While I read voraciously every day, I rarely post about any particular item. I was recommended The Phoenix Project from a work colleague and gave it a go. It’s a sort of sequel to the Unicorn project. The subject matter is ultra specific though, IT DevOps is not for everyone and has a ridiculous amount of jargon to sort through. The logic applied here is more important than the specifics. More accurately, these two books juggle the balance between the day to day portions of work, and how properly focused management practices can optimize that work to find a balance across profitability, employee satisfaction, and productivity.
In the gaming space, you should find some absolutely clear links to the
Concept #1 – Constraints & Bottlenecks
All production chains have constraints and bottlenecks. Identifying and remediating them is the only way to improve productivity. Any other improvements are only window dressing, as they eventually will encounter the restrictions. Sometimes this is tool related (like a machine that can only do 3 things an hour), sometimes this is people related (a single trained person to do the work). There are a bunch of ways to address this, like getting more / better tools, or changing the process to bypass the bottleneck.
Think of creating a late game item, your bottleneck could be anywhere in the production chain and you need to have good metrics to ensure you’re creating enough material to supply. Often times this happens when you run out of power to put more buildings down.
Concept #2 – Prioritization Is Essential
Few organizations actually understand what prioritization means. It’s more than just putting things in order to do, it’s about drawing a line on things you are unable to do. Less about saying ‘no’ and more about saying ‘not now’. This particular management point has the largest impact on employee satisfaction, as any single person allocated 90% or more work has no flexibility for more work. When the process is saturated, you cannot add MORE to the queue, it will just sit.
Think of belt saturation at the start/mid point of any factory. Eventually you’ll reach a point where you need to make a choice on what needs to be produced first. Heat on Aquilo is the only priority, nothing else works until you have that set up.
Concept #3 – Work Types
This is more specific to IT DevOps but the concept of distinct work packages is also core to optimization. There are business projects, IT projects, planned changes, and unplanned work. The first is what drives your business and clients. The second is what drives internal improvements. The third is how to manage the specific changes so that they don’t cause other issues. The fourth is everything else that suddenly pops out!
Using Factorio here, a business project would be launching a rocket to a new planet, requiring a lot of planning to get all the pieces ready. An IT project is building a power plant once you land on a planet, as you need that to get the other pieces going. A planned change is when you upgrade production chains, like moving from Assemblers to Electromagnetic Plants – this often causes issues in other production chains. Unplanned work is when stuff goes sideways. Like a biter attack that gets through your defences, or a spaceship that gets hit and loses the ability to produce ammo.
Real World
The concepts above apply to a bunch of real world domains, and all relate to awareness and decision making. You need to know there’s a problem, the actual problem, and then think of how any fix to that problem can be resolved without creating another one.
Maybe you notice your drain isn’t working the way it normally should. Is the issue with the P-trap, the main drain, or the main outlet? If none of those terms make any sense, then you need to find someone who can help you with it.
Maybe you want to plan a trip to a sunny destination, and realize that the cost is way more than expected. Do you change your plans? Do you prioritize your budget? Do you put in extra time/effort to get more money?
Maybe you plan to host a family BBQ and while you have more than enough food, the BBQ itself can only get food out to feed 5 at a time? Do you get a new BBQ? Do you change the menu to use less of it? Do you use an oven to help? Do you borrow your neighbour’s? Do you move towards a potluck where stuff is brought in cooked?
Most of us do this naturally and don’t really think about it, though often that’s due to familiarity with a domain of work. A bricklayer knows that they need to keep a set of material on hand and can only have so much mortar ready before it can’t be set. They may not have the same approach towards gardening, where plant spacing / shadows impacts overall growth. But the ideas are similar, right? A gardener gets their seedlings ready and at hand, with tools nearby. They have soil treatments & water at hand to ensure each has the best chance of growth.
I’m not saying everything needs to be treated this way. Random stuff is sometimes a lot of fun! Overplanning can drain the fun of any activity too! It is however a very effective way to manage stress levels, and giving yourself enough flex for any unplanned adventures. If every hour of your day is booked solid, when do you have time to be spontaneous or just enjoy life?
This is a very long winded review of a book that actually goes much farther than its material. There’s a lot of confirmation bias here, as it’s the way I’ve generally run my own life for nearly 30 years, though admittedly with challenged balance. It also explains why I get so much enjoyment from production games, as they are small/large puzzles that are all solvable! And when you solve it once, there are really high odds that you can use a similar solution in the future. And I really love skill transference, as it has a tremendous impact on self-confidence. Eventually you get to a point where all problems seem solvable – not saying YOU will solve them, but you understand them enough to know what needs to be done and what skill is required to get it done.
All from a book about IT DevOps. Not bad.
