A lesson in understanding IT

The head of strategy and growth in PMI, Dave Garrett advised me to read “The Phoenix Project: A Novel about IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win”. We were discussing citizen development, low-code and no-code, and it must have been very obvious to Dave that I had no clue about IT, coding or software (or project management for that matter).

Hard to read

It has been hard to read. Not because of the writing, it is a well-written story about how a COO tackles a plethora of IT and staff issues. It was hard to read because I don’t have the context or language to understand. What you do pick up immediately is how, if IT is not managed correctly, it will create havoc. That development and operational teams need to work together.

Quotes

I will share some of the quotes from the book:

• Developers are even worse than networking people. Show me a developer who isn’t crashing production systems, and I’ll show you one who can’t fog a mirror. Or more likely, is on vacation.
• The only thing more dangerous than a developer is a developer conspiring with Security.
• When something hits the fan, you need all the various stakeholders and technology managers to communicate and coordinate until the problem is resolved.
• CIO stands for…