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

Wes Davis is the Director of Distributed Technology Operations, and Palmer summarizes his role as maintaining network operations for Parts Unlimited. Davis is outspoken and often rude to others, but he mostly lashes out when he feels he or his team is under criticism. His hobby is racing cars, which he does every weekend, and he is a prominent customer of Parts Unlimited, as well as a critical member of IT leadership. Davis is one of Palmer’s sidekicks, alongside McKee, and he provides a critical complement to Palmer’s leadership style. Palmer is a balanced and moderate leader, but this personality leaves a gap when confrontation is needed. Though Palmer is occasionally pushed to confrontation, Davis is readily confrontational, often standing up to Mason, Allers, and Moulton when they make unfair demands of the IT team.

Davis’s role in the novel is to complement and contrast Palmer and McKee, rounding out the IT leadership team to form a fluid system. He also frequently serves as the team’s cynic, inserting doubt and questioning methods when he does not understand them. For each major IT development, Davis is usually skeptical at the beginning of the process before reluctantly admitting that McKee or Palmer succeeded. For example, Davis criticizes the new change process as a waste of time, but by the time Project Unicorn is starting, he is impressed by the speed and efficiency of McKee’s change process across departments. Davis is also a “straight shooter,” meaning he is not afraid to say what he thinks is going on. This contrasts with Palmer’s more introspective behavior, in which he is more likely to think about an issue at length before speaking out.

Patty McKee is the Director of IT Services Support, and Palmer describes her as the face of IT services at Parts Unlimited. McKee was an art major and only took her role at Parts Unlimited when faced with the challenges of making a living through creative work. McKee provides a critical complement and contrast to Davis and Palmer, rounding out their IT team. Unlike Davis or Palmer, McKee has a mind for patterns and processes, and she often insists on codifying the IT department’s operations, both to learn from processes and to keep track of who does what with their systems. A key parallel between McKee and Palmer is that McKee serves the same role to Palmer and Palmer does to Masters. Masters often dictates a series of requests and demands to Palmer, which Palmer then summarizes before planning how to act on the requests. McKee does the same with Palmer—he will essentially think aloud about an issue, and McKee will summarize the issues and propose plans to deal with them.

McKee’s role in the novel centers on her organizational skills and ability to accomplish tasks “off-stage.” The novel rarely shows McKee at work, instead focusing on her commanding presence in meetings and correspondence. However, much of the actual work of Palmer’s team ultimately gets done by McKee off the page, such as the change process methods, the initial collaborations with Development, and the use of kanban boards. Often, Palmer will walk into the CAB room to find changes made to index cards, organization, and labeling, which McKee will then explain in person. Though she is less outspoken than Davis, McKee arguably contributes more to the actual work of the IT department.

Steve Masters is the CEO and former chairman of the board at Parts Unlimited. Like Palmer, he has a military background, but he notes his 30 years in business as the main contributor to his leadership style. Even Palmer notes Masters’s distinctly un-military tactics, such as the leadership activity in which everyone shares stories about themselves, which Palmer calls “touchy-feely.” Despite his progressive leadership style in some portions of the novel, Masters is domineering and dismissive in others. For example, after he convinces Palmer to take the VP role, he then proceeds to override all of Palmer’s suggestions and requests.

Masters is a transient antagonist in the novel, serving as the apparent puppet of the true antagonist: Moulton. Masters is hampered by his board, led by Bob Strauss, which seems determined to split the company and outsource major functions and departments. Though Masters appears to work against the better interests of the company for the first half of the novel, he later explains that he thought he was doing was the company needed. Masters eventually realizes the importance of IT, Development, and Palmer himself, which leads him to push forward with Palmer on the Unicorn Project. In the end, Masters congratulates Palmer and offers him even greater advancement, while simultaneously easing Moulton out of the company, signaling the victory of the protagonist over the antagonist.

Sarah Moulton is the SVP of Retail Operations at Parts Unlimited. Moulton is a complicated character in the novel, predominantly because there is a layer of implicit misogyny that clouds the otherwise obvious nature of Moulton’s character as the antagonist of the novel. There is a long history of sexism oriented around dismissing the viability of women’s careers by the patriarchal standard of “hard work” and “responsibility.” As Palmer illustrates his criticisms of Moulton, it becomes increasingly obvious that he does not think that she deserves the role she has in the company, and he consistently ties this unfairness to Moulton’s ability to manipulate Masters. Though this manipulation is not sexual, and McKee explicitly denies that Moulton and Masters have any inappropriate relations, the implication remains that Moulton, and women in general, can only achieve higher positions by manipulating men, instead of through hard work.

Moulton is the antagonist of the novel because of the way she tries to subvert Palmer’s efforts at ameliorating the challenges of the IT department and Parts Unlimited in general. She often puts her own plans and projects first, even when they are detrimental to everyone else, as when she outsources risky systems alongside Project Unicorn to subvert the project freeze. In the end, Moulton leaves Parts Unlimited, and in the novel, her departure represents the success of hard work and intelligence over manipulation and politics, reaffirming the text’s position that actual work and progress are more important than appearances.

John Pesche is the CISO at Parts Unlimited. For most of the novel, Pesche is an irritating, obfuscating character who only serves to interfere with the goals of IT, Development, QA, and other departments. His job is to ensure that Parts Unlimited protects itself and its customers from data breaches, but it becomes clear that Pesche does not know how to achieve this goal efficiently. Pesche’s story in the novel is complicated by his apparent anxiety and depression, culminating in what Palmer perceives to be an attempt to die by suicide. However, following his mental health crisis, Pesche changes his appearance and demeanor, quickly becoming an asset to Palmer as he completes his integration of the Three Ways into Parts Unlimited’s IT sphere.

Pesche is a manifestation of the power of cooperation in the novel. His initial status as an antagonist centers on his inability to work with others, which leads to his ostracization from the company’s major leadership teams. However, later in the novel he becomes a powerhouse of cooperation, tracking down and interviewing other department leaders for additional information and helping Palmer integrate critical functions into Project Unicorn. In the end, his implementation of Evil Chaos Monkey takes advantage of the excitement and cooperation of Simian Army Chaos Monkey to cement his place alongside Palmer as a member of Unicorn’s leadership team.