From f0f52a218d08977e51ec4df8c9112b6089192caa Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Julio Biason Date: Wed, 8 Jan 2020 10:18:19 -0300 Subject: [PATCH] Book review: The Phoenix Project --- content/reviews/books/the-phoenix-project.md | 71 ++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 71 insertions(+) create mode 100644 content/reviews/books/the-phoenix-project.md diff --git a/content/reviews/books/the-phoenix-project.md b/content/reviews/books/the-phoenix-project.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..dba8d33 --- /dev/null +++ b/content/reviews/books/the-phoenix-project.md @@ -0,0 +1,71 @@ ++++ +title = "The Phoenix Project: A Novel About IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win - Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, George Spafford" +date = 2020-01-08 + +[taxonomies] +tags = ["books", "reviews", "devops", "phoenix", "gene kim", "kevin behr", "eorge spafford"] ++++ + +[GoodReads Summary](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17255186-the-phoenix-project): +In a fast-paced and entertaining style, three luminaries of the DevOps +movement deliver a story that anyone who works in IT will recognize. Readers +will not only learn how to improve their own IT organizations, they'll never +view IT the same way again. + + + +{{ stars(stars=1) }} + +Let me take something out of the way from the start: This is a book with a +fictional story, which try to explain the DevOps movement. And it age poorly. + +If we start with the fictional part, you have some guy which is promoted to VP +of Technology and suddenly have to deal with the integration of all the IT +parts of the company (infrastructure, development, security, business). + +Just to prove the point that any company needs DevOps 'cause every company is +an IT company now, the story is about an auto-parts company. + +And heck if the characters are not as cliché as possible, with a few +absurdities: The infrastructure manager is a fat guy that doesn't care about +his appearance; there is the "evil" manager that tries to put the blame on +everyone else but herself; the paranoid security guy (although every security +person should be paranoid, nonetheless), which surprisingly turns into a monk +in the middle of the book. And then you have the magical "future board member" +that knows absolutely _everything_ about IT, but it is never asked if he +wants to manage the IT department in the first place -- and trains the new VP +even before becoming a board member, maybe out of purity of his heart, 'cause +he's a "down to earth" kind of guy, but since he's filthy rich, he can do that +('cause, you know, rich people are really willing to take their time to help +others). + +The story is planned exactly to prove a point: Crisis emerge and are solved +exactly in order to prove there is an order things are in the authors head -- +which becomes clear in the "Handbook", a non-fictional part in the end of the +book. There are three ways in the way an IT department accepts DevOps and +surely all the events happen in the same exact order. + +Another point: instead of the VP being the catalyst of the DevOps changes in +the company, people around him start to move into DevOps without knowing: The +manager lady simply brings kanban out of the blue, for example. And that +"security guy turned monk", out of the blue, decided to bring the stakeholders +into the discussion -- again, without the VP being the catalyst for it. + +In the end, everything ends fine: The VP is about to become COO, the evil lady +gets fired, everyone is happy, everything is going, the company is making huge +trucks of money... And nothing bad every happened: All ideas worked +flawlessly, there were not side effects, everything is happy, with rainbows +and candies and balloons... + +After the story, there is the "DevOps Handbook", which could be something +usable, if it wasn't for what seems an attempt to produce more words with +little content. There is a bunch of replicated stuff, like "a downward spiral" +which keeps being repeated two or three paragraphs apart. You know that scene +in "Up!", in the newsreel, which the news person says "Lutz promised he'll not +return till he proves he's right", cutting to Lutz saying "I promise I'll not +return till I prove I'm right"? That feels exactly like this. + +Again, the book didn't age well. There is a lot of space for pointing out +side-effects, removing the "THIS NEW THING WILL SAVE EVERYTHING!" tone of the +story. But, for someone who's into DevOps since 2017, the story and handbook +seems really outdated.