So, on the advice of @QuinnyPig on Twitter, I’ve started listening to “The Phoenix Project” on Audible.
In overview, this is a narrative allegory of an IT project gone wrong. I’m up through Chapter 5 as I write this and I’d like to posit a couple things the protagonist is doing wrong. This is one of those books that managers, CIOs, CTOs, and directors will read and treat as Holy Writ, so some perspective seems an order.
The book follows a guy “promoted” to be the newest Vice President at a hundred-year-old auto parts concern. Their stock is tanking at half the value before, and they’re getting their lunch eaten by competition. The CEO is under fire, and the previous CIO and VP of IT just got streeted under mysterious circumstances.
What follows is so realistic, I feel like I worked with the guy. He gets promoted on a Tuesday and then learns:
- The company has to fix its failed payroll run by 3pm…that day.
- There’s no change control policy in place. Or, more precisely, there’s an ITIL-compliant policy in place, but nobody follows it.
- His two lieutenants are a process wonk “I told you so” and a shoot-from-the-hip Alpha Nerd
- There’s no master list of what is even being worked on
- Everyone in management has a pet IT guy he pings when he needs something.
- The head of the “miracle” project (the titular “Phoenix”) is a grandstanding, blame-shifting corporate lizard.
Like Dilbert, this would be incredibly engrossing…if I hadn’t worked on projects for organizations just like this. Everyone has.
What’s Wrong
So, there are some things wrong with the book already.
First, these people are waay too loyal. This company is a backwater hellhole and IT is way too fluid for them to retain talent. The main guys in IT would’ve left long ago.
Second, people magically get with the program. This happens exactly never, especially in IT. People have their own little kingdoms and generally don’t care if the rest of the world/company burns around them. Ask me over beer sometime and I’ll tell you about the woman from Managed Print Services with the big hair.
Most damningly, this company should be out of business. Repeated inability to execute on IT doesn’t get you years and years of benign forbearance, it gets you fired and your assets sold off to competitors. That’s business.
In the end, I guess (?) I’m enjoying the book, but it’s turning into a preachy allegory about Lean/TPS. We’ll see where it goes.