After reading The DevOps Handbook couple of months ago Phoenix Project: A Novel about IT, Devops, and Helping Your Business Win (yes, this is the full title) is the second book from Gene Kim. It is so much different than the previous one!

I have never read IT book that was written in novel format, with a narrator and dialogues. Of course, dialogues were not so nice and well written as in the normal novel but anyway action sometimes was rapid and addictive. Book has its worse moments, but to be honest Gene Kim is not a professional action book author. Besides of those short “slow action” moments after finishing a book, I am curious what will happen next to Parts Unlimited agile gang. There is no single line of code or any other pure technical sentences, which is good in my opinion. If you are looking for a book where you can dive into technical details of continuous delivery or infrastructure as a code you will not find it in Phoenix Project book. The book describes a story where understanding principles lead to adopting techniques which elevated jeopardized business. Without understanding those principles adopting DevOps techniques may be just following the fashion trend in the industry. For whom I recommend Phoenix Project …? In my opinion, this is the entry level book for anyone looking into DevOps and high-performance teams with curiosity but does not know much about it and had never tried lean practices.

Notes

Below are a couple of sentences I marked during reading

The only thing more dangerous than a developer is a developer conspiring with Security.

Achieving “over-security” can be dangerous for business. Who needs security when business is down?

You will never hit the target you are aiming at if you can fire the cannon only once every nine months. Stop thinking about Civil Era cannons. Think antiaircraft guns.

This is about deployment frequency, I like very much this metaphor.

One the manufacturing floor, whenever we see work go backward, that’s rework. When that happens, you can bet the amount of documentation and information flow is going to be pretty poor, which means nothing is reproducible and that it’s going to get worse over time as we try to go faster. The call it ‘non-value-add’ activity or ‘waste’.

I like so much ‘non-value-add’ activity term.

DevOps isn’t about automation, just astronomy isn’t about telescopes.

Do I need to add anything?