My thoughts
Finished
TLDR: If you're in IT and you keep hearing about dev-ops and have no idea what it means, this is a good starting point! It preaches good ideas and first-principles for dev-ops. Just don't expect any practical advice on implementing the concepts discussed in the book. For that you'll have to look elsewhere. Start here, don't end here! Please! I read this as part of a professional development effort at work. My read took just over a month and I found it to be one of the most engaging "tech & business" books I've ever read. The book doesn't dig much further than the basics of what dev-ops "is" and what it looks like for a business to start the transition from the "old school" IT cost-center model. That said, it does explain a lot of the common "gotcha's", objections, and wins that can be found on the path into dev-ops-land at your org from a management perspective. I have three primary issues with the book: If you have experience with what "modern" dev-ops looks like (multiple deploys a day, well-standardized testing and automation, heavy integration of IT in business, etc.) the contents of this book really feel like they're just scratching the surface of what's possible. if you are in that camp (like I was), I would recommend reading this all with a grain of salt and expecting to have to do a whole-lot of independent reading and work on how to connect the dots from the slightly-agile situation the fictional Phoenix project is at by the end of the book to something that resembles modern practices. The book is very clearly aimed at management and there aren't many useful tips in here for the "practice" of dev-ops. This book won't tell you how to implement CI/CD, how to evaluate the trade-offs between cloud, on-prem, and hybrid environments, how to build trust with your business and integrate IT as a value-add for them, etc. It will tell you what those things are and that you should do them, but that's about it. The "novel" part of the book really is a thin veneer on top of a dev-ops intro manual. A useful tool for getting ideas to stick, don't go in expecting a character arc or exciting drama. This is basically a recounting of a bunch of business meetings with some characters and relatable situations slapped in-between to get the points across.