I recently read The Phoenix Project: A Novel About It, Devops, And Helping Your Business Win. It's a fable about Bill, the director of midrange computing at a fictional large auto parts manufacturer called Parts Unlimited. Bill has set up a comfortable life in middle management in the orderly world of AS-400s.
One morning Bill is called to the CEO's office. He's informed that the CIO and VP of IT operations have been terminated and Bill is now the VP. So Bill is reluctantly thrust into being a freshly minted VP in a role he did not seek. Bill's early tenure is marred by numerous IT disasters such as a failed launch of a major product called Phoenix, a failure to make payroll due to an IT issue, and a failure in the retail point of sales system. Bill has to work extremely long hours dealing with these crises and it begins to take a toll on his family life. To make things even worse the CEO presents Bill with an ultimatum. Fix IT in 90 days or the IT department will be outsourced.
Early on Bill is introduced to a mysterious guru character named Eric. Eric teaches Bill about how IT can be approached like manufacturing. Eric takes Bill on tours of a large manufacturing plant. They discuss inventory and work in progress, the evil of inventory in manufacturing, and how to apply this to IT.
Eric introduces the modern concept of DevOps. In devops development and operations are combined. So the idea is to reduce this "over the wall", "works on my PC", "all hands on deck deployment", "developer role / IT role", "separate performance testing" dysfunctions and inefficiencies. Replacing with one piece flow and continuous deployment.
The book was ok. It was a compelling read for the first 100 pages or so. It dragged a bit in the last 50 pages. From the developer side I could relate to a lot of it. Parts of the book, especially toward the end, came across as a bit autobiographical and self-congratulatory.
Still it was worth reading. The director at the time ordered everyone to read it and I've finally got around to it. I'm not sure if it was supposed to make us think, or it was "this is what we're doing now." I got it from the local library, as the manager at the time refused to allocate budget for some local copies. I guess that shows how important it was - brand new hardcover copy can be had for $20 each. meh w/e.
It was good for me to see more the IT operations side and what happens to both prepare for, and to support deploying the code that the developers release. I've written about one piece flow on this site mostly as it relates to the software developer experience - since that's been my area all these years. It was good for me to get some more insight into the IT side. I was pleased to see the same principles of value stream apply on the operations side too. So it can be integrated with development if the effort is put in to set it up.
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