Gene Kim

Career

As a student of Gene Spafford, Kim co-authored the open source tool Tripwire while at Purdue University in 1992. He co-founded Tripwire, Inc in 1997 with Wyatt Starnes.

In 1999, Kim started his work studying IT organizations, capturing and codifying how high performing organizations have IT operations, security, audit, management, and governance working together to solve common business objectives. Kim co-wrote the “The Visible Ops Handbook: Implementing ITIL in 4 Practical and Auditable Steps” in 2004, and “Visible Ops Security: Achieving Common Security and IT Operations Objectives in 4 Practical Steps” in 2008.

Kim was named as a Computer Science Outstanding Alumni in 2007 for “exceptional professional achievements and their success in advancing world technology with the application of computer science”, and as one of Computerworld’s “Forty Technology Innovators Under Forty” in 2007.

Tripwire

After Spafford and Kim co-authored Tripwire at Purdue University, Kim co-founded Tripwire, Inc in 1997 with Wyatt Starnes in Portland, Oregon. He served as the CTO there for thirteen years, leaving in July 2010 to become a full-time author and researcher. The company grew from 17 to 75 employees in 1999, and reached over 260 employees and $74 million in revenue by 2009.

Author

Kim is the author of three books, The Phoenix Project, The Visible Ops Handbook and “The Visible Ops Security Handbook.”

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

Kim co-authored "The Phoenix Project" with Kevin Behr and George Spafford and published it through IT Revolution Press in January 2013. It is a business book in novel format in the fashion of “The Goal,” by Eliyahu Goldratt.

The novel tells the story of Bill, the IT manager at Parts Unlimited. The company’s new IT initiative, code named Phoenix Project, is critical to the future of Parts Unlimited, but the project is massively over budget and very late. The CEO wants Bill to report directly to him and fix the mess in ninety days or else Bill’s entire department will be outsourced. With the help of a prospective board member and his mysterious philosophy of The Three Ways, Bill starts to see that IT work has more in common with manufacturing plant work than he ever imagined. With the clock ticking, Bill must organize work flow streamline interdepartmental communications, and effectively serve the other business functions at Parts Unlimited.

The book has been called a "must read" for IT professionals and quickly reached #1 in its Amazon.com categories.

The Visible Ops Handbook

The Visible Ops Handbook: Implementing ITIL in 4 Practical and Audible Steps book was co-authored by Kevin Behr and George Spafford and published by IT Revolution Press in June 2005.

The book outlines how successful technology companies like Etsy, Netflix, Facebook, Amazon.com, Twitter and Google transformed their ITIL practices to implement effective change control. The Visible Ops Handbook is now considered an IT "cult classic" by the industry.

The Visible Ops Security Handbook

Visible Ops Security: Achieving Common Security and IT Operations Objectives in 4 Practical Steps was published in 2008. The book describes how to resolve the core conflicts businesses experience to respond more quickly to urgent business needs and provide stable, secure and predictable IT services.