Reading: Here I Am. 

The Mother of Witty Dialogs.

A TV Show writer predicts his crumbling family life in the stories he invents for his show (not the other way around: writes about his family life in the TV Show).

On the back of The Phoenix Project it says “a must read for business and IT executives”. It is.

You need data backing up issues. Not hearsay.

Your job as a VP of IT Operations:
– Ensure a fast, predictable, uninterrupted flow of planned work that delivers value to the business.
– Minimize the implact and disruption of unplanned work in order to provide stable, predictable and secure IT.

The Three Ways:

1. Ensure a fast flow from Dev to Ops.
2. Shorten and amplify feedback loops.
3. Foster a culture of experimentation and learning from failure.

There is a Brent in every organization. The wizard that pieces everything together and seems to be a required resource on every project.
His knowledge must be documented, his process automated.
If he is not a Sharer but a Hoarder, keeping all information to himself, he must be fired eventually.

Four categories of work:

• Business projects
• Infrastructure/IT projects
• Changes
• Unplanned work

The theory of Constraints:

• Identify the constraint
• Exploit the constraint: make sure it can not waste time
• Subordinate the constraint

Work in progress (WIP) is the BIG Killer for productivity. Get thing done.

Technical debt: when not paid down, interest grows over time. You keep paying (more and more) interest in the form of unplanned work.

A work center: man, machine, method, measures.

Start with thinking totally extreme: think improving to the extreme (deploy from once every 3 month to 10 times per day).

IT is at the core of every modern organization. Ignoring that will bring the organization in Big Trouble.

Hoarders vs Sharers. People holding information about tasks they only know how to do. Get rid of that/them.

Nice summary in the back.

Derek Sivers schreef Anything You Want. He tells us about his life as founder of CDBaby, one of the first online record stores.

Hij vertelt ons over zijn leven als oprichter van CDBaby, een van de eerste online platenwinkels.

Sivers heeft een grote behoefte aan onafhankelijkheid. Eigenlijk wil hij zijn bedrijf, dat toch al per ongeluk is begonnen, niet laten groeien. Laat zien dat zaken leuk kunnen zijn, maar als je hem zijn eigen koers laat varen in plaats van die van jou, dan word je waarschijnlijk ongelukkig met dat proces.

Hij pleit voor “genoeg” voor geluk. Of beter gezegd, waar is je weg in geluk in het bedrijfsleven. Wat wil je en net zo belangrijk: wat niet. Het runnen van een groot bedrijf dat groeit vanuit je kleine handjevol medewerkers is misschien niet leuk en maakt je ongelukkig.

Maak uw eigen weg vrij. Geef geen reet om wat anderen denken. Choose Yourself….