Phoenix Project: A Novel About It, Devops, And Helping Your Business Win Paperback – 16 April 2018

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.

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.

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.