Finished reading: The Phoenix Project by Gene Kim 📚

Finished reading: The Phoenix Project by Gene Kim 📚

I was on the fence about this one; I’ve managed a tech team before but I’m not currently in charge of anyone so I’ve about had my fill of ‘mangement’ information books. With that said, this is a novel that tells a story which happens to describe some best practices and approaches for running (or being in) a tech team.

The part I really like is The Three Ways principles and I think there’s insight there for anyone working in a project of any kind. The story makes a lot of parallels between manufacturing physical goods and ‘knowledge work’, focussing on bottlenecks, and planning, and if you haven’t thought about your project in that way then I’d say definitely pick up this book. “Go fast and break things” runs counter to a lot of that, but eventually you’re going to need to build something a bit more robust, and some planning will be of great benefit.

The writing itself felt a little forced, but perhaps I just don’t deal with people who talk like that (?).

If you’re near the top of a tech-focussed team, I recommend you have a read. There might not be anything new to you in there, but if there is, it’ll be useful.