Thoughtworks Technology Podcast

The allure of cloud, with its promises of cost benefits, greater stability and more recently as the lynchpin of digital transformation, is well understood. But if such promises are to be realized, tech leaders need to think beyond just lifting and shifting on-prem applications into the cloud.

In this episode, we’re delighted to welcome a new co-host to our team: Ashok Subramanian, Head of Technology, ThoughtWorks UK. He’s joined by our regular host Alexey Boas and special guest, Alexandre Goedert, Head of Technology, ThoughtWorks Chile.

Together they explore what cloud migration means today, now that the big three cloud platform providers have practically met feature parity. They look at the implications of cloud-to-cloud migration and help uncover some of the hidden costs.

Any developer that’s moved from an object-oriented language to a functional one knows how disconcerting the shift can be. It demands a completely different mindset.

In this episode, our regular co-hosts Neal Ford and Alexey Villas Boas talk to Gregorio Melo about functional programming. He’s just written a book about functional programming, using Clojure as its basis.  Together they explore why developers choose to learn functional languages and how they can make the learning curve less daunting.

These days, it can seem that everything is being done as code. But compliance as code isn’t just some fad: it’s about automating compliance processes so that they become more transparent and ensuring any compliance issues that arise can be quickly dealt with.

In today’s episode, our host Rebecca Parsons talks to Satyam Argawala a Lead Consultant at ThoughtWorks Australia about compliance as code: what it means, why it’s necessary and where to start.

Over the years, there have been numerous approaches to data management: from data warehouses and data marts to data lakes — collating data in a central place. Today, we see many failure modes when it comes to building big data platforms, with organizations stuck in building data architectures such as data lakes that never deliver business value.

In our latest episode, we explore the ideas of data meshes, an alternative approach to serve and surface data organizationally. Our regular co-hosts Mike Mason and Neal Ford talk to Ken Collier, Head of Data Science and Engineering at ThoughtWorks, and Zhamak Dehghani, one of our regular co-hosts and also a Principal Consultant, with a focus on distributed systems architecture.

Everyone knows that tech has upended the business rulebook. But for all the exhortations to go digital, there’s been scant practical advice on how to do it. Until now.

In our latest episode, regular host Mike Mason is joined by ThoughtWorkers Jim Highsmith, Linda Luu and David Robinson to hear about their new book EDGE — value driven digital transformation. The book outlines an operating model that helps companies become holistically agile so that every part of the business — from culture to leadership to tech to product — can adapt and evolve at the speed of change.

The technology choices that businesses make are fast becoming key factors in creating great products and great customer experiences. But who should be responsible for those choices: the CIO or the CTO.

Our regular co-hosts Zhamak Dehghani and Mike Mason are joined by ThoughtWorks’ very own CTO (and erstwhile podcast host) Rebecca Parsons and principal consultant, Marcelo de Santis, who has previously been both a CIO and CTO at large multinational companies. Together they explore how modern businesses can get the technology leadership they need.

The theories of complex adaptive systems devised by the Santa Fe Institute have been used to draw out surprising patterns in the world around us — such as biology in mammals or revenue growth in retail stores. James Lewis, a principal consultant at ThoughtWorks, has been exploring how to apply such thinking to technology, in particular the practices and characteristics that underpin successful uses of microservices.

Join our regular host Mike Mason to hear more about the surprising world of complex adaptive systems, and what technologists can learn from it.

Who wouldn’t want to empower individuals and teams to solve problems as they encounter them? It’s a natural instinct for many developer-led organizations. But as phenomena like Shadow IT or skunkworks have shown, there can be a downside: a lack of coordination over what gets tackled and maintaining solutions over the long term.

In this episode, our co-hosts, Rebecca Parsons and Zhamak Dehghani, are joined by Andy Yates, Head of Strategy at ThoughtWorks TechOps, to explore the idea of the Citizen Developer. They look at ways of supporting problem-solving go-getters, while giving them the tools to ensure their efforts are aligned to business needs.

In this episode, our co-hosts Neal Ford and Rebecca Parsons catch up with Biharck Muniz Araújo, a principal consultant at ThoughtWorks Brazil, to hear about his new book Hands-On RESTful Web Services with TypeScript 3, a guide to designing, developing, scaling and deploying RESTful APIs for your applications.

Together they explore why the book was written and how REST has continued to evolve, as well as the established patterns and best practices.

A radical approach to enterprise IT is emerging in China — a cloud-based approach to encapsulated business models that enables small enterprises to steal a march on larger competitors and also enables long-established firms to go digital.

The concept is almost unheard of outside China, and in this episode, our co-host Neal Ford and Mike Mason are joined by two ThoughtWorkers from China — Xu Hao, Head of Technology for ThoughtWorks China and Liu Shangqi, Frontline Consultant — to delve into the ideas behind Zhong Tai.