The Phoenix Project

The Survival of Parts Unlimited

Parts Unlimited is in trouble. Newspaper reports reveal the poor financial performance of the organisation. The only way to save the company and make it competitive again is “The Phoenix Project”—an IT-enabled business transformation. Your team is tasked with leading the IT Department and ensuring this project is a success.

Roles and High-Stakes Challenges

Your team will take on different roles within Parts Unlimited. You can be Retail Operations, Human Resources, or the CFO running business projects. Alternatively, you can play the VP of IT Operations or lead various IT functions. The challenge is to manage a massive backlog of issues and features while the business keeps coming up with new, demanding ideas and external developments throw a spanner in the works.

Bridging the Gap between Dev and Ops

We all know the typical IT complaints: developers throwing untested solutions “over the wall” into production, and Operations putting up barriers that delay deployment. This simulation is built around the groundbreaking book by Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, and George Spafford. It lets you experience these dynamics firsthand and shows how to apply DevOps principles to achieve significant improvements.

The Three Ways in Practice

Throughout three or four intense rounds, you will work on IT projects and issues using the ‘Three Ways’ of DevOps:

• The First Way: Emphasises the performance of the entire system rather than specific silos.

• The Second Way: Focuses on creating right-to-left feedback loops to shorten and amplify necessary corrections.

• The Third Way: Fosters a culture of continual experimentation, risk-taking, and learning from failure.