The Phoenix Project
Before talking about this topic, I would encourage you to read this pdf version of the book. Not sure whether this is a legal version but its available in the internet.
http://itrevolution.com/wp-content/uploads/files/PhoenixProjectExcerpt.pdf
This is a wonderful book written based on a hypothetical story. the main emphasis of this book is to highlight the problem that we come across through out of our career and how we should approach each of those.
I too learned tons of stuffs from this book. The most important thing I learned is, the fact that its very difficult to solve problems if you do not have a clear cut vision and a strategy. Just doing things will ruin your career as well as the future of the company depending on the influence you can make through your designation.
I would like to summarize few learning that I gained from this book. I would again encourage you to read at least one round of this book.
What I got from this book?
During our work schedule, we undergo various kinds of work. Sometime we feel that each situation is unique and its only us who have faced that particular incident. In fact the situation could be unique. It depends on the nature of work we do. However, we can simply categorize them into the followings:
Work types: project work, internal work, changes and unplanned work.
Above is what the book is suggesting. Its so simply and straight forward. Do you have any category in your mind? This is perfectly aligning to a typical software development company. I am not going to talk about each category except the last one. Project work, internal work and changes are pretty much easy to understand and detect. The catch is that we need to tackle each differently. You cannot compromise project work which earns your salary and makes the share holders happy, to bunch of internal work such as software update, firewall migration, data center relocation, and similar types of work which are not in the main steam of business. Its also important to understand that we cannot simply give the top most priority to project work as internal work also indirectly affect the business.
Software development is a system which has many different wheels with different sizes and each for different purpose. Just look at this image in left. Its bunch of wheels. Some are big and some are very small and looks very less in power that it can generate.
When you closely look at this, you can see that, not all the wheels are in the critical path. Failure in non critical path wheels may not impact the main wheels. In the same context, we need to understand the activities which are in the critical path. Each of these wheels represents a work station which we will discuss at the last of this article.
So, what if one of the wheels are pulled into a different system? Its called unplanned work. The entire system will go offline or will be less productive. The book refers unplanned work as 'Anti work' and the most worst work type. Anti work can ruin the entire business flow. Therefore its very important to plan the work ahead. Different tools and techniques are available to prevent Anti work
Tools and techniques: calculated buffer, brainstorming with experts, root cause analysis, activity flow diagram, and more importantly change management.
We talked about work stations above. Books suggests that each work station has the following characteristics. A project is the typical example which comes to our mind when we talk about work stations. However a project is not a work station.
Above is what the book is suggesting. Its so simply and straight forward. Do you have any category in your mind? This is perfectly aligning to a typical software development company. I am not going to talk about each category except the last one. Project work, internal work and changes are pretty much easy to understand and detect. The catch is that we need to tackle each differently. You cannot compromise project work which earns your salary and makes the share holders happy, to bunch of internal work such as software update, firewall migration, data center relocation, and similar types of work which are not in the main steam of business. Its also important to understand that we cannot simply give the top most priority to project work as internal work also indirectly affect the business.
When you closely look at this, you can see that, not all the wheels are in the critical path. Failure in non critical path wheels may not impact the main wheels. In the same context, we need to understand the activities which are in the critical path. Each of these wheels represents a work station which we will discuss at the last of this article.
So, what if one of the wheels are pulled into a different system? Its called unplanned work. The entire system will go offline or will be less productive. The book refers unplanned work as 'Anti work' and the most worst work type. Anti work can ruin the entire business flow. Therefore its very important to plan the work ahead. Different tools and techniques are available to prevent Anti work
Tools and techniques: calculated buffer, brainstorming with experts, root cause analysis, activity flow diagram, and more importantly change management.
We talked about work stations above. Books suggests that each work station has the following characteristics. A project is the typical example which comes to our mind when we talk about work stations. However a project is not a work station.
Characteristics of a work station: machine, men, method and measure
Each phase of software is a work station. Requirement completion, dev completion, testing and so on. These are the work station. Thinking in this way will help to get out of the project mind set and identify where the real problems are. No matter how better we develop software, if the requirement is not good enough to get the attention of the customers.
This is just a glimpse of the book. The book has a character called Eric who guides Bill who is the main character. Once I thought Eric always gives the guidance to Bill and its matter of implementation. Later I realize that Eric represents the knowledge around us. There are millions of good reads, researches, shared experiences, our own judgements available to make a decision or to setup a process. Software development is no different to any of other businesses. Its all about Input and output. Output should have quality and right requirement. Optimization will always happen in between. The process of converting inputs to output is the methodology we use to build things.
Each phase of software is a work station. Requirement completion, dev completion, testing and so on. These are the work station. Thinking in this way will help to get out of the project mind set and identify where the real problems are. No matter how better we develop software, if the requirement is not good enough to get the attention of the customers.
This is just a glimpse of the book. The book has a character called Eric who guides Bill who is the main character. Once I thought Eric always gives the guidance to Bill and its matter of implementation. Later I realize that Eric represents the knowledge around us. There are millions of good reads, researches, shared experiences, our own judgements available to make a decision or to setup a process. Software development is no different to any of other businesses. Its all about Input and output. Output should have quality and right requirement. Optimization will always happen in between. The process of converting inputs to output is the methodology we use to build things.
No comments:
Post a Comment