Thoughtworks Technology Podcast

Understanding your technology estate and how it's being leveraged is critical for organizations; it impacts everything from financial planning to capability development. But given the rapid pace of change — even inside a single company, let alone the wider industry — how can this be done effectively? One approach we've landed on at Thoughtworks is something called a Tech Dash: it's a method of internal research that surfaces information about an organization's technology use, and even software developers' experiences.

In this episode of the Technology Podcast, Camilla Crispim and Renan Martins talk to hosts Alexey Boas and Ken Mugrage about the value of a Tech Dash and explain how it can help track technology use. They also discuss where the idea came from and how they put it into practice across Thoughtworks Brazil.

Bahmni started life as an open-source hospital information management system and electronic medical record for a single hospital in rural India. Today, it has more than 500 implementations in 50 countries across Africa and Asia, and is recognized as one of only 165 digital public goods by the Digital Public Goods Alliance.

Thoughtworks played a key part in bringing Bahmni into the world back in 2012. And although today it's run and supported by a coalition of organizations, Thoughtworks continues to have a leading role in the project as a member of its Governing Committee.

To tell Bahmni's unique story, Rebecca Parsons and Ken Mugrage speak with Satish Viswanathan and Angshuman Sarkar, two Thoughtworkers actively participating and contributing to the project. They discuss Bahmni's origins and how it grew from a small, local tool to become a vital component in healthcare infrastructure in parts of the world that have long faced resource challenges.

Learn more about Bahmni: https://www.bahmni.org/

One of the fundamentals of security is self-awareness: knowing where you may be vulnerable, the practices and processes that aren't yet quite in place and what actions you need to prioritize are essential if your organization is to excel at security. But how can that be done? In complex and distributed teams, surfacing such knowledge can be incredibly difficult. One solution, though, is something called a security maturity model.

In this episode of the Thoughtworks Technology Podcast, Thoughtworks alumnus Diana Adorno and current Thoughtworkers Lisa Junger and Robin Doherty speak to host Alexey Boas about a security maturity model they've developed that was recognized by the prestigious CSO50 Awards. They explain the purpose of developing and using one, how theirs works and why it should matter to any organization that wants to get serious about the way it does security.

Despite occasional confusion, the difference between continuous delivery and continuous deployment is simple: should deploying to production be on demand or every good build? Answering which approach is 'best' is difficult; any attempt at dogmatism is likely to just look foolish, given it is, like many other debates in software development, context-dependent. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't try and unpick the issues at the heart of the discussion. It's all well and good saying the debate is context-dependent, but what does that actually mean in practice?

In this episode of the Technology Podcast, Ken Mugrage and Valentina Servile debate the merits of both continuous delivery and continuous deployment. Talking with hosts Prem Chandrasekaran and Birgitta Böckeler, they offer their perspectives on when and where both should be used — in making the case for their chosen approaches, they shed some much needed light on a discussion that every software engineering team should have.

Learn more about Valentina Servile's book Continuous Deployment: https://www.thoughtworks.com/insights/books/continuous-deployment

Volume 30 of the Thoughtworks Technology Radar was published in April 2024. Alongside 105 blips, the edition also featured four themes selected by the team of technologists that puts the Radar together. They were: open-ish source licenses, AI-assisted software development teams, emerging architecture patterns for LLMs and dragging pull requests closer to continuous integration. Each one cuts across the technologies and techniques included on the Radar and highlights a key issue or challenge for software developers — and other technologists — working today.

In this episode of the Technology Podcast, Birgitta Böckeler and Erik Dörnenberg join Neal Ford and Ken Mugrage to discuss the themes for Technology Radar Vol.30. They explain what they mean, why they were picked and what their implications are for the wider industry.

Explore volume 30 of the Technology Radar: https://www.thoughtworks.com/radar

Bringing machine learning models into production is challenging. This is why, as demand for machine learning capabilities in products and services increases, new kinds of teams and new ways of working are emerging to bridge the gap between data science and software engineering. Effective Machine Learning Teams — written by Thoughtworkers David Tan, Ada Leung and Dave Colls — was created to help practitioners get to grips with these challenges and master everything needed to deliver exceptional machine learning-backed products.

In this episode of the Technology Podcast, the authors join Scott Shaw and Ken Mugrage to discuss their book. They explain how it addresses current issues in the field, taking in everything from the technical challenges of testing and deployment to the cultural work of building teams that span different disciplines and areas of expertise.

Learn more about Effective Machine Learning Teams: https://www.thoughtworks.com/insights/books/effective-machine-learning-teams

Read a Q&A with the authors: https://www.thoughtworks.com/insights/blog/machine-learning-and-ai/author-q-and-a-effective-machine-learning-teams

Can AI improve the quality of our code? A recent white paper published by code analysis company CodeScene — "Refactoring vs. Refuctoring: Advancing the state of AI-automated code improvements" — highlighted some significant challenges: in tests, AI solutions only delivered functionally correct refactorings 37% of the time. However, there are nevertheless opportunities. The white paper suggests it might be possible to dramatically boost the success rate of AI refactoring to 90%.

In this episode of the Technology Podcast, Adam Tornhill, CTO and Founder of CodeScene, joins Thoughtworks' Rebecca Parsons (CTO Emerita), Birgitta Böckeler (Global Lead for AI-assisted software delivery) and Martin Fowler (Chief Scientist and author of the influential Refactoring book) to discuss all things AI and code. From refactoring and code quality to the benefits and limitations of coding assistants, this is an essential conversation for anyone that wants to understand how AI is going to shape the way we build software.

Read CodeScene's Refactoring vs. Refuctoring white paper, which explores AI's role in improving code: https://codescene.com/hubfs/whitepapers/Refactoring-vs-Refuctoring-Advancing-the-state-of-AI-automated-code-improvements.pdf

Read CodeScene's Code Red white paper to learn how code quality impacts time-to-market and product experience: https://codescene.com/hubfs/web_docs/Business-impact-of-code-quality.pdf

CodeScene's new automated refactoring tool is now in beta. Learn more: https://codescene.com/campaigns/ai

Listen to our podcast discussion about AI-assisted coding from November 2023: https://www.thoughtworks.com/insights/podcasts/technology-podcasts/ai-assisted-coding-experiences-perspectives

If you've ever wondered how to measure your cloud carbon footprint, you can — thanks to a tool that's called, somewhat unsurprisingly, Cloud Carbon Footprint. Launched in March 2021 by Thoughtworks as an open-source project, it allows users to monitor and measure carbon emissions and energy use from cloud services.

On this episode of the Technology Podcast, senior software engineers Cameron Casher and Arik Smith join Alexey Boas and Ken Mugrage to talk about Cloud Carbon Footprint in depth. They explain why CCF is different from the measurement tools offered by established cloud vendors, how it actually works and how you can get started with it yourself.

CCF on GitHub: https://github.com/cloud-carbon-footprint

Learn more: https://www.cloudcarbonfootprint.org/

Looking Glass isn't like most other technology trend reports. It doesn't just tell you what deserves your attention, it's designed to help you use it to focus on what really matters to you. Published once a year, Thoughtworks intends it to be a tool that helps readers make sense of the emerging technologies that are going to shape the industry in the months and years to come.

In this episode of the Technology Podcast, lead Looking Glass contributors Rebecca Parsons and Ken Mugrage trade hosting duties for the guest seats, as they talk to Neal Ford about the most recent edition of the Looking Glass (published in January 2024). They explain what the Looking Glass is and outline some of the key 'lenses' that act as a framework readers can use to monitor and evaluate what's on the horizon.

Covering everything from AI to augmented reality, this conversation offers a new perspective on emerging technology to help prepare you for 2024.

Explore Looking Glass 2024: https://www.thoughtworks.com/insights/looking-glass

A few years ago, Thoughtworker and (prolific) author Neal Ford published Fundamentals of Software Architecture with Mark Richards. They're now back with another book on software architecture — written with co-author Raju Gandhi — which offers readers a very different learning experience. Described as a combination of technical book and graphic novel, Head First Software Architecture dispenses with dense prose to present and explain software architecture concepts and ideas in some highly innovative and novel ways.

In this episode of the Technology Podcast, the authors — alongside their editor, Sarah Grey — join Rebecca Parsons to discuss their new book. They explain the thinking behind the approach, how it diverges from Fundamentals of Software Architecture and detail some of the challenges of writing in a new format.

Whether you're interested in getting started with software architecture or simply curious about technical communication and learning, listen to find out more.

Learn more about Head First Software Architecture: https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/head-first-software/9781098134341/