An October highlight here at MMT Digital was the launch of our very first DevOps Academy. We kicked off with a two-day induction for our new cohort at the MSQ HQ, led by the Academy tutor Liam Gulliver.
During their first week, our students had some fun at team building tasks and deep dived into the first hands-on technical module, looking at container technologies and Azure DevOps. Over the years, MMT Digital have delivered some award-winning DevOps transformation work for the UK leading consumer brands including Vodafone, and today we're excited to expand our DevOps engineering capabilities. The Devops Academy is designed to grow the next generation of DevOps specialists for the rapidly evolving digital-first world and help accelerate digital transformation for our clients.
The MMT Digital DevOps Academy is an eight month long programme which is designed to help the students progress from the classroom-based sessions to working alongside our seasoned engineers.
The first eight weeks will be largely spent in the classroom. Afterwards, the students will join our software engineering teams for four days a week, with the fifth day being dedicated to continuous learning. After completing the DevOps Academy, our students will become fully-fledged members of the MMT Digital Systems Engineering team.
The idea of launching a DevOps training course came to life when our engineering team realised, that despite DevOps skills being in high demand, there is a lack of DevOps modules in traditional software developer trainings. Therefore, DevOps specialists can be hard to find and recruit. MMT Digital has previous experience in offering short-term DevOps training, however, this long-term programme will provide engineers from various backgrounds with the opportunity to sharpen their DevOps skillset.
The Academy tutor and our System Engineering Manager Liam Gulliver comments: “We've had success with fast-track programmes in the past, but they didn't really offer a robust foundation and entry-level way into DevOps. I wanted to be able to start growing world-class engineers who are trained to be experts in not just the technology aspects of DevOps, but the people and science aspects too.”
We've had success with fast-track programmes in the past, but they didn't really offer a robust foundation and entry-level way into DevOps. I wanted to be able to start growing world-class engineers who are trained to be experts in not just the technology aspects of DevOps, but the people and science aspects too.
Liam Gulliver
Senior Software Engineering Manager, MMT
The MMT DevOps Academy is designed for developers looking to re-train, as well as recent graduates who are keen to get started in the DevOps niche. As Liam puts it: “DevOps is critical to organisational performance of any software business – which these days is almost every business! There’s a huge shortage of folks who can provide the skills necessary to execute on DevOps transformations, cloud infrastructure and cloud strategy, along with a solid developer experience and automation.”
Our training will provide the students with all the knowledge and tools necessary to work within Azure. After completion they will be able to use Azure DevOps, Kubernetes and Terraform, having gained experience within organisational design, systems thinking and real-life challenges. Additionally, they will also have had the opportunity to undertake the AZ-900 Azure Fundamentals exam.
Our first cohort of students is working hard on the Academy curriculum and testing their new skills with a fictional client, Cars Unlimited.
Their tutor Liam shares his experience of the Academy so far: “I am really pleased with how the academy is unfolding. We have 6 strong members of the cohort who all seem to have a real affinity for this kind of thing. The 6 I selected were based on their eagerness to learn, their genuine interest in the subject and the strength of the presentation they provided. We asked each candidate to provide a short presentation on something they’d worked on or something they were proud of. Each one gave well-thought-out presentations as part of their interview.”
MMT Digital are delighted to welcome such a motivated and talented cohort to the team. We look forward to supporting our students in their professional development and welcoming them to our Software Engineering teams after completion of the Academy.
