61 pages • 2 hours read
Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, George SpaffordThe Phoenix Project: A Novel about IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2013A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Essay Topics
What is the narrative significance of the Prologue’s format as a press release? How does the novel’s content ultimately subvert the perspective of the analyst who wrote it?
Of Palmer’s responsibilities when he first becomes VP of IT Operations, which seems the most important? How does Palmer’s role change over the course of the novel? How do other characters’ perspectives on his role change?
How does Moulton avoid responsibility in the novel? Why does Masters listen to her for as long as he does? What does this dynamic reveal about company politics?
How does Brent exemplify the concept of a constraint? How does Palmer’s way of addressing Brent’s constraint status change over the course of the novel? What does this suggest about the authors’ opinion of addressing constraints in the workplace?
Research Eliyahu Goldratt’s The Goal and Critical Chain and the Theory of Constraints. How does The Phoenix Project further develop this theory by applying it to IT Operations? Does the novel successfully illustrate how to apply Goldratt’s manufacturing and project management concepts to DevOps?
Define DevOps by looking at multiple sources, then consider Palmer’s final note about DevOps: “It’s Project Management, Development, IT Operations, and even Information Security all working together and supporting one another” (398). In your opinion, is Palmer’s definition accurate? Why or why not?
Break down the process from development to release of the Phoenix Project, then outline the maintenance and support applied to Phoenix after the initial deployment. What went wrong with Phoenix? How does the Unicorn Project start to fix those issues? What could Palmer, or any other character, have done differently to make Phoenix more like Unicorn?
Define the Three Ways. How does each “Way” impact a specific element of business functions? Which seems the most important to you, and why?
Who does the novel present as the best leaders in The Phoenix Project? The worst? What do they have in common?
Why do you think Masters proposes the extravagant training program for Palmer at the end of the novel? What does Masters expect Palmer to gain from this type of training? How can Palmer use the lessons learned during The Phoenix Project in his future roles?
