The Phoenix Project: A Novel About IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win

the trick to a long career in IT Operations management is to get enough seniority to get good things done but to keep your head low enough to avoid the political battles that make you inherently vulnerable.

CIO stands for “Career Is Over.”

I realize my frustration is not because of the drive failure, but because we’re continually unable to stay focused on the things that matter most to the company.

“Your job as VP of IT Operations is to ensure the fast, predictable, and uninterrupted flow of planned work that delivers value to the business while minimizing the impact and disruption of unplanned work, so you can provide stable, predictable, and secure IT service.”

You must figure out how to control the release of work into IT Operations and, more importantly, ensure that your most constrained resources are doing only the work that serves the goal of the entire system, not just one silo.

Every time that we let Brent fix something that none of us can replicate, Brent gets a little smarter, and the entire system gets dumber. We’ve got to put an end to that.

Erik called WIP, or work in process, the “silent killer,” and that inability to control WIP on the plant floor was one of the root causes for chronic due-date problems

three of the four categories of work: business projects, internal projects, and changes.

It’s not really work at all, like the others. The others are what you planned on doing, allegedly because you needed to do it. Unplanned work is what prevents you from doing it. Like matter and antimatter, in the presence of unplanned work, all planned work ignites with incandescent fury, incinerating everything around it.

The fourth category of work is unplanned work!”

“Unlike the other categories of work, unplanned work is recovery work, which almost always takes you away from your goals.

That’s why it’s so important to know where your unplanned work is coming from.” I smile as he acknowledges my correct answer, and am oddly pleased that he validated my antimatter notion of unplanned work, as well. He says, “What is this change board that you mentioned?” I tell him about my attempts to get some sort of change process going and my attempt to elevate the discussion above how many fields there were on the change form, which then resulted in getting people to put their intended changes on index cards and our need to juggle them on the board. “Very good,” he says. “You’ve put together tools to help with the visual management of work and pulling work through the system. This is a critical part of the First Way, which is creating fast flow of work through Development and IT Operations. Index cards on a kanban board is one of the best mechanisms to do this, because

That’s why it’s so important to know where your unplanned work is coming

“You’ve put together tools to help with the visual management of work and pulling work through the system. This is a critical part of the First Way, which is creating fast flow of work through Development and IT Operations. Index cards on a kanban board is one of the best mechanisms to do this, because everyone can see WIP.

“Now you sound just like Jimmy, complaining about things you can’t control,” he sighs. “Of course Phoenix is causing all the problems.

Being able to take needless work out of the system is more important than being able to put more work into the system. To do that, you need to know what matters to the achievement of the business objectives, whether it’s projects, operations, strategy, compliance with laws and regulations, security, or whatever.”

“Remember, outcomes are what matter—not the process, not controls, or, for that matter, what work you

“Unlike the other categories of work, unplanned work is recovery work, which almost always takes you away from your goals. That’s why it’s so important to know where your unplanned work is coming from.”

“Remember, outcomes are what matter—not the process, not controls, or, for that matter, what work you complete.”

I’m never going to tell them about all the frustrating and absurd meetings I’ve had to put up with Steve. That’s between him and me.