The Phoenix Project, the DevOps novel
Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, and George Spafford wrote a business novel about an IT collapse. IT Revolution Press published it on 10 January 2013. It is not a video game, and this site does not host the book.
The story in one sitting
Bill Palmer works in IT at Parts Unlimited, an auto-parts maker and retailer in Elkhart Grove doing about $4 billion a year. He is pushed into a vice-president role and given 90 days to save a failing internal effort, codenamed the Phoenix Project, or watch the department get outsourced. Erik Reid, a board candidate, coaches him with ideas Bill first hears as riddles.
The work is not a manual of commands. It is a novel about a plant that happens to be an IT department. Four kinds of work show up in the publisher’s short summary and in secondary reading notes: business projects, internal projects, scheduled changes, and unplanned work. Unplanned work is the one that eats the other three.
The Three Ways
The First Way is flow: see the system, not the ticket. The Second Way is feedback, made faster and louder so a bad change is visible while it is still small. The Third Way is continual experimentation and learning, including the practice of taking time to improve the work itself. Those definitions are IT Revolution’s, not a paraphrase I invented to sound precise.
Against The Goal, the mapping the publisher prints is the useful one: Erik plays Jonah, Bill plays Alex, and Brent is the bottleneck everyone routes work through. The character page holds the rest of the cast, including Parts Unlimited as a company row.
Edition facts I will stand behind
The product page lists a fourth edition on 3 September 2024. Paperback ISBN 9781950508945, ebook 9781950508969, audiobook 9781942788348. The fifth-anniversary edition is 352 pages, ISBN 978-1942788294. The audiobook narration credited on the product materials is Chris Ruen, 14 hours 46 minutes. Formats and legal places to read are on the editions page.
Questions
Who wrote The Phoenix Project?
Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, and George Spafford. The publisher is IT Revolution Press.
What are the Three Ways?
Flow and systems thinking, amplified feedback, and a culture of continual experimentation and learning. IT Revolution’s own article defines them that way.
Is it the same as The Goal?
The authors say they modeled the novel closely on Eliyahu Goldratt’s The Goal. Erik maps to Jonah, Bill to Alex Rogo, and Brent is the constraint.
Can I read it free here?
No. The publisher offers a sample excerpt. Libraries and stores sell or lend the full book. This page does not link pirated PDFs.
Sources
- IT Revolution product page — checked 2026-11-12
- The Three Ways — checked 2026-11-12
- 10-minute summary — checked 2026-11-12
- Making of the book — checked 2026-11-12
- Official excerpt — checked 2026-11-12
- Open Library — checked 2026-11-12