I found the book was an easy to read, was entertaining and surprisingly compelling and informative. and therefore I do not hesitate in recommending this to you, even if you may not be working directly in technology.

1. The
Phoenix
Project
A
Novel
About
IT,
DevOps
and
Helping
Your
Business
Win
The Phoenix Project is the story of Parts Unlimited, a fictitious company under fire from all quarters and is
destined to disintegration unless they can make significant changes in the way work is managed to deliver
business value.
While the story is fictional, rather simplistic and contains a number of quirky characters, it humanises the
emotions and responses to a series of situations which will be familiar to many in the real world. It is this
familiarity which hooks you in and using “The Three Ways” methodology, drags you along to the point
where the Phoenix Project is delivered and you want to work for a company like Parts Unlimited.
“The Three Ways” methodology encapsulates the common sense principles drawn from the
Agile Manifesto 2001 and the Theory of Constraints1984 and provides the impetus of the management
process and the thinking constructs to enact the transformation.
The book was definitely an entertaining, compelling and informative read which I highly recommend, even
if you are not working directly in technology. This book, however, is a marketing tool which could be used to
help in developing a business improvement case and communicate change in your organisation.
First published in 2013
Authored by:
q Gene Kim
q Kevin Behr
q George Spafford
Parts
Unlimited
q Parts Unlimited is a $4 billion per year
manufacturing and retail company
which employs 4,000 people
q The Business is grim with sales down,
stock movements down, profits down
and the share price is in free fall
q The competition is fierce and are better
equipped to respond to market change
q Investors are not happy with a vocal
minority calling for the company to be
split into two
q The regulators are displeased and are
threatening to impose penalties if
outstanding audit items are not
adequately addressed
q The board is under fire
q The Phoenix Project is a strategic initiative
to help solve a lot of these problems.
However the project is BIG, expensive and
not running to plan
q Money is tight and delivery and operations
teams are asked to do more with less
q Systems are not being adequately
maintained and are unreliable and
impacting staff and customers
q Change and deployment processes are
broken resulting in:
§ unapproved/unaware changes taking
place
§ the system is being gamed & falsified
§ workarounds resulting in increasing
complexity and levels of technical debt
§ unreliable systems impacting the staff
and customers
q An unhealthy dependency on
selected key people
q The business are not seeing
value from IT and are feeling
frustrated
q Us and them, finger pointing
mentality
q Outsourcing of IT is on the
agenda
q Information Security
representative is maligned
and despised
q New work is started but it is
not being completed

2. q provide a learning and safe culture
q institutionalise the improvement of daily
work
q elevate local discoveries to global
improvements
q inject resilience patterns into your daily
work
q leaders to reinforce the learning culture
Flow
Evolve
The
Principles
of
“The
Three
Ways”
q make work visible
q limit work in
progress
q reduce batch size
q reduce handoffs
q manage constraints
Where
work
can
be
q business projects
to deliver business
value
q technical projects
to sustain systems
& address technical
debt
q changes
q unplanned work
associated with
service restoration
Managing
Constraints
Avoid
Investment
Illusion
q The simplified flow above contains 3 tasks with the
assigned capacity and the associated output per work
cycle
q Task B is restricted to completing 1 unit per work cycle
and therefore sets the tempo for the complete end to
end process
q Task A outputs accumulate as task B cannot keep up
with the flow rate
q Task C is under utilised because the upstream
constraint cannot deliver enough work
5
1
3
5 1 Business
Value
Complete
1
Task A Task B Task C q Investment in task A would be an illusion as
downstream processes would still be
constrained by task B. It is quite likely to
exacerbate the problem as there is a risk that
task B may become less efficient as Work In
Progress accumulates at a higher rate.
q Investment in task C would also be an illusion,
as the input flows will continue to be
constrained by task B
q Real flow benefits would be realised by either
reworking the process to bypass the constraint
or to improve task B’s efficiency and lift its
capacity
q Increasing capacity of task B to 4, will move the
constraint to task C
q see problems as they occur by
constantly testing design and
operational assumptions
q swarm and solve problems to
build new knowledge
q push quality to source
q enable optimising for downstream
recipients
A good understanding of the
business process to transform
inputs into business value Is
required.
This includes:
q tasks and dependencies
q Material resource
requirements
q skilled resource requirements
q quality checks
q approval protocols
q key performance metrics
Feedback
2002 20131984 20161999 2001
timeline