DevOps 101 : The Phoenix Project
After spending my nearly twenty years in a small yet capable software development shop, my career took a mandatory turn as the shutdown of the company.
Long story short, my previous company although a small one has undergone & completed many important international telco projects with Ericsson in the RMEA region. In addition, it has a successful long-living partnership with biggest private health laboratories in Turkey. Even back in ASP & Visual Basic 6 years, it has developed an in-house four-tier web development framework later ported to ASP.NET & C#. We were doing solid analysis & design. Since 2002, I’ve leaded many of these projects including LIS (Laboratory Information System).
With recent years, we started to lose traction. New telco projects ceased and mostly turned into support work. And finally last year, we lost ever-lasting LIS project to a local LIS vendor. They switched from an online web-based B2B LIS system to a client/server windows forms. What a shame!
After company shutdown, I started my own freelance company Up&Running Cloud. Meanwhile, one question is stilling bearing my mind “What have we done wrong although everything looks to be OK?”
I think that I’ve found the answer.
The Phoenix Project
Unfortunately, constantly working under customer pressure let my head down and I couldn’t find time to look around see what’s going on in the industry. Hopefully, now I am on my own and don’t want miss the train.
I started reading to fill the gap and “The Phoenix Project” was the first one.
“The Phoenix Project” is a NOT a technical book as some may wrongly assume. It won’t teach you HOW to setup your CI/CD flow but it will teach you WHY you’re doing it WRONG.
Unlike other technical books, this is a fictional story and much easier to read. You immediately identify with the main character Bill Palmer who is promoted to CIO in the beginning of the story. The company — “Parts Unlimited” — is not an IT company but a manufacturing but that doesn’t mean IT does not play a key role in its success even its existence.
“In previous economic eras, businesses created value by moving atoms. Now they create value by moving bits.”
Jeffrey Snover, Technical Fellow at Microsoft, paraphrasing Dr. Nicholas Negroponte
As you read the book, you see how “Parts Unlimited” is in big trouble so Bill. You meet Sarah, the most hated disgusting character to any technical guy. And then as you go along, it starts to feel so familiar.
“Yes, it happened to me!”
To some degree, every IT guy faced similar problems. You must have already faced both managerial and technical issues along with your project. Customer is pushing for more and more, the backlog of tasks & issues starts to grow and grow. Everyone in the team is working hard. However your TODO list still continues to grow and grow. Meanwhile, customer is interrupting you with urgent requests.
Finally, the customer is upset with you. Your Sarah started to blame you that “You can’t deliver.” But it is what it is. They’re asking for too much and your resources are limited. They got what they pay for. Didn’t they?
Unfortunately, we’re doing it all wrong!
Same story for Bill. But how will he overcome all this problems? Can he transform the IT to deliver more? You better read it.
The Goal, The Three Ways and The DevOps Revolution
The book is a complete adaptation of “The Goal” to the IT. “The Goal” is answering why manufacturing industry fails to deliver timely. Goldratt, in his novel, how his “Theory of Constraints” answers these problems.
You learn what is a constraint, how Bill finds out his constraint and how he adopts the flow of work so that he protects his constraint.
You’re introduced to the principles of “The Three Ways”.
“The First Way
helps us understand how to create fast flow of work as it moves from Development into Operations, because that’s what’s between the business and the customer.”
“The Second Way
shows us how to shorten and amplify feedback loops, so we can fix quality at the source and avoid rework.”
“The Third Way
shows us how to create a culture that simultaneously fosters experimentation, learning from failure, and understanding that repetition and practice are the prerequisites to mastery.”
I hope that I was able to arouse your curiosity reading this book. Actually this book is a MUST READ not only for IT people but also any manager who does not understand why their IT can not deliver.
“Every company is a technology company, regardless of what business they think they’re in. A bank is just an IT company with a banking license.” Christopher Little
If you want to purchase this book, here is the Amazon link.
Further Reading
Books
Online Resources
