You may have noticed that life in IT has changed. Businesses are changing the way they think and operate. So, with that in mind, I decided to finally pick up and read The Phoenix Project by Gene Kim, Kevin Behr and George Spafford. This book has been on my to-do list for a while but I just hadn’t gotten around to reading it.
Boy, I wished I had read it sooner! Right away, the novel jumps right into to the action. You meet Bill, the Operations Manager, who all of a sudden is tasked with taking over all of IT Operations with a promotion. With the promotion comes the challenges of transforming not just IT, but all of the business to turn around a company in a very short amount of time. As the book says,
“we’re hearing more lately: something called “DevOps.” Maybe everyone attending this party is a form of DevOps, but I suspect it’s something much more than that. It’s Product Management, Development, IT Operations, and even Information Security all working together and supporting one another.”
DevOps is here and so we in the industry have to adapt. I had heard through the grapevine, ie Twitter, that during the keynote at VMWorld in San Fransisco that there were people walking out when the speakers started talking about DevOps. This is surprising and sad at the same time. Who wouldn’t want their business to succeed? Automation, process cleanup and Agile methodology are all necessary in today’s instant world. There are less and less people not connected to the cloud, whether it be via a smartphone, smart home, or even a smart car. Look at Tesla, they just pushed out autopilot in their cars. How did they do it? They used DevOps methodology to push out the code in such a quick time that it surprised everyone that it was released.
I encourage you to pick up a copy of The Phoenix Project and read it. Not just for a good read, but take the methodologies and examples to heart and begin using them where you are at. Whether you are a manager, like Bill, an engineer, an architect or even a security officer. The Phoenix Project provides a great example of where the industry not only is but where it is headed.
