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

by Gene Kim

cio stands for “Career Is Over.”

Developers are even worse than networking people. Show me a developer who isn’t crashing production systems, and I’ll show you one who can’t fog a mirror.

“You know the saying, right? The way you can tell a vendor is lying is when their lips are moving.”

Information Security is always flashing their badges at people and making urgent demands, regardless of the consequences to the rest of the organization, which is why we don’t invite them to many meetings. The best way to make sure something doesn’t get done is to have them in the room.

It’s the never-ending hamster wheel of pain: Information Security fills up people’s inboxes with never-ending lists of critical security remediation work, quarter after quarter.

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.”

“I’ll tell you what I need from you,” he replies calmly. “I need the business to tell me it’s no longer being held hostage by you it guys. This has been the running complaint the entire time I’ve been ceo. it is in the way of every major initiative. Meanwhile, our competitors pull away from us, leaving us in the dust. Dammit, we can’t even take a crap without it being in the way.”

What can displace planned work? Unplanned work. Of course.

it is not just a department. it is a competency that we need to gain as an entire company.

You’ve just described ‘technical debt’ that is not being paid down. It comes from taking shortcuts, which may make sense in the short-term. But like financial debt, the compounding interest costs grow over time. If an organization doesn’t pay down its technical debt, every calorie in the organization can be spent just paying interest, in the form of unplanned work.”

Whether you’re talking about sports training, learning a musical instrument, or training in the Special Forces, nothing is more to mastery than practice and drills. Studies have shown that practicing five minutes daily is better than practicing once a week for three hours. And if you want to create a genuine culture of improvement, you must create those habits.”

“In any system of work, the theoretical ideal is single-piece flow, which maximizes throughput and minimizes variance. You get there by continually reducing batch sizes.

Understanding what technology can and can’t do has become a core competency that every part of this business must have.