The Phoenix Project

by Gene Kim

Wes and Patty are sitting next to each other at the conference table, so I walk behind them to listen in. Wes leans back in his chair with his arms crossed over his stomach. They don’t get all the way across. At six feet three inches tall and over 250 pounds, he casts a shadow on most people. He seems to be in constant motion and has a reputation of saying whatever is on his mind. Patty is the complete opposite. Where Wes is loud, outspoken, and shoots from the hip, Patty is thoughtful, analytical, and a stickler for processes and procedures. Where Wes is large, combative, and sometimes even quarrelsome, Patty is elfin, logical, and levelheaded. She has a reputation for loving processes more than people and is often in the position of trying to impose order on the chaos in it. She’s the face of the entire it organization. When things go wrong in it, people call Patty. She’s our professional apologist, whether it’s services crashing, web pages taking too long to load, or, as in today’s case, missing or corrupted data. They also call Patty when they need their work done—like upgrading a computer, changing a phone number, or deploying a new application. She does all of the scheduling, so people are always lobbying her to get their work done first. She’ll then hand it off to people who do the work. For the most part, they live in either my old group or in Wes’ group.