Thoughtworks Technology Podcast

Exploring the Basal Cost of software

Oct 20, 2022

30:11

Creator website

Highlights

AI Chapters

Episode notes

The Cost of Software Development

02:02

The Cost of Running Software

01:43

The Metaphor of Fitness and Cognitive Load

01:45

Introduction

2min

Is There a Cost of Dependency?

2min

Is Your Base Will Cost at Some Point?

2min

How to Reduce Base Costs in a Software Development Environment?

2min

XP Practices - Can You Be More Explanatory?

2min

The Right Is This Best For?

2min

The Seven Ways of Lean Manufacturing

2min

The Metaphor of Fitness and Cognitive Load

2min

The Cost of Running Software

2min

10.

How Do You Measure Your Productivity?

2min

11.

The Depolar Frequency and Onboarding Time

2min

12.

What Are the Indicators of Health in Your Organization?

3min

13.

The First Step Is to Make It Visible

3min

14.

How to Minimize the Art of Work

2min

15.

Do You Really Need to Innovate in the Digital Transformation Age?

2min

16.

The Cost of Software Development

2min

The “Basal Cost” of software is an idea from Eduardo Ferro Aldama. The term is borrowed from biology, where the "Basal Metabolic Rate" refers to the number of calories a human body burns just to maintain normal functioning. Applied to software development, the concept is intended to help us pay much more attention to the long term costs — like additional complexity and maintenance — of building a new feature.

In this episode of the Technology Podcast, James Lewis and Georgina Giannoukou join hosts Neal Ford and Birgitta Böckeler to discuss the Basal Cost of software and explore how it can help organizations and software development teams better manage product and system complexity.