Finished reading: The Phoenix Project by Gene Kim šŸ“š

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 ā€˜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 ā€˜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. ā€œGo fast and break thingsā€ 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.