A MUST Read !

I would like to begin this section of the blog with one of my absolute favorite book : Phoenix Project. I liked this book so much that at some point I was considering buying a copy for each person of my department :).

This IT Novel not only inspired me but also resonated with me at so many levels even now. You will stop counting how many times you will recognize yourself in these situations and mind processes.

The whole story feels like you are in the action following the hero Bill Palmer with a GoPro all along. It is well written, you can feel Bill grow through the book, follow his thoughts, develop the logic of improving things. From the initial mayhem you walk the path of solving problems and facing challenge like anybody will face in this industry. It introduces concepts of Agile and DevOps naturally , coming from their origins and explaining the whole mindset that leads to such methodologies.

I would definitely recommend this book to anybody in IT with about 2 years experience for best impact and mindfulness. It goes through all the Agile and DevOps vibes by describing the problems it was originally designed to solve. More than buzzword, the thoughts process are explained and follows logic. The stories also feel so human and pedagogic! Remember this is a novel ! Not an IT recipe book, and the human part of it is vibrant of reality and compassion. This describes behavioral patterns through actual humans and interactions, making it feel so real that you feel you could meet the protagonist in daily life at work.

If I had only maybe one reproach is that globally through the whole book , the hero does have struggles but succeed everytime. None of the lessons he implements fails completely. I can recall one excerpt of the book about compliance with a failure of one of the protagonist but they do succeed the audit anyway so no real failure.

As a conclusion, I personally think that this book should be on every IT/manager bookshelf either physical or virtual. This is an inspiring book, well written, taking the risk of making a Novel based on IT stories and succeeding to make it so interesting.