The Phoenix Project DevOps Simulation - Paul Wilkinson

Pink Elephant – Knowledge Translated Into Results
The Phoenix Project
DevOps business game
Paul Wilkinson
Director
GamingWorks

The Phoenix Project – A Devops business simulation game © Pink Elephant, 2016. All Rights Reserved.
Why?
•  LACK of right CULTURE, lack of right COMPETENCES
•  NEW FRAMEWORK
•  Many vendors promote TOOLS as THE SOLUTION
•  Many Training companies will be offering Certificates
•  Fast implementation of DevOps
Most DevOps initiatives will fail...

DevOps needs special training!
“Cultural resistance
will create significant
failure rates when
starting with
DevOps”
“Organizational
change issues are far
more challenging”
“Enterprises are not
ready for DevOps but
will not survive
without it”
“DevOps cannot be obtained overnight with a
simple check and a little training. It is a
transformational approach to core processes and
it takes time, dedication and especially a team
that can implement DevOps practice.”

DevOps Foundation

Why a Simulation
•  Practice DevOps principles in safe and realistic
environment (experiment, continuous learning,
team development)
•  Better understand theory (from foundation) to
apply it in day to day work (value from training
investment)
•  Better insight into the consequences starting
DevOps journey (People, Process, Technology)
•  Capture agreed improvements to take away

ü  Business role can be added to game to
extend to Bus-Dev-Ops
ü  Focuses on core talent requirements
that the business is demanding
ü  ü  Teams must use Process engineering
tools (KanBan, Value Stream Mapping).ü

The Phoenix Project simulation
KPI R1 R2 R3 R4
Number of deployments 3 4 6 8
% successful 75% 79% 84% 96%
# Errors 8 10 6 2
% issues solved in same round 50% 66% 87% 100%

The Phoenix Project Simulation
•  10-12 participants
•  “The Phoenix Project”
•  Business & IT roles
•  Issues from the book
•  Experiencing top 10 DevOps challenges
•  Bringing real value to the business
•  Reflection, experimenting, learning
•  Finding solutions
•  … and how to implement them in own work

Do you recognize this?
“….too many business demands…IT says yes to all
demands…”
“….taking resources off projects to work on other
unexpected things…”
“….unclear who is working on what projects/issues and
what has the highest priority…”
“….chasing around after the status of projects….”
….causing delays, rework, wasted effort, doing the
wrong things, reduced business outcomes, increased
business risk!

Which of these would help?
q  CAB
q  Visual Management
q  WIP
q  Automation
This is what the team experiences.
Lesson 1 The need for Visualization
ü

Visualisation
© GamingWorks
Backlog To Do WIP 6 Doing Done
Planned
Unplanned
Version 1.0
DevOps
60% - 40% - Reality?
Where does unplanned come from?
How to avoid?
How to prioritize?

“….too much work you can’t always deliver the quality that
is expected”..
“….allocating incidents and projects to the same person
with unrealistic time demands’.
….causing delays, rework, wasted effort, doing the
wrong things, reduced business outcomes, increased
business risk!
“….you can’t meet your promise to customer because
somebody doesn’t have time to meet their promise”.

q CAB
q Visual Management
q WIP
q Automation
This is what the team experiences.
Lesson 2 The need to understand constraints and WIP
ü

FLOW
Backlog To Do DEV (WIP 4) OPS (WIP 3) CHANGE (6)
Planned
Unplanned
q X
q X
q X
q X

“….Too little time to test. Solution must go live…”
“….a lot of rework as mistakes were made in final step of
deployment”
….causing rework, wasted effort, mistakes going
live causing more unplanned work!
“….deployment was later than planned – users unavailable
for testing”

q  Value Stream Mapping
q  Visual Management
q  Integrated testing
q  Continuous deployment
Lesson 3 The need for integrated testing. Build quality
in up front.
ü 
Which of these would help prevent passing errors
downstream and detect as early as possible to ‘fail fast’
and provide feedback?

FLOW – aspects
Version 1.0© GamingWorks
•  Work must flow
•  How much work CAN we deploy?
•  How fast?
•  Avoid constraints
•  Avoid errors down-stream
•  Avoid sending work up-stream
•  Pull vs Push
•  Automate
•  Build quality in
•  Integrated testing

DevOps aspect – Continual Learning
State of DevOps ﬁnding: Improving quality is
everyone’s job. High-performing organiza<ons
spend 22 percent less <me on unplanned work and
rework. As a result, they are able to spend 29
percent more <me on new work, such as new
features or code.
‘…The DevOps mantra of con<nuous improvement is
both exci<ng and real, pushing companies to be
their best, and leaving behind those who do not
improve’.

DevOps aspect – what do we see?

DevOps aspect – what do we see?
KPI R1 R2 R3 R4
Number of deployments 3 4 6 8
% successful 75% 79% 84% 96%
# Errors 8 10 6 2
% issues solved in same round 50% 66% 87% 100%

ü  Need to get together (Collabora8on) to analyze and improve
performance – break down SILOs
ü  Importance of se:ng and managing priori8es/project por@olio –
together with business
ü  Need to idenDfy and visualize resource capacity (Constraints and
limiDng WIP)
ü  Use visual management(Kanban Board) – prioriDze & manage workload
ü  Improve esDmaDon of IT AND Biz capacity and WIP limits
ü  Business included in DevOps decisions (Bus-Dev-Ops)
ü  Get together to agree and improve end-to-end Communica8on
ü  Cross training to get out of the funcDonal, silo mentality
ü  Organize the con8nuous improvement of business and IT

Top takeaways - teams having par8cipated in the simula8on?

The Phoenix Project DevOps Simulation - Paul Wilkinson

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