Review: The Phoenix Project
Yeah, I really read this. It’s a novel about DevSecOps. Really.
Intellectually, I understand what Gene Kim, Kevin Behr and George Spafford are up to. They believe in this management and software develop methodology and are trying to evangelize it. What surprised me is that they to spread the word in long form narrative fiction. Evidently they hypothesize that there’s a market for fiction about a Hero’s Journey through software development management.
I pretty much had to read it.
As literature, it’s a total potboiler. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.) Our hero is thrown into a job he can’t refuse in a department full of underappreciated characters who mistrust him. There are high-level schemers working against his goals and the goals of his company. The security manager takes apparent glee in undermining the smooth operations of systems to defeat imagined foes. Fortunately there’s a guru/guardian angel who embodies nearly every cliche of the misunderstood Silicon Valley genius to take our hero under his wing.
Along the way, our hero quits in frustration, only to be literally begged to come back by the CEO. The security manager walks out, drinks himself into oblivion and comes back to the good side through application of DevSecOps principles. Our hero wins the loyalty of his team, frees his company from the prison of hidebound operating principles and leads it to the Nirvana of market penetration. If you know what I mean, and I think you do.
It’s an advertisement dressed up as an airport novel, executed perfectly competently. For that matter, I learned a few things about DevSecOps management principles that were worth thinking about.
I can’t recommend it, but it’s exactly what it says on the tin.