Book SummaryThe Phoenix Project, by Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, and George Spafford

1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of The Phoenix Project

A business today lives or dies based on the strength of its IT department. Because information technology is so deeply integrated into everything a business does—from producing goods and services to interacting with customers, processing orders, and even paying its own employees—every company in the modern age has to be proficient in how to optimize IT services. Not doing so risks heavy consequences, up to and including the failure of the business.

The Phoenix Project, published in 2013, presents a fictional case study of just such a scenario—an imaginary auto parts manufacturer that’s falling behind its competitors because it’s unable to align the work of IT services with the company’s larger goals. A new business initiative, dubbed “The Phoenix Project,” promises to bring the company into the 21st century by integrating online ordering, in-store sales, inventory management, and marketing campaigns. However, by botching the Phoenix rollout, the auto parts company almost implodes from a disastrous series of technical failures.

The authors of The Phoenix Project are Gene Kim, founder of the digital security company Tripwire, Kevin Behr, who co-founded the IT Process Institute along with Kim, and George Spafford, Vice President Analyst for the business consulting firm Gartner. Together, they use their combined expertise in technology...

The Phoenix Project Summary The Saga of an IT Department

Our story focuses on the character Bill Palmer, a mid-level director at Parts Unlimited who’s promoted to vice president (VP) of IT Operations shortly before the grand rollout of the Phoenix Project, an online sales management tool that’s been years in the making. What he finds, though, is an IT department in utter disarray, stretched to its limit by constant demands and arbitrary deadlines it can’t possibly meet. Right out of the gate, Bill must cope with an emergency payroll issue, an ongoing conflict between IT Operations and the software development team, and a prospective board member who suspects that Bill’s IT department is going about its business all wrong.

On his first day as VP, Bill is thrust into trying to solve a payroll data problem that could result in many workers not receiving their paychecks. The difficulty resolving the issue is compounded by the lack of communication within the department. After sleepless nights and much departmental overtime, Bill determines that the root of the problem was a system change enacted by a vendor without the department’s knowledge. This clues him into what the authors say ought to be obvious in hindsight: **A process for...

The Phoenix Project Summary Work and What Stops It

Throughout their narrative, Kim, Behr, and Spafford illustrate the common workflow challenges that plague IT departments. At the root of these issues, when they occur, is a failure to recognize, prepare for, and manage the two greatest disruptors of productivity—unexpected work and bottlenecks.

In the story, Erik challenges Bill to identify and understand the four types of work IT performs. The first of these are business projects initiated by the company or one of its divisions, such as sales, marketing, or human resources. The novel’s titular Phoenix Project is a business initiative on the largest scale. The second type of work constitutes internal IT projects, such as upgrading servers or migrating data. The third class of IT work is made up of changes, often minuscule, to databases, app configurations, and lines of code. The authors suggest that such changes are a major source of work and potential problems that, if unmanaged, contribute to the fourth type of work IT does—unexpected work that grinds the system to a halt.

Sources of Work in IT

The way the authors differentiate between “business projects” generated by the company at large and “internal projects”...

The Phoenix Project Summary The Pillars of Production

None of the problems of IT are insurmountable, but Kim, Behr, and Spafford argue that addressing them requires completely rethinking how IT work is done. In their fictional case study, they demonstrate how work management principles developed on factory production lines can be applied in an IT environment, where the production of software, databases, and networks can be likened to manufacturing physical products. The three foundational pillars of production can be summed up as 1) fast workflow, 2) quick feedback, and 3) continual improvement.

Because the authors’ point-of-view character is a vice president of IT operations, one might assume that their advice is intended for readers in corporate management positions. However, understanding the principles that follow will be essential for everyone in the production process, since implementing the authors’ recommendations will require buy-in from many people in a company and certainly everyone in IT.

(Shortform note: The authors’ core concepts (which we’ll discuss in the sections that follow) evolved from principles of ITIL, Lean, and Agile production methods, which are mentioned in The Phoenix Project but not explained in depth....

Shortform Exercise: Apply the Pillars of Production

Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, and George Spafford use a fictional scenario to illustrate three foundational ways of improving the speed and quality of production in the context of IT services. Theoretically, these same production philosophies could apply to any organization, whether it’s producing software, information, physical products, or a customer service experience. Think about your own workplace and how the three Pillars of Production (fast workflow, quick feedback, constant improvement) might apply.

How does your workplace monitor the flow of projects and the status of tasks, and how might you make it more transparent?