The Phoenix Project: A Novel about IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win

Business novels are part of the overall genre of business fiction, also known as business fables or leadership fables. This genre consists of stories that function around a critical business issue, often eschewing traditional elements of plot in favor of developments and revelations in the operations of a company or organization. Many of these works center on a specific area of business, such as leadership, project management, manufacturing, or technology, aiming to illustrate a critical concept through the narrative. While the point of these works, on the whole, is to teach readers an important idea in business, the success of the business novel lies in its ability to place the reader in the position of the main characters, learning alongside them as the novel progresses. For example, in The Phoenix Project, readers are meant to relate to Palmer, learning along with Palmer as he figures out the Three Ways. Palmer often gets stuck or confused, which provides the reader comfort and encouragement in trying to understand these concepts for themselves.

Some of the most notable business novels include Patrick Lencioni’s The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, John Paul Kotter’s Our Iceberg is Melting and Leading Change, and Eliyahu Goldratt’s The Goal, as well as Goldratt’s follow-up novel, Critical Chain. As with other business novels, The Phoenix Project presents Parts Unlimited as a company struggling to remain competitive, and the main character, Palmer, must learn how to save the company from failure. Rather than solving this issue alone, Palmer has the help of Erik Reid, who functions like a teacher in the novel, often even referencing other business novels as resources. Though some editions of The Phoenix Project include the reference work that accompanies the story, The DevOps Handbook, the premise of the business novel is that it is easier to understand and relate to in comparison to traditional reference works, which are often cold and overly technical.