Ken works with technology organisations around the world. His focus is the intersection of product development, strategy, architecture, leadership, and software engineering culture. He is a leading expert on the practical application of sensemaking and complex adaptive systems approaches to improving agility and product development flow in software engineering organisations. He has held multiple technical and leadership positions in organisations, ranging from start-ups to Fortune 100 companies. He has led multiple large global organisation transformations. He holds patents in virtualization and network management. His current work focus is deep learning systems for edge devices, including system architecture for intelligent, autonomous systems.
Ken also works with the National University of Ireland Galway, where he teaches strategy & planning, systems analysis & design, and large-scale transformation. He is a research associate with Lero, the Irish Software Research Centre. He has authored more than 35 peer-reviewed publications on software engineering topics, including winning the IEEE Software best paper award. Topics include software architecture, agile and lean development, sensemaking, decision-making, AI, and management of software development organisations. He is a speaker at leading international conferences on architecture, software engineering, agile, and lean product development, and regularly serves as a conference organizer and program committee member. He was co-editor of the 2019 IEEE Software special issue on Large-Scale Agile Development. He is a reviewer for software engineering publications, including IEEE Software, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, and Journal of Systems and Software.