The Phoenix Project: A Novel about IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win

At this level, I care more about the integrity of the process, not so much about the actual changes.”

“Ha! ‘Small credit card breach.’ I like that. Like ‘small nuclear reactor meltdown.’ I’ve gotta write that one down,” he says, snorting.

Every time that we let Brent fix something that none of us can replicate, Brent gets a little smarter, and the entire system gets dumber. We’ve got to put an end to that.

Is this a joke? In case you haven’t heard, we’ve got a real business to run. Sorry if that interferes with this full-time audit employment racket you’ve got going on here.” Trust Wes to say what people are thinking but are too smart to actually say aloud.

“A critical part of the Second Way is making wait times visible, so you know when your work spends days sitting in someone’s queue—or worse, when work has to go backward, because it doesn’t have all the parts or requires rework.

“How did you know?” She smiles. “It’s so easy. You start looking off somewhere, and then your shoulders and jaw tense up, and your lips press together.”

it’s always it Operations who still has to stay up all night, rebooting servers hourly to compensate for crappy code, doing whatever heroics are required to hide from the rest of the world just how bad things really are.

Finally, I ask bluntly, “Steve, want to tell me what’s on your mind? I’m on top of this situation. What do you need that you aren’t getting right now?”

I say sincerely, “We may be starting over, but we need all your experience and skills to make this work. It’s still your process, and I know this is absolutely critical to our success.” “Okay,” she says, sighing in resignation. “I suppose I care more about our survival than whether we use our old process or not.”