Speaker

Ken Mugrage teaches Continuous Delivery and DevOps for ThoughtWorks. He’s a core organizer for DevOpsDays, and is in complete denial about the world accepting “DevOps Engineer” as a job title.

Quick Q&A With Ken Mugrage

We had a chance to catch up with Ken and ask him a few questions about his experience with Continuous delivery and DevOpsDays.

Miguel Alho: Hi Ken! You had the opportunity of being a part of great group at Thoughtworks that has defined and spread many of the good practices associated with Continuous Delivery. What has that been like?

Ken Mugrage: It’s been amazing.

There are often events in a person’s career which don’t seem significant at the moment, but can end up being huge. For me, one of these was joining ThoughtWorks while Jez Humble and David Farley were finishing up the Continuous Delivery book. I was hired to help out with our products, so Jez sat down with me to teach me about their take on getting software to production. It instantly clicked for me why it was so important, but I had no idea how much it would change the software industry.

MA: What’s it like teaching CD and what’s your approach to it?

KM: I don’t teach in a classroom style session often, so mostly this comes up as advice.

I have the privilege of working on lots of different pipelines using all sorts of tools on all sorts of tech stacks. I use this knowledge to advice people on what works and what doesn’t. The primary message these days seems to center around the fact that there’s no easy answers. Doing CD “right” requires many different types of activities all working together.

MA: As a core organizer of DevOpsDays, it must for feel special to see the event continuously grow globally over the last 10 years. What are your hopes and perspective for the future of the event?

It’s been amazing! To be clear, I’ve only been part of the global team for about 2 years. My previous experience was mostly as an attendee, speaker, and sponsor. When I attended my first event in Silicon Valley in 2010 I had no idea how much it would take off, as I’m sure nobody did.

The part where I’ve been really lucky is actually the combination of 2 of your questions. I’ve been able to see the growth of DevOps, which I consider to be 100% culture, and Continuous Delivery, which I consider part of the technology.

To be deeply involved with both has been a true privilege.

MA: Well for us it will also be a privilege to have you around to learn from at the event. We are super excited for this!