The Phoenix Project 1: A Graphic Novel About It, Devops, and Helping Your Business Win

Silver Medal winner of the IBPA Book Awards 2024.

In the high-stakes world of Parts Unlimited, a struggling auto parts company, the road ahead is littered with seemingly insurmountable obstacles. A new IT initiative, code-named Phoenix Project, represents the company's best hope to halt declining sales and reverse its fortunes. But dark clouds are on the horizon...

When several disastrous system outages rock Parts Unlimited, all eyes turn toward the hapless IT department. Newly minted VP of IT Ops, Bill Palmer's future and that of the entire Phoenix Project are suddenly hanging by a thread as angry executives, infighting teams, and technical debt run amok.

But help arrives in the unlikely form of Erik, a prospective board member with a mysterious military past. Through Erik's mentoring and uncompromising methods, Bill begins to unearth decades of organizational dysfunction. He confronts the silo-driven operations of the IT department and uncovers crippling political minefields that transcend technology.

With technical debt mounting, Bill must revolt against entrenched lures and survival narratives that have long paralyzed the IT organization. Can he rally his team into a cohesive unit and capture the hearts and minds of skeptical leaders and developers?

Volume 1 of this graphic adaptation by Gene Kim and illustrated by Mike Collins vividly brings the bestselling book The Phoenix Project to life on every page. Join Bill's rebellion as he leads IT out of stagnation and toward a soaring Phoenix-like rebirth.

Gene Kim is a multi–award-winning CTO, researcher, and author. He is the founder of Tripwire and served as CTO for thirteen years. He is the author of six books, which have sold over one million copies, including The Unicorn Project (2019), and coauthor of the Shingo Publication award-winning Accelerate (2018), The DevOps Handbook (2016), and The Phoenix Project (2013). Since 2014, he has been the organizer of DevOps Enterprise Summit, studying the technology transformations of large, complex organizations. Kim has a Master of Computer Science from the University of Arizona and has been studying high-performing technology organizations since 1999. He was the founder and CTO of Tripwire, Inc for 13 years, an enterprise security software company. In 2007, ComputerWorld added Gene to the “40 Innovative IT People to Watch Under the Age of 40” list, and he was named a Computer Science Outstanding Alumnus by Purdue University for achievement and leadership in the profession. He lives with his wife and children in Portland, OR.

Though originally training to be a lawyer, Mike Collins recently celebrated 40 years of working in comics. In that time, he's drawn pretty much every major character in the US and UK: X-Men, Batman, JLA, Spider-Man, Superman, Wonder Woman, The Flash, Judge Dredd, Slaine, and Rogue Trooper among them. Best known for drawing Doctor Who, since the show's triumphant return twenty years back for Doctor Who Magazine, IDW, Titan, and two Dalek graphic novels for BBC Books, as well as writing and drawing Doctor Who online games for Tiny Rebel. He's also the artist on the 1970s Marvel-style Doctor Who merchandise. He's drawn two well-regarded and successful original Graphic Novels—an adaptation of Dickens' A Christmas Carol and the docudrama about the first moon landing, Apollo. In TV he works as a storyboard artist on many genre shows: Doctor Who, Fool Me Once, His Dark Materials, Good Omens, The Witcher, Midwich Cuckoos, and Lazarus Project, among others. In recent times he's worked on several How To Draw books and part-works: a 100-issue run on How To Draw Marvel magazine; 3 volumes of How To Draw Fortnite; How To Draw Five Nights at Freddie's; he currently illustrates the D&D Adventurer partwork magazine. He's married to Bernadette Vella, an IT manager at several major international financial institutions for the last few decades, who was very excited about this book happening as she'd long used it in her work strategies. Between them, they have three daughters: Bethan, Becky, and Rhiannon; and three sons: Robert, Andrew, and Daniel, and three grandchildren: Ari, Annie, and Sonny. Mike lives in Cardiff, Wales.