Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house…… nothing was stirring not even my mouse……. that was because I was busy reading The Phoenix Project by Gene Kim, Kevin Behr and George Spafford.

As I sit here surrounded by plates of nibbles, nuts, crisps and sausage rolls, I still have part of my mind searching for answers and a way forward. I have just finished this book after my Amazon delivery of yesterday, and wow, it is a page turner…… maybe not if you haven’t worked in the IT industry, but I can honestly say I have thoroughly enjoyed every part of this book.

I ask myself the question, why have I not read this book sooner? being that it was originally released nearly 8 years ago! One piece of advice, if you haven’t read it……. read it!

I first became aware of the book a few years ago, but more recently in my quest to try and really focus on DevOps as a practice.

As an IT Professional my Career in IT started whilst working for a manufacturing comapny in South Wales, so when I came into IT I was acutely aware of all the Japanese Manufacturing principles and techniques, from KaiSen and Lean Manufacturing, having some of my early IT development work in the early 2000’s being focussed on developing an IT Web interface system called ‘SID’ the Switchgear Information Database, which was designed to take all inputs from a flow line and manufacturing work centres into a web application and automate the results. Little did I know then, but I was doing my bit for DevOps!!

I laugh to myself when the characters of the book are introduced and cant help but compare past colleagues and friends with the roles portrayed by Brent, Bill, Wes, Patty, John, Chris, Dick and Sarah! Both laughing at the situations as I have been in many similar situation over the years ,through to sympathising with each character in equal merit.

The authenticity of this book is clearly based on real life in many ways, and the brilliant character Erik reminds me of so many of those seasoned veterans of the IT industry, an ex-military come Operations Director and prospect Board member turned mentor of Bill and the quest to understand Lean Manufacturing principles and the parts they play in transforming a way that a traditional Dev, Sec and Ops IT organisation into the lean, sleek and nimble organisation that we are part of creating and supporting in todays IT landscape.

The simple message that IT is pervasive shines through, and this book is in my opinion not really aimed at the seasoned IT Pro, my belief is that this book should be read by any business executive especially those that find themselves not being to tech savvy!

I cannot praise this book highly enough and have thoroughly enjoyed my Christmas Eve following the success and promotion of Bill! I would recommend this book wholeheartedly!

I have already been recommended The DevOps Handbook and The Unicorn Project as the next books to purchase, so they are now on my Amazon wishlist!

Thank you for everyone’s support, wishing you all a Very Merry Christmas!!

John

100DaysOfCloud Overview

My Main ReadMe Page is all set up with a bit about me!

The guys at 100DaysofCloud have set up the GitHub repo to be cloned and also have a great repo containing ideas and areas to collaborate on: https://github.com/100DaysOfCloud/100DaysOfCloudIdeas

My Github Journey tracker can be found here: https://github.com/jonnychipz/100DaysOfCloud

Please Watch/Star my repo and feel free to comment of contribute to anything I push! I really look forward to hearing from anyone who is going to jump on the journey around the same time as me! Lets see where I get to in 100 days!

I would encourage others to jump on this journey, I’m not sure that I will be able to commit every day for 100 days, but as long as I can complete 100 days that will be great!