The Phoenix Project


What follows are my personal notes on The Phoenix Project, which assume that you've read the book (I have) and just want a refresher on the lessons. I also used the article linked in the summary above to help clarify my own thinking on the content.


The 4 Types of Work

  1. Business Projects
  2. Internal Projects
  3. Changes (bug fixes, improvements generated by the first two types)
  4. Unplanned work — the most dangerous

WIP ("whip") ~ Work In Progress

What drags everything down is clutter of unfinished projects. Keeping too many balls in the air results in more time spent keeping them all from hitting the ground than working on them.

Formula for Wait time = % busy / % idle

50% busy / 50% idle = 1 unit of wait time

90% busy / 10% idle = 9 units of wait time

99% busy / 1% idle = 99 units of wait time


Kanban Boards

Visualize everything on everyone's plate. We too easily get sucked into juggling invisible tasks which causes slippage and demoralizes. Making all tasks visible creates the opportunity to prioritize and defer.


10 Deployments per Day

Less about actually completing enough work to need 10 deployments/day and more about having the agility to be able to respond that rapidly when the need arises. If you can deploy 10x daily then your deploys are automated, fast, and reliable.