The Phoenix Project

A Novel about IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win

Gene Kim, Kevin Behr & George Spafford

Praise for this book

The Phoenix Project is a must read for business and IT executives who are struggling with the growing complexity of IT.
Jim Whitehurst, President and CEO, RedHat, Inc.
Every person involved in a failed IT project should be forced to read this book.
Tim O'Reilly, Founder & CEO of O'Reilly Media
This book is a gripping read that captures brilliantly the dilemmas that face companies which depend on IT, and offers real-world solutions.
Jez Humble, Co-author of Continuous Delivery, Lean Enterprise, Accelerate, and The DevOps Handbook
A must-read for anyone wanting to transform their IT to enable the business to win. Told through an absorbing story that is impossible to put down, the authors teach the essential lessons in an accessible way. Every business leader and IT professional should read this book!
Mike Orzen, co-author of the the Shingo Prize winning book Lean IT: Enabling and Sustaining Your Lean Transformation
This book is the modern day version of The Goal. Today, our constraints aren't robots inside our factories, but it's how we manage technologies like Tomcat and Java that power our most critical projects and applications. This book continues the journey that began with Shewhart, Deming, Ohno and Dr. Goldratt, and shows us how to diminish our modern constraints to help the business win.
John Willis, Senior Director Global Transformation Office, Red Hat

AboutDetailsDownloads

Bill, an IT manager at Parts Unlimited, has been tasked with taking on a project critical to the future of the business, code named Phoenix Project. But the project is massively over budget and behind schedule. The CEO demands Bill must fix the mess in ninety days or else Bill’s entire department will be outsourced.

With the help of a prospective board member and his mysterious philosophy of The Three Ways, Bill starts to see that IT work has more in common with a manufacturing plant work than he ever imagined. With the clock ticking, Bill must organize work flow streamline interdepartmental communications, and effectively serve the other business functions at Parts Unlimited.

In a fast-paced and entertaining style, three luminaries of the DevOps movement deliver a story that anyone who works in IT will recognize. Readers will not only learn how to improve their own IT organizations, they’ll never view IT the same way again.

What's inside

Start Here — Industry thought leaders Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, and George Spafford have created an effective, entertaining allegory as an accessible introduction to DevOps and the principles behind it.
Three Ways — Learn the Three Ways and the Theory of Constraints, the underpinning principles of DevOps.
Work Types — Discover the four types of work and why they matter to a successful organization.
All Levels — This bestselling fictionalized example of a company struggling with the growing complexity of technology and business is for all readers trying to help their company succeed.

Original Publication Date: January 10, 2013
4th Edition Publication Date: September 3, 2024
5th Anniversary Edition Pages: 352
Paperback Dimensions: 6 x 9 inches, black and white
4th Edition Paperback ISBN: 9781950508945
4th Edition eBook ISBN: 9781950508969
Audiobook ISBN: 9781942788348
Topics: Leadership · Software Delivery & Architecture · Workplace Culture
Formats: audio · epub

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About the authors

3 authors

Gene KimFounder, Author, Researcher, IT Revolution

Affiliation as of 2026-08-31

Gene Kim has been studying high-performing technology organizations since 1999. He was the founder and CTO of Tripwire, Inc., an enterprise security software company, where he served for 13 years. His books have sold over 1 million copies—he is the WSJ bestselling author of The Unicorn Project and The Phoenix Project Graphic Novels , and co-author of The Phoenix Project , The DevOps Handbook , Vibe Coding , and the Shingo Publication Award-winning books Accelerate and Wiring the Winning Organization . Since 2014, he has been the organizer of DevOps Enterprise Summit (now Enterprise Technology Leadership Summit and Enterprise AI Summit), studying the technology transformations of large, complex organizations.

Talks by GeneAll 67 →

26 min

Beyond the Phoenix Project: A Conversation With Gene Kim and John Willis

San Francisco 2016

22 min

State of AI-assisted Software Development: 2025 DORA Report

Las Vegas 2025

21 min

Rewiring The Engineering and Product Organization to Deliver A Customer Support GenAI Service

Connect Feb 2025

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Kevin Behrfounder, Information Technology Process Institute (ITPI) (at publication)

Now: Strategy Practice Head, Implicit Sciences · as of 2026-09-07

Kevin Behr is the founder of the Information Technology Process Institute (ITPI) and the Chief Strategist for the CIO and Board Advisory Practice at Assemblage Pointe, where Kevin has built a unique consulting practice that mentors and coaches IT organizations to increase their business effectiveness and competitive advantage now and over the long term through the application of improvement sciences. As a trusted mentor and advisor to chief executive officers and chief information officers around the world, Kevin blends his 25 years of IT management experience with his skills as a communicator, collaborator and synthesist to deliver powerful solutions to everyday business problems. He has held the post of CTO and CIO at companies ranging from public corporations to nimble technology start-ups. He is the author of several IT management books, including the exciting new business novel The Phoenix Project in tandem with the same author team as the bestselling Visible Ops Handbook, which he also coauthored with Gene Kim and George Spafford, and The Definitive Guide to IT Management, published by Hewlett Packard. Kevin is a very popular keynote speaker and is frequently called on to address a broad range of technology and management topics by organizations such as the National Academy of Sciences, Hewlett-Packard, the SANS Institute, AFCOM and The IT Service Management Forum.

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George Spaffordresearch director, Gartner (at publication)

George is a Research Director for Gartner covering process improvement in IT operations that leverage best practice references such as ITIL, COBIT, ISO/IEC 20000 and so forth. He is a prolific author and speaker, and has consulted and conducted training on strategy, IT management, information security and overall service improvement in the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand and China. His publications include co-authorship of “The Phoenix Project”, “The Visible Ops Handbook", “Visible Ops Security” and the IIA Information Security Governance guidance. His current areas of research include service design, complexity and operational processes.

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