Introduction

Business Simulation Duration: 1 Day

The Phoenix Project is a DevOps business simulation. A business simulation is an interactive workshop in which teams of people work on challenging issues within a simulated environment. In a simulation each participant will play a role and has specific tasks, responsibilities and authority.

 

Do you recognize these challenges?

  • Faster and reliable deployment
  • How to create a new culture?
  • Better collaboration between DEV and OPS

We all know the typical IT behaviours and complaints about developers throwing seemingly untested solutions over the wall into production and leaving operations to pick up the pieces. On the other hand, we hear development complaining about the barriers put up by operations that delay deployment, or workload demands placed on developers from IT Operations like minor updates, fixing issues and applications not working.

The increasing penetration of IT into all areas of the business and the desire for ever more and ever faster customer-facing solutions is compounding the issues even more. As a result, the workload on development and IT Operations is growing, workflows are stuck and, IT Projects are failing, business executives are angry and frustrated, seeing lost business opportunities and risks to business operations. Gene Kim, Kevin Behr and George Spafford wrote an excellent novel “The Phoenix Project” about an organization facing these challenges and how the applied DevOps principles to realize significant improvements and business value.This business simulation is built around this ground breaking book and let you experience the dynamics of the book.

Parts Unlimited is in trouble. Newspaper reports reveal the poor financial performance of the organization. The only way forward to not only save the company but to make it competitive and profitable is “The Phoenix Project” which represents an IT-enabled business transformation, with Retail Operations as the business owner of this project.

The VP of IT Operations is asked to take the lead of the IT Department and make sure “The Phoenix Project” will be successful. But he is facing a tremendous amount of work. Huge backlogs of issues, features and projects. Your team will act in different roles within the company Parts Unlimited. You can be Retail Operations, Human Resources or Finance playing the Business of the company. Running your projects. Or you can be the VP of IT Operations or other members of his IT Team that needs to develop the applications and solve the IT Issues.

Your challenge is to use the DevOps principles and apply them in this serious Business Simulation. In three rounds you will work on the IT Projects and IT Issues and make sure “The Phoenix Project” will be finished on time. But, beware, the business keeps coming up with new ideas and demands and external developments outside your control can also throw a spanner in the works.

  • How to apply DevOps principles in a real life situation?
  • How to find the right balance between delivering your SLA requirements and your IT Projects according to plan?
  • How to experience how DevOps can bring serious value to your business?
  • How to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of your IT Department?
  • How to create better flow in your teams?
  • How to develop people’s skills to act in a DevOps environment?
  • How to show business their responsibilities in making IT Projects more successful?

This simulation is targeted to all roles and employees in Business, IT Development and IT Operations who want to apply Lean, Agile and ITSM principles to improve the performance of their IT Services or to create more value out of their IT Solutions. This simulation is for organizations who want to develop that culture to achieve better collaboration and as a result, faster and errorless deployment of new IT Solutions.

The simulation can be used for:

  • Awareness programs
  • Assessment sessions
  • Teambuilding.

The Phoenix Project is a great add-on to any DevOps course.

No prior knowledge of DevOps is required.

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