Thoughtworks Technology Podcast

Covid-19 unleashed a wave of medical and pharmaceutical research and innovation across the world. In India, the government launched the Drug Discovery Hackathon, an initiative designed to bring together expertise in fields ranging from biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, machine learning and virology to discover new drugs that could help thwart the pandemic. One team that took part was from Thoughtworks India. In this episode of the Technology Podcast, two of the members — Pooja Arora and Justin Jose — talk to Rebecca Parsons and Ashok Subramanian about a number of projects they worked on during the hackathon. Among other things, they explain how they used reinforcement learning to improve the efficacy of potential drugs in tackling what was, at the time, a virus that was only partially understood.

Serverless received significant attention when it first emerged in the middle of the 2010s. And although it has now entered the mainstream and is today used in a diverse range of scenarios and architectures, it nevertheless remains a topic that causes considerable confusion and debate: where should we use it? How should we use it? Sometimes, what even is it, exactly? In this episode of the Technology Podcast, Mike Mason and Prem Chandrasekaran are joined by former Thoughtworker Mike Roberts — author of "the canonical book on serverless," Programming AWS Lambda — to discuss the current state of serverless. They examine the ways that serverless is understood today and explore the impacts and challenges it has for both businesses and software developers. Read Mike Roberts' book Programming AWS Lambda: https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/programming-aws-lambda/9781492041047/ Read Mike's long-read on serverless on martinfowler.com: https://martinfowler.com/articles/serverless.html

Thoughtworks CTO Rebecca Parsons has had a long and varied career in technology. Even before joining Thoughtworks in 1999, she completed a PhD, worked as a postdoc researcher at Los Alamos National Laboratory and taught at the University of Central Florida. Becoming CTO in 2007, she has seen Thoughtworks — and the wider tech industry — evolve through a period in which the business mainstream has become increasingly comfortable with cutting-edge innovation. In this episode of the Technology Podcast, Neal Ford and Birgitta Böckeler talk to Rebecca about her career, starting from Caterpillar warehouses in Peoria, Illinois, to being awarded the Technical Leadership Abie Award by AnitaB.org. It's the latest episode in our ongoing mini-series of Thoughtworker Journeys, offering an insight into the diverse and sometimes surprising experiences of technologists at Thoughtworks. Learn more about AnitaB.org: https://anitab.org/ Read the new edition of Rebecca's book, Building Evolutionary Architectures: https://www.thoughtworks.com/insights/books/building-evolutionaryarchitectures-second-edition

As an organization matures and grows, silos will inevitably emerge. That can pose problems, particularly in the relationship between product and engineering functions — friction can slow growth and make delivering at speed much more challenging than it was previously. In this episode of the Technology Podcast, Thoughtworks CTO Rebecca Parsons is joined by colleagues Rick Kick (Head of Application and Platform Transformation in the Enterprise Modernization team for Thoughtworks North America) and Kennedy Collins (Head of Product and Design for the North America Central Market), alongside Anthony Maitz of Pariveda, to discuss how to manage the various frictions and tensions that can emerge as organizations scale. They cover a wide range of tactics and strategies to improve alignment between product and engineering, and offer an insight into what can actually be done to address a common scale-up growing pain. Read Rick and Kennedy's article discussed in the episode: https://martinfowler.com/articles/bottlenecks-of-scaleups/03-product-v-engineering.html

It's often said that technology moves quickly, but the decisions we make about it can have long-term consequences. That's why identifying these trends — and understanding what they mean — matters. At Thoughtworks we do that with our Looking Glass report. Our most recent edition was published at the end of 2022; it provides a useful framework for thinking through the major shifts that look set to happen across the industry in 2023. In this episode of the Technology Podcast, regular hosts Mike Mason and Ken Mugrage take the guest seats to talk to Neal Ford about the six key trends in the latest Looking Glass. They explain why they were chosen before diving deeper into a selection of some of the most hotly debated trends that feature in the report, such as metaverse and Web3. Explore the latest Looking Glass: https://www.thoughtworks.com/insights/looking-glass Read Mike Mason's metaverse article (co-written with Barton Friedland) https://www.thoughtworks.com/insights/articles/metaverse-practical-review

Despite the term being coined two decades ago by Eric Evans, domain-driven design has arguably become more relevant than ever in software engineering, thanks to the rise of cloud and highly complex distributed systems. In this episode of the Technology Podcast, Alexey Boas and Ashok Subramanian are joined by Prem Chandrasekaran and Karthik Krishnan — authors of the new book Domain-Driven Design with Java — to discuss DDD and how it has developed over the last 20 years. They explore how DDD can help us respond to complexity and talk about the perspectives they put forward in their book.

The issue of accessibility in relation to technology and software has gained increased attention in recent years. While few would disagree that it's important, it nevertheless remains something that is all too often overlooked or viewed as a luxury when it comes to actually building products. This is unfortunate: taking accessibility seriously throughout the process of development and design will not only help foster a more equitable industry, it will also lead to better products for everyone. In this episode of the Technology Podcast, Scott Shaw and Prem Chandrasekaran are joined by Kate Linton and Katie Peterson to discuss the importance of shifting accessibility left — making it a first-order concern that's part of the earliest stage of the product development lifecycle. They explore why many companies are failing on accessibility, how it can be done properly and the wider benefits of such a shift.

Zhamak Dehghani, a Thoughtworks alumnus and the author of O'Reilly's 'Data Mesh: Delivering Data Driven Value at Scale', joins Emily Gorcenski, Service line leader for data and AI in Thoughtworks, Germany. They delve into the evolution of Data Mesh, emphasizing the shift from centralized data to decentralized approaches. The pair discusses the importance of domain-oriented ownership and addresses challenges in governance and implementing change. They also highlight the vital role of user engagement in designing effective data products.

Low-code and no-code development platforms have been heralded in recent years as a solution to engineering talent gaps and as a trend that will properly democratize technology, allowing even non-coders to build applications from scratch. However, despite the marketing rhetoric, such platforms pose considerable challenges: how do they fit alongside existing development projects? To what extent do they enable or restrict our ability to build the kinds of software we want and need? In this episode of the Technology Podcast, Neal Ford and Mike Mason are joined by Scott Shaw and Xu Hao to discuss the state of play in the world of low-code and no-code. They explore the different types of platforms that have emerged in the space and ask what organizations need to consider before they invest time, energy and money in integrating them.

For many who have been part of the recent migration of users from Twitter to Mastodon, their first encounters with the "fediverse" have been puzzling, even disorienting. Given a decade in which we've all grown accustomed to the affordances of corporate social media, it's not surprising people have questions: How does it work, exactly? How am I supposed to use it? With so much current interest in the platform — and the wider ecosystem of which it is a part — in this special bonus episode of the Technology Podcast, Birgitta Böckeler digs into the technology and culture of Mastodon with the help of Effy Elden, Moritz Heiber and Julien Deswaef, three Thoughtworkers that have been long-time residents of the fediverse. They discuss how Mastodon works, how it sits within the broader decentralized social media landscape and whether this move to Mastodon marks the start of a new chapter in how the world views social media.