Amazon.ca:Customer reviews: The Phoenix Project: A Novel about IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win

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Mers

Best example of a DevOps needs

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on January 11, 2023

It is a must for someone that has not yet been in the bath of DevOps.

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Erika Laplante

Emballage

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on November 26, 2021

Reçu dans une grande boîte mélangé avec d'autre produit sans protection pour le livre. Heureusement il y a seulement le derrière du livre qui était plié un peu, mais ça s'est replacé en le mettant à plat.

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From Canada

Erika Laplante

Emballage

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on November 26, 2021

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Amaz77919

Nothing new

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on September 9, 2022

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The book explains concepts that are not new anymore and that many companies have adopted successfully through experimenting.
The story is boring and takes a big effort to finish it

3 people found this helpful

Zack

Good book, poor condition

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 22, 2022

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When I received the book the back half of it looks to have been exposed to water and has warped pages, not sure if this happened in warehouse or during shipping. Other than that it's a great book.

A. P. Farrell-vinay

Curate's egg: good in parts but missed many things

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on June 16, 2013

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Problems:

Bill can't remember how to spell his wife's name (Mostly "Paige", sometimes "Page").
He is so out-of-touch at the start he has no inkling that there is a BAU problem.
By page 100 he still doesn't realise he needs Portfolio Management and major redocumentation.
I like the way the motormouth marketing woman is set up as all-purpose Bad Girl. I'm sure we all know people like her.
The fact we know in advance that his moronic boss is slated for the chop is a great relief.
Testing is mentioned 21 times, coverage once and then only in relation to code. Feature coverage doesn't get mentioned despite being one way in which release readiness is assessed. There is no mention of any attempt to assess the readiness of any release. On page 278 we learn that "it took three hours to get the Phoenix project into the test environment and get all the tests to pass". This is evidence that none of the authors is a test manager or has ever worked closely with one.
There is no mention of any project plan or test process for the Phoenix project. Bill evidently doesn't see fit to call these out. Critically he has made no attempt to monitor the Phoenix defects.
By chapter 15 he's managed to distinguish between 4 kinds of inputs and has realised he has a resource contention problem.
Steve's alleged realisation of his errors is wholly unconvincing: if he could understand that well he'd have had far more self doubt and he would never have goofed as badly as he did.
By chapter 19 the characters accept that there is a resourcing issue. We still have no mention of impact analysis (but it might be coming).
There are mentions of technical debt but no reference to what it is or means.
The thinking shown on p 225 (chapter 22) is exactly what was missing in the DevOps occasions I have met. There is a glib reference to checklists. Writing checklists and keeping them current is a major task in itself.
There is no mention of the need to be able to handover a project to Operations and what this requires. 229 pages in and there is no mention of requirements specifications (they don't occur in the book). There is a reference to "... the need to understand the true business context that IT resides in" on page 251. Rather than get that right the authors worry about COSO cubes and KPIs without ever being sure that the requirements are aligned to the business. Nor is there any parallel drawn between keeping the documentation correct and oil changes (page 253). Business analysis? Process models (only in relation to SOX on page 269)? Business cases? What are they? By page 266 they start (effectively) writing partial outline requirements without ever looking to see if they already exist or trying to find out if not, why not.

Overall I don't think the symptoms listed are likely to be resolved by the proposed cures such that we can be sure that they won't recur.

9 people found this helpful

redcarr

Compra não ocorreu

Reviewed in Brazil 🇧🇷 on December 2, 2022

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Compra não ocorreu

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Jabbakie Iscarioteanul

Recognizes the problem, does not offer a solution

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 16, 2021

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As code throughout the world ages and gets complicated (the typical company uses software that has been first released 15-20 years at this point) , most places do face the conundrum that the imaginary corporation described in the book face- how to modernize their IT/software infrastructure or their flagship software product. Many chose rewrite from scratch and most fail. The story within this book ( the decision, the mistakes, the symptoms, the cast of characters) is painfully familiar to anyone within industry. But the recommended solution - adopt Dev-Ops - operates on two unrealistic assumptions - one , that the organization , primarily its leadership, is capable of realizing its mistakes, admitting them and acting on improving the situation. As other reviewers have noted - these are the same people that made the decisions that led the organization and the product to the metaphorical cul-de-sac, and , unlike in the book, in the real world, recognizing that comes with consequences that executives don't want to pay. Far better to resign and take the golden parachute on the way to the next place.
The second premise is that the leadership of the company cares about their subordinates, their livelihood, the product and its reputation, the company and its reputation and the customers that rely on this product to get their businesses to be successful - and that's what motivates their decisions. This, in today's America, at least, it's borderline ridiculous (to be clear, the decisions are motivated by keeping the quarterly numbers and the stock price up no mater how much cheating , lying and stealing has to happen). Sadly so. So yeh, entertaining, even cathartic read, but not especially useful.

6 people found this helpful

Brad H

This book needs an editor and a rewrite.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 13, 2014

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Do you enjoy poorly written fiction with a decent message? This book might be for you!

I'm fairly certain this guy didn't hire an editor. Actually he thanks his assistant for the editing so I'm guessing that's all he sprung for. Based on how many copies this book has sold and how beloved it is, it's paying off. If only we all had that luxury.

The characters are flat and boring, the dialog is more suited to robots, and the author uses 6 commas per sentence. If you turn off your inner editor you might manage to muddle through. Oh I forgot about the adverbs, they're everywhere. Someone get this guy a copy of Stephen King's On Writing please!

Along with his proclivity for commas, he doesn't seem to understand how time works. His characters have a meeting on Friday and on Monday the plan has been in place for weeks. Did this story take place in another dimension? I guess his assistant didn't pay attention to that part.

The guru of the story is some mysterious fat slob investor who is unknown to everyone yet he seems responsible for the increased output of the manufacturing wing of the company. Wouldn't upper management have some inkling of who this guy is? This character seems based on the concept of a computer nerd from the 90's complete with a bad hair cut. Oh and he's fat and also a slob, did I mention that?

The main take away is that the author _hates_ developers and security folks. He HATES them! I lost track of how many times he points out how horrible developers are to work with and how SecOps ruins everything. Perhaps this is based in truth but we'd be better served with a story that explained how to get everyone on the same page. Instead the head of security has a magical weekend transformation (he lost 15 lbs!!) and suddenly he's on the hero's side. Yay magic!

My employer is all hot and bothered about ITIL right now so everyone in our operations department is reading this book. Based on my quick survey, no one seems to be bothered by the things I listed above so I've come to the conclusion that I'm just a picky miserable bastard.

Overall the message makes sense just don't get too mired in the poor writing.

20 people found this helpful

Michael Dereszynski

Topically spot on, but amateur writing

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 3, 2021

Verified Purchase

This book spoke to me on a number of levels. Having spent 25 years in IT both in a variety of roles from developer, to consultant, to sys admin to management, I can relate to so many of the situations and stories presented here. I find myself turning the page to watch the next catastrophe unfold and say to myself, "yep, that's just like when I worked on ...". It's almost like someone was sitting in the room taking notes.

I picked up this book because I teach a college course on Systems Analysis and Design and wanted to move beyond the stale UML descriptions and project stages text. I felt like having something more modern and reflective of real-world would be helpful to the graduate students I teach. It would likely be valuable in this way, but the vulgar language used in the book is distracting and unnecessary. While I don't find a well placed curse word offensive, the story is littered with obscenities where more care and a good thesaurus would suffice and keep the content approachable.

I don't expect a novel about business to be classic literary prose, but the amount of drinking, language and useless storylines is enough to have me rethink it's usefulness in a professional setting.

One person found this helpful

Adric Net

Valuable if quite clunky

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 3, 2014

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Organizations need proven ideas and best practices ... wisdom ... to meet their challenges. Some of the answers, or at least clues, are in this book but many will have trouble getting to them. The presentation of the important ideas in this novel is intended to make it easier to share and engage with them, but I'm unsure if that goal is realized.

If The Phoenix Project's purpose is to instill best practices knowledge and good processes along with some backing philosophy by incorporating it into an engaging fiction format with compelling characters and an interesting story then it may well be at best a partial success.

The payload is pretty good and will provoke thinking about business problems and their solutions. It's too preachy overall and much of the raw philosophy is difficult to digest. If this is your first exposure to these ideas then perhaps you will follow the references and learn more, or perhaps you will just be put off and move along. I did some of both.

Unfortunately the delivery mechanism is worse. As noted extensively by other reviewers the story and characters are not the best.
Interactions among corporate officers, one-dimensional villains in other departments and other problems make this seem more like IT fantasies than any kind of compelling or believable tale. The use of real-sounding characters and projects deny access to the fuzzier and gentler form of the fairy tale and instead, as a book about business it is confusing and frankly insulting in spots.

Perhaps the goal was set too high and the project (book) was under-resourced? That would be a great irony if true.

I bought a few copies of this work for people I thought it might help and will do so again, despite its flaws.

3 people found this helpful

Paul Leenards

Recognizable in its analysis of IT operations and very unrealistic in how to actually transform the IT department

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 16, 2017

Verified Purchase

I am a bit ambivalent about this book. At one side the situation at the IT department Gene Kim describes at the start of the book is very recognizable and is very much like situations I've encountered myself in my career as IT operations manager and as a consultant. The DevOps based improvements put forward contain nuggets of wisdom that are worth reading and would be good advise in many situations.
On the other hand the story itself is confusing and very unrealistic. Probably a lot of stuff is left out because it is not relevant to the main story. The team the main person was managing before he got his promotion vanished never to be seen again. There is no HR at Parts Unlimited worth mentioning. And all managers and staff get it right away, no need to explain again and again or listen to all kinds of arguments why it will not work. I guess this is the fastest culture change ever. In that respect the book is unrealistic and provides no guidance on how to actually work with the DevOps principles.
When you are struggling to get your IT operations department back on the road, this book might give you some good insights about the direction to look. After you have finished this book, start reading books on managing cultural changes, on human behavior and on transforming IT departments to give you a better understanding on what to do next..

6 people found this helpful

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