The Phoenix Project: A Novel about IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win

by Gene Kim

Even in the technology backwaters I’ve chosen to make my turf, I need to track network issues closely. Because these

issues disrupt the services my group provides, people will blame the outages on me.

How do they keep bringing such incredible new capabilities to market while we remain stuck in the mud?

Despite all our hard work and late nights, the competition keeps leapfrogging us.

Each year, it gets harder. We have to do more with less, to simultaneously maintain competitiveness and reduce costs.

“That was an important project. To make that acquisition pay off, we needed to nail it, which you and your team did superbly.

Customers need to be able to buy from us from wherever they want, whether it’s on the Internet or in our retail stores. Otherwise, we’ll soon have no customers, at all.”

“I need you to keep all the things that are supposed to be up, well, up.

“What I want is for it to keep the lights on. It should be like using the toilet. I use the toilet and, hell, I don’t ever worry about it not working. What I don’t want is to have the toilets back up and flood the entire building.”

“You want the it systems to be reliable and available, and for the business to be able to depend upon them. You want disruptions to normal operations kept to an absolute minimum so that the business can focus on getting Phoenix done.”

“Restore critical business operations and keep us out of the front-page news.

Everyone longs for the days when we didn’t spend half our time talking to auditors, complying with each new regulatory requirement du jour.

“My job is to keep management in compliance with all relevant laws, regulations, and contractual obligations. Luke and Damon were reckless. They cut corners that severely affected our audit and security posture.

High touch marketing requires high tech.

Chris is constantly asked to deliver more features and do it in less time, with less money.

“The third largest item is incident and break-fix work. Right now, it’s probably consuming seventy-five percent of our staff’s time. And because these often involve critical business systems, incidents will take priority over everything else, including Phoenix and fixing audit findings.

we’re continually unable to stay focused on the things that matter most to the company.

“Your job as vp of it Operations is to ensure the fast, predictable, and uninterrupted flow of planned work that delivers value to the business while minimizing the impact and disruption of unplanned work, so you can provide stable, predictable, and secure it service.”

“Processes are supposed to protect people.

it is in the way of every major initiative. Meanwhile, our competitors pull away from us, leaving us in the dust.

Technology keeps changing faster and faster, and it’s nearly impossible to keep up anymore.”

unplanned work is recovery work, which almost always takes you away from your goals. That’s why it’s so important to know where your unplanned work is coming from.”

“Remember, outcomes are what matter—not the process, not controls, or, for that matter, what work you complete.”

it is smack in the middle of every major company effort we have and is critical to almost every aspect of daily operations.”

Look, I care about security, and we always look for risks to our systems and data, but we’re always up to our eyeballs in urgent work, trying to keep our heads above water. And in my new role, I’m just trying to help the company survive.”

Can we ship it soon enough to matter?

Are we gaining or losing customers?

there are only three internal control objectives: to gain assurance for reliability of financial reporting, compliance with laws and regulations, and efficiency and effectiveness of operations.

We need to be nimble, and sometimes we need to buy instead of build.”

It’s not just as easy as signing an invoice.”

“I need my developers building new features. They can’t be constantly tied up with Bill’s team, dealing with deployment issues.”

“If you can’t out-experiment and beat your competitors in time to market and agility, you are sunk. Features are always a gamble. If you’re lucky, ten percent will get the desired benefits. So the faster you can get those features to market and test them, the better off you’ll be. Incidentally, you also pay back the business faster for the use of capital, which means the business starts making money faster, too.