The Phoenix Project

by Gene Kim

“To prevent another Brent escalation, we should log every keystroke and record the terminal session. Maybe even have someone follow him around with a video camera and turn on audit logging so we know exactly what he changed.” I like it, although it sounds a bit extreme. However, I suspect that it will take extreme measures to get us out of this situation. I venture, “Maybe we take away his production access, so the only way the work can get done is him telling the level 3s what to do.” Wes guffaws. “He might quit if we did that right away.” “So, who do we have that’s available to put into this level 3 resource pool?” I ask. He hesitates. “Well, we have the two hires we made a year ago that were meant to help shore up Brent. One is working on creating server build standards, but we can take her off of that temporarily. There are two other engineers that we identified for cross-training years ago, but we never had the time to pursue it further. So, that’s three people.”