Bill is an IT manager at Parts Unlimited. Its Tuesday morning and on his drive into the office, Bill gets a call from the CEO. The companys new IT initiative, code named Phoenix Project, is critical to the future of Parts Unlimited, but the project is massively over budget and very late. The CEO wants Bill to report directly to him and fix the mess in ninety days or else Bills entire department will be outsourced. With the help of a prospective board member and his mysterious philosophy of The Three Ways, Bill starts to see that IT work has more in common with manufacturing plant work than he ever imagined. With the clock ticking, Bill must organize work flow streamline interdepartmental communications, and effectively serve the other business functions at Parts Unlimited. In a fastpaced and entertaining style, three luminaries of the DevOps movement deliver a story that anyone who works in IT will recognize. Readers will not only learn how to improve
[...]... flowcharts and a lot of tabulated numbers, and the other, in her early thirties, types on a laptop Spreadsheets are strewn all over the large conference room table The older woman gestures with an open marker at what appears to be a list of potential failure causes Something about the way they dress, and their concerned and irritated expressions, makes me think they were recruited from a local accounting... replacements to our managers and employees so they can do their jobs, you hear?” “Yeah, we’re on it But I’m not calling about that And I’m not calling about Phoenix, either,” he says, sounding irritated “Look, about your memo on change management: I know you’re the boss, but you better know that the last time we did one of these change management kumbayas, we ran IT straight into the ground No one, and. .. worried that IT Operations was under attack by Development, Information Security, Audit, and the business Now, I’m starting to realize that my primary managers seem to be at war with each other, as well What will it take for us to all get along? Chapter 5 • Thursday, September 4 I wake up with a jolt when the alarm clock goes off at 6:15 a. m My jaw still hurts from clenching it all night The dismal prospects... neat and tidy was not only for aesthetics but also for safety Old habits die hard I hear the NOC before I see it It’s a large bullpen area, with long tables set up along one wall, displaying the status of all the various IT services on large monitors The level 1 and 2 help desk people sit at the three rows of workstations It s not exactly like mission control in Apollo 13, but that’s how I explain it. .. that this is all they have available today Over two hundred people are having similar problems, and many aren’t getting replacements Apparently, people with your laptop model also have had their’s break because of some security patch.” Damn I forgot It s Patch Tuesday, when John and his team roll out all their security patches from our major vendors Once again, John is causing huge issues and disruptions... to make them all run the same way “I need Chris focused on Phoenix execution Anything in your area of responsibility that takes focus away from Phoenix is unacceptable That applies not just to you and Chris, but everyone else in this company Is that clear?” “Absolutely,” I say, nodding “You want the IT systems to be reliable and available, and for the business to be able to depend upon them You want... successfully argued that of the twenty-seven changes made in the past three days, only John’s tokenization change and the SAN upgrade could be reasonably linked to the payroll failure However, Wes and his team were still unable to restore SAN operations At 3 p.m., I had to tell Ann and Dick the bad news that we had no choice but to execute plan B Their frustration and disappointment were all too evident It wasn’t... seeing all the company minions making their way to her lair I arrive and immediately see Kirsten Fingle, who runs the Project Management Office sitting at the head of the table I am a big fan of hers She is organized, levelheaded, and a stickler for accountability When she first joined the company five years ago, she brought a whole new level of professionalism to our organization At her right, Sarah leans... by Nancy Mailer, Chief Audit Executive Holy crap She is incredibly smart and formidable Years ago during the retail acquisition integration, I watched her grill a manager from the business we were acquiring He was presenting their financial performance, when she started a rapid-fire interrogation, like a cross between Columbo, Matlock, and Scarface He quickly broke, admitting that he was exaggerating... compensate its workers, with some employees receiving no pay at all, according to a Parts Unlimited internal memo The locally headquartered company admitted that it had failed to issue correct paychecks to some of its hourly factory workers and that others hadn’t received any compensation for their work Parts Unlimited denies that the issue is connected to cash flow problems and instead attributes the . profitability and close the gap by tightly integrating its retailing and e-commerce channels. Already years late, many expect the company to announce another program delay in its analyst earnings. “That was an important project. To make that acquisition pay off, we needed to nail it, which you and your team did superbly. “I’m sure Laura has told you a bit about the organizational changes. In the Marines, keeping the barracks neat and tidy was not only for aesthetics but also for safety. Old habits die hard. I hear the NOC before I see it. It s a large bullpen area, with long tables