, slow and unpredictable working practices (as common in 'legacy' IT environments as it once was in pre Industrial Revolution manufacturing) is not the answer. Establishing consensus between technical and non-technical stakeholders both about what is worthwhile and what is achievable given constraints of time,cost and resources (including people, processea and technology) is vital. This book goes a long way towards responding to the challenges of today's Industrial Revolution, bur most importantly it provides enough wisdom about the fundamental forces that are in play today to allow readers to devise their own personal responses. Before reading tbis book I was aware of most of the underlying theory and technologies and had encountered work colleagues similar to the archetypes represented by the characters in this book, but only when I read this book did the big picture of what is going on in the world at large become so clear. Now that I have gained these new insights, I would thoroughly recommend this book to anyone with responsibility for social/political/economic planning, organisational managemt, operational research, systems engineering, information security or information technology. Finally, a word of warning: this book can easily be read over the course of two days.but as it's a gripping read you may want to plan to start it when you have an interruption-free weekend coming up...

A good book written in a form of a fictional novel that portrays the classical (and somewhat extreme) challenges of an IT Operations which hasn't kept pace with the time and doesn't have effective ways of working to get things done in a coordinated and timely fashion. The book takes you through the dramatic highs and lows of a day in the life of IT Ops executives and depicts the importance of IT in realising (or not) organisation's strategy/competitive edge. It shows the importance of the IT best practices such as DevOps and Agile in a most practical and pragmatic way without making it too academical or mundane to read.

Great book, very pleasant to read but also full of interesting cases.

Highly recommend this book for anyone who has any dealings with IT, whether you are a business person, manager or IT professional. Easy to read and understand the concepts since the entire book is an example of implementing DevOps within IT. And the cover is beautiful!

O livro conta a história do departamento de TI de uma empresa americana. Como o departamento sai do caos total para um fluxo orquestrado, alinhado e entregando valor ao negócio da empresa, que nada tem a ver com TI. É interessante ver que apesar de tratar de uma empresa privada americana, o setor de TI retratado se assemelha a muitos setores de TI do Brasil, incluindo de órgãos públicos. Em fim. O livro é muito bom. Por se tratar de uma história de ficção com personagens interessantes a leitura flui muito bem. A fluidez da leitura é semelhante ao do livro "A meta", que eu também recomendo. Não é um livro que vai te dar detalhes de como resolver os problemas da TI. Muita das soluções adotadas no livro não são tão simples de serem adotadas na vida real. Mas mesmo assim o livro enche o leitor de motivação para ajudar no desafio de promover mudanças em seu local de trabalho!

The characters are archetypical and relatable. The pace is thrilling, the story unfolds with the learning process of individuals and the organization. It delivers the spirit of DevOps in a way which is respectful and even intimate for IT professionals. I recommend this book for every IT professional, IT manager and other managers on top or depending on IT. I spared one star because, as a roman – as literature, it is not worth much. Very basic language, silly soap opera situations, not philosophical, not poetic, not psychological, not theatrical. It is a management book written as a story which is accessible for a broad public.

This book looks like telling about the devops first but actually it tells us trusted relationship among all department is the most important for Business to achieve the goal. I really enjoyed it.