61 pages • 2 hours read
The Phoenix Project: A Novel about IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win
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Themes
The Role of IT in Achieving Business Objectives
At the beginning of the novel, Palmer and Masters seem to share an unhealthy view of IT Operations as a background process, something that should always work and never need discussion. Parts Unlimited neglects IT, as reflected in the IT workspace, which Palmer describes as “built in the 1950s, and last remodeled in the 1970s…It looks old and neglected” (28). The building, like IT Operations, is not the center of Masters’s attention, and he even describes IT as a “toilet,” adding, “I don’t ever worry about it not working” (20). This perspective devalues IT as a “competency” that Masters later understands is critical to Parts Unlimited and all modern businesses. The Phoenix Project, while focusing on DevOps and the Three Ways, also reveals the importance of IT in the contemporary business sphere, marking technology as the most important path to relevance in a modern market.
When Masters realizes the error of his ways, he retracts his comparison of IT to plumbing, noting, “IT is not a department that I can delegate away. IT is smack in the middle of every major company effort we have and is critical to almost every aspect of daily operations” (211). He now understands that although IT is ever-present, much like plumbing, it is also an avenue to greater success in the business. Masters’s new outlook on IT reflects what Palmer learns throughout the novel: IT can be a transformative and forward-moving department with the right tools and organization. The reality of modern business is that every department needs technology to succeed, and technology is the main avenue of contact with customers. Without a robust IT department, no company can succeed, precisely because IT needs to be fully integrated with every element of the business. Nonetheless, at the turning point of the novel, Masters still sees IT as a web of tangled connections spread across the company, threatening to invigorate or strangle it.
By the end of the novel, Masters and Palmer realize the full error of their initial perspective, and Palmer notes, “Everything my team has learned…shows that when IT fails, the business fails” (392). IT is no longer a background process, nor is it a mystical connective tissue in the body of the business. Instead, they now understand it to be a critical process that can elevate the business and increase the viability of Parts Unlimited as a whole. Reid, the sage of the novel, even proposes investment strategies focusing on “long positions on companies with great IT organizations that help the business win, and short the companies where IT lets everyone down” (395). The confidence Reid has is directly tied to his belief that strong IT organizations are necessary for business success, and he plans to make a lot of money by exploiting this strategy. Though the combined efforts of Development, QA, IT Operations, and Information Security allow Parts Unlimited to recover in the novel, Palmer and Master’s journeys highlight the importance of technology and IT in the modern day.
The Transformational Potential of DevOps Practices
Palmer and the other managers in Development, QA, IT Operations, and Information Security operate as individual “tribes” at the beginning of the novel. Further, leaders like Palmer, McKee, and Davis operate like distinct “tribes” within each department. Pesche, the head of Information Security, always seems to get in the way of IT and Development, while Palmer notes “the perpetual tribal warfare between” Development and IT (51). Mason, the head of QA, complains that Development gives his team applications at the deadline, leaving little time to test anything before shifting it over to production in IT. These disconnects lead to greater wait times, failure to deploy on time, and issues that create technical debt and unplanned work, tying up all four departments for much longer than anticipated. When Reid begins his mentorship over Palmer, his emphasis on the Three Ways is actually a path to DevOps, a unified operation of Development, QA, IT, and Information Security that banishes the “tribe” mentality of Parts Unlimited.
In the immediate aftermath of the Phoenix failure, the first hint of DevOps cooperation comes when Moulton suggests enhancements to Phoenix. Palmer rejects the idea, proposing instead a regular schedule of work from Development through QA into IT. Palmer, McKee, and Davis are “simultaneously pleased and taken aback by this sudden cooperation from Development” (160), as the team starts to band together against a common enemy: Moulton. This evolution supports what Reid describes as the First Way: an understanding of “how to create fast flow of work as it moves from Development into IT Operations, because that’s what’s between the business and the customer” (103). Understanding this flow requires a broader understanding of the business’s needs, which rely on both Development and IT, and improving this flow requires cooperation between them. It is only when Palmer, Allers, Mason, and Pesche have perfected this flow that they can begin focusing on the Second and Third Ways.
With the success of Project Unicorn, Palmer reflects, “During the Phoenix launch, I doubt anyone in this group could have imagined being part of a super-tribe that was bigger than just Dev or Ops or Security,” adding that he suspects DevOps is more than a “super-tribe,” combining “Product Management, Development, IT Operations, and even Information Security” (398). This combination allows the Second and Third Ways to flourish as Development integrates the needs of QA, IT, and Information Security into the beginning of their work, and the other three departments work together to amplify feedback to Development, creating a process of continual improvement. Now that they are working together as part of a larger process, the different departments stop fighting for resources, scrambling to meet deadlines without considering other teams’ responsibilities, and finally start producing products and services that meet and exceed the company’s needs. Parts Unlimited’s implementation illustrates Reid’s vision for the Three Ways, which transcends any singular department or leader, creating an environment in which all parties are focused on the elevation and success of the business as a whole.
Overcoming Obstacles Within an Organization
At the beginning of The Phoenix Project, Palmer’s main concern in Midrange Operations is outages. When Masters promotes him to VP of IT Operations, Palmer summarizes his role as ensuring “disruptions to normal operations [are] kept to an absolute minimum so that the business can focus on getting Phoenix done” (20). However, Phoenix becomes a huge disruption itself, and other issues, like the SAN crash, audit findings, and POS issues, all become struggles until Palmer comes to understand the different types of work. Reid teaches Palmer how to differentiate business projects, internal IT projects, changes, and unplanned work, giving him a new understanding of how best to organize his team to handle obstacles. A critical part of this process is learning the Theory of Constraints, which identifies Brent as a bottleneck across the organization. Combining these ideas, Palmer begins a transition from scrambling to resolve obstacles as they occur to preemptively removing obstacles, strengthening the organization’s resolve and resilience.
A turning point in Palmer’s understanding of how obstacles work comes when Reid clarifies how Brent operates as a constraint. Looking at the heat treat oven in the factory, Palmer realizes, “You asked what work centers are our constraints, and I told you that it was Brent, which can’t be right, because Brent isn’t a work center” (242). This revelation allows Palmer to see how work centers, composed of machines, workers, methods, and measures, determine the flow of work, and Brent, who is spread between too many work centers, is acting as a constraint. Now understanding IT as a flow of work between teams and operations, Palmer starts to look at wait time, unplanned work, and WIP as the real focal points in need of improvement. With the realization that all the obstacles he faces are the result of poor organization, not a lack of effort or knowledge, Palmer starts combining work centers, mixing teams, and catching up on the technical debt of Parts Unlimited.
The ultimate sign of Palmer’s success is the integration of Simian Army Chaos Monkey and Evil Chaos Monkey, two projects that focus on breaking systems in order to rebuild them stronger and more resilient. Simian Army Chaos Monkey involves planned outages and crashes, and when it is implemented, Palmer realizes that “over the following weeks, as Development and IT Operation worked together to make our code and infrastructure more resilient to failure, we truly had IT services that were resilient, rugged, and durable” (387). Evil Chaos Monkey worked similarly, targeting security issues. Palmer identifies this step as a critical element of Reid’s Third Way, in which obstacles are reframed as opportunities for improvement, fostering a culture of improvement. By the end of the novel, Project Unicorn becomes emblematic of how a sound organization thrives on obstacles, rather than buckling under the weight of unplanned and misunderstood complications.
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