ThoughtWorks 3tv6

Mainframe modernization is hard: there's a huge amount of complexity that needs to be understood before it can be addressed. However, generative AI can help — something we've discovered at Thoughtworks while working with Mechanical Orchard on its Imogen modernization platform. In particular, it can be a powerful tool for understanding legacy codebases.    In this episode of the Technology Podcast, hosts Ken Mugrage and Alexey Boas are ed by Thoughtworks CTO Rachel Laycock and Mechanical Orchard CEO and Founder Rob Mee to explore how the two organizations have been using generative AI to accelerate mainframe modernization. They discuss how the collaboration began, what it has actually involved in practice — and what the challenges were — as well as exploring the wider implications of the project for our understanding of generative AI in software engineering.   Learn more about Thoughtworks' partnership with Mechanical Orchard: https://www.thoughtworks.com/en-gb/about-us/news/2025/mechanical-orchard-launch-imogen-1st-partner-thoughtworks

You might think you know software engineering, but what are the really fundamental elements? What are the concepts, ideas and practices that are completely essential? What makes software engineering what it is? Thoughtworker Nate Schutta and Dan Vega are attempting to address those questions in their book with O'Reilly, The Fundamentals of Software Engineering. Covering topics ranging from reading code through to the importance of learning to learn, it promises to offer a fresh insight into the skills and knowledge needed to be a successful software engineer. In this episode of the Thoughtworks Technology Podcast, Nate and Dan hosts Neal Ford and Ken Mugrage to discuss the book and to dive into what really are the fundamental elements of software engineering. Listen for a fresh perspective on the discipline and a deep dive that shows it's about far more than just writing code. Learn more about The Fundamentals of Software Engineering: https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/fundamentals-of-software/9781098143220/

Thoughtworks Technology Radar Vol.32 was published at the start of April 2025. Featuring 105 blips, it offered a timely snapshot of what's interesting and important in the industry. Through the process of putting it together, we also identify a collection of key themes that speak to the things that shaped our conversations. This time, there were four: supervised agents in coding assistants, evolving observability, the R in RAG and taming the data frontier. We think they point to some of the key challenges and issues that industry as a whole is currently grappling with. To dig deeper and explore what they tell us about software in 2025, regular host Neal Ford takes the guest seat alongside Birgitta Böckeler to talk to Lilly Ryan and Prem Chandrasekaran. They explain how the themes are identified and discuss their wider implications. Read the latest volume of the Thoughtworks Technology Radar: https://www.thoughtworks.com/radar            

The term 'vibe coding' — which first appeared in a post on X by Andrej Karpathy in early February 2025 — has set the software development world abuzz: everyone seems to have their own take on what it is, how it's done and whether it's a bold new chapter in the history of programming or an insult to anyone that's ever written a line of code. Clearly, then, we need to talk about vibe coding — and that's precisely what we do on this episode of the Technology Podcast. Featuring Thoughtworkers Birgitta Böckeler (AI for Software Delivery Lead) and Lilly Ryan (Cybersecurity Principal), who hosts Neal Ford and Prem Chandrasekaran, we dive into the different understandings and applications of the concept, and discuss what happens when a meme collides with reality.

Nearly ten years after the first edition of Infrastructure as Code was published by O'Reilly, Kief Morris is publishing a third edition of the book. But why a new edition now? What's changed in technology and business over the last decade? Quite a lot, as it happens. To talk about what's new — both in the infrastructure world and in the book itself — Kief Morris s host Ken Mugrage on the Technology Podcast. They discuss each edition and what's new in this one, and dive into the infrastructure challenges and issues that need to be tackled in 2025, from tooling and deployment to maintenance and infrastructure evolution. Learn more about Infrastructure as Code, Third Edition: https://www.thoughtworks.com/en-gb/insights/books/infrastructure-as-code-3rd-ed

AI is inherently dynamic: that's true in of the field itself, and at a much lower level too — models are trained on new data and algorithms adapt and change to new circumstances and information. That's part of its power and what makes it so exciting, but from a business and organizational perspective, that can make governance and measurement exceptionally difficult. How can we know that our AI is optimized for the right thing? How can we be sure it's oriented towards what we want it to be? This is where the concept of fitness functions can help. Broadly speaking, fitness functions are ways of measuring the extent to which a given solution is fulfilling its goals — so, in the context of AI, they can help teams ensure that AI systems are serving their intended purpose. In this episode of the Technology Podcast, Rebecca Parsons and Neal Ford — authors (alongside Pat Kua) of Building Evolutionary Architectures, the book which brought fitness functions into the software architecture space — host Neal Ford to explore how the fitness function concept can help us better manage the dynamism of AI and, in doing so, overcome the challenge of bringing such systems into production. Learn more about Building Evolutionary Architectures: https://www.thoughtworks.com/insights/books/building-evolutionaryarchitectures-second-edition    

How can we better define and clarify architectures to ensure consistency and control? If, as Neal Ford and Mark Richards discussed on a recent episode of the Technology Podcast, software architecture intersects with many different facets of software development and delivery, what can we do to better manage architectures in a way that is adaptable and dynamic? Neal and Mark return to the guest seats to speak again to host Prem Chandrasekaran about fitness functions and architecture as code, and explain why rethinking our approach to software architecture can help ensure greater alignment with organizational needs and objectives.  

The release of DeepSeek's AI models at the end of January 2025 sent shockwaves around the world. The weeks that followed have been rife with hype and rumor, ranging from suggestions that DeepSeek has completely upended the tech industry to claims the efficiency gains ostensibly unlocked by DeepSeek are exagerrated. So, what's the reality? And what does it all really mean for the tech industry? In this episode of the Technology Podcast, two of Thoughtworks' AI leaders — Prasanna Pendse (Global Director of AI Strategy) and Shayan Mohanty (Head of AI Research) — hosts Prem Chandrasekaran and Ken Mugrage to provide a much-needed clear and sober perspective on DeepSeek. They dig into some of the technical details and discuss how the DeepSeek team was able to optimize the limited hardware at their disposal, and think through what the implications might be for the industry in the months to come. Read Prasanna's take on DeepSeek on the Thoughtworks blog: https://www.thoughtworks.com/insights/blog/generative-ai/demystifying-deepseek

Generative AI's popularity has led to a renewed interest in quality assurance — perhaps unsurprising given the inherent unpredictability of the technology. This is why, over the last year, the field has seen a number of techniques and approaches emerge, including evals, benchmarking and guardrails. While these all refer to different things, grouped together they all aim to improve the reliability and accuracy of generative AI. To discuss these techniques and the renewed enthusiasm for testing across the industry, host Lilly Ryan is ed by Shayan Mohanty, Head of AI Research at Thoughtworks, and John Singleton, Program Manager for Thoughtworks' AI Lab. They discuss the differences between evals, benchmarking and testing and explore both what they mean for businesses venturing into generative AI and how they can be implemented effectively. Learn more about evals, benchmarks and testing in this blog post by Shayan and John (written with Parag Mahajani): https://www.thoughtworks.com/insights/blog/generative-ai/LLM-benchmarks,-evals,-and-tests

Software architecture necessarily intersects with a diverse range of critical things, including implementation, infrastructure, data and engineering practices. All these elements require serious consideration and reflection if you're to architect effectively.  To discuss these various intersections, Thoughtworks' Neal Ford and his long-time collaborator Mark Richards host Prem Chandrasekaran on the Thoughtworks Technology Podcast. They dive into why these intersections matter, what they mean for software architects and how individuals and teams can go about addressing them. 

Who should be involved in the process of making decisions about software architecture? That's a question that's been puzzling Thoughtworker Andrew Harmel-Law for some time — so much so that he decided to write a book about it. The result is Facilitating Software Architecture. Published by O'Reilly in December 2024, it's both an argument for and a guide to involving more people in the architecture decision process. To discuss the topic and the book, Andrew ed hosts Neal Ford and Prem Chandrasekaran on the Technology Podcast. They explore why including more roles in software architecture matters today, some of the common objections to and risks of such an approach, alongside techniques and practices that can make doing it in fast-paced and dynamic organizations easier. "It's quite magical when you see this blossoming of understanding of what it is that architects do... It's not less architecture, it's more. It's just happening in a broader sphere." — Andrew Harmel-Law You can find Andrew's book on the O'Reilly website: https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/facilitating-software-architecture/9781098151850/

With the rise of generative AI, the concept of the uncanny valley — where human resemblance unsettles, disturbs or disgusts — is more relevant than ever. But is it a problem that technologists need to tackle? Or does it offer an opportunity for greater thoughtfulness about the ways generative AI is being built, deployed and used? In this episode of the Technology Podcast, host Lilly Ryan is ed by Srinivasan Raguraman to discuss generative AI's uncanny valley and explore how it might offer a model for thinking through our expectations about generative AI outputs and effects. Taking in everything from the experiences of end s to the mental models engineers bring to AI development, listen for a wide-ranging dive into the implications of the uncanny valley in our experience of generative AI today. Read Srinivasan's recent article (written with Ken Mugrage): https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/10/24/1106110/reckoning-with-generative-ais-uncanny-valley/

Legacy modernization is an enduring challenge — and as systems become more complex, the difficulty of understanding and modelling a system so it can be modernized only becomes more difficult. However, at Thoughtworks we've seen some recent success bringing generative AI into the legacy modernization process. To discuss what this means in practice and the benefits it can deliver, host Ken Mugrage is ed by Thoughtworks colleagues Shodhan Sheth and Tom Coggrave. Shodhan and Tom have been working together in this space in recent months and, in this episode of the Technology Podcast, offer their insights into finding success with this novel combination. They explain how it can be implemented, the challenges and experiments they did on their way to positive results and what it means for how teams and organizations think about modernization in the future. Read Shodhan and Tom's article on legacy modernization and generative AI (written with Alessio Ferri):  https://martinfowler.com/articles/legacy-modernization-gen-ai.html

Data contracts are a bit like APIs for data — they make it possible to interface with data in a way that ensures the transfer of data from one place to another is stable and reliable. This is particularly important for building more reliable data-driven applications. To discuss data contracts, host Lilly Ryan is ed on the Technology Podcast by Andrew Jones, the creator of the data contract concept (in 2021) and author of Driving Data Quality with Data Contracts (2023), and Thoughtworker Ryan Collingwood who is currently writing their own book on data contracts due to be published in 2025. Andrew and Ryan offer their perspectives on the topic, explaining the origins and motivation for the idea and outlining how they can be used in practice.  You can find Andrew’s book here: https://www.amazon.com/Driving-Data-Quality-Contracts-comprehensive/dp/1837635005  

What does it mean to be a technology leader today? What kind of challenges must you address? What questions do you need to answer? To explore all that — and dive into what it looks like from a Thoughtworks perspective — host Ken Mugrage spoke to Thomas Squeo, the CTO for Thoughtworks in the Americas. They discuss everything from keeping track of emerging technologies and wider industry shifts, to product thinking, AI and career development. Listen to get to know a Thoughtworks leader and discover fresh perspectives on some of the big questions and debates all of us in tech keep finding ourselves returning to. 

Volume 31 of the Technology Radar will be released on October 23, 2024. As always, it will feature 100+ technologies and techniques that we've been using with clients around the world — alongside them are a set of key themes that emerged during the process of putting it together. We think they offer another way into the Radar and give a unique insight on some of the most interesting issues impacting the software industry. In this episode of the Technology Podcast we discuss them: coding assistance antipatterns, Rust being anything but rusty, the rise of WebAssembly and what we describe as the "cambrian explosion of generative AI tools." To do so, Alexey Boas is ed by guests and podcast regulars Ken Mugrage and Neal Ford. Ken and Neal provide an insight into the conversations that happened during the process of putting this volume together, and offer their perspective on the implications of these themes for the wider tech industry.  

The Thoughtworks Technology Radar is, first and foremost, a publication. It's a document that anyone in the tech industry can read twice a year to learn about our experiences and perspectives on technology. However, it's also more than that: it's built on top of a process of deliberation, discussion and curation. We think that's particularly important — it's something we encourage technology teams and organizations to do and which we with our Build Your Own Radar tool.  On this episode of the Technology Podcast, Neal Ford and Ken Mugrage Prem Chandrasekaran to discuss Build Your Own Radar. They outline why the Radar process is just as important as the artifact that gets created at the end, and explain how organizations can use it to facilitate conversations about how and what technology they use and want to use in the future.    Learn more about Build Your Own Radar: https://www.thoughtworks.com/radar/byor

Like every other kind of technology, when it comes to databases there's no one-size-fits-all solution that's going to be the best thing for the job every time. That's what drives innovation and new solutions. It's ultimately also the story behind DuckDB, an open source relational database specifically designed for the demands of online analytical processing (OLAP), and particularly useful for data analysts, scientists and engineers.  To get a deeper understanding of DuckDB and how the product has developed, on this episode of the Technology Podcast hosts Ken Mugrage and Lilly Ryan are ed by Thoughtworker Ned Letcher and Thoughtworks alumnus Simon Aubury. Ned and Simon explain the thinking behind DuckDB, the design decisions made by the project and how its being used by data practitioners in the wild. Learn more about DuckDB: https://duckdb.org/why_duckdb.html    

It's widely accepted that, in most cases at least, software systems should be modular, consisting of separate, discrete services. But what about the size of those services? How big or small should they be? This is where the question of service granularity comes in: too small and your system will become needlessly complicated; too big and you lose all the benefits of modularity we were seeking in the first place. In this episode of the Thoughtworks Technology Podcast, host Ken Mugrage is ed by Neal Ford and Mark Richards — authors of multiple books on software architecture — to discuss service granularity. They explain why it matters and how software architects can go about getting it right, through the lens of granularity integrators and disintegrators.   Learn more about Neal and Mark's 2021 book Software Architecture: The Hard Parts (co-authored with Zhamak Dehghaniand Pramod Sadalage): https://www.thoughtworks.com/insights/books/software-architecture-hard-parts Find out more about Neal and Mark's second edition of The Fundamentals of Software Architecture, set to be released in early 2025: https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/fundamentals-of-software/9781098175504/

Trying to measure developer effectiveness or productivity isn't a new problem. However, with the rise of fields like platform engineering and a new wave of potential opportunities from generative AI, the issue has come into greater focus in recent years.  In this episode of the Technology Podcast, hosts Scott Shaw and Prem Chandrasekaran speak to Abi Noda, CEO of software engineering intelligence platform DX, about measuring developer experience using the DevEx Framework — which Abi developed alongside Nicole Forsgren, Margaret-Anne Storey and Michaela Greiler. Taking in everything from the origins of the DevEx framework in SPACE metrics, to how technologists can better 'sell' the importance of developer experience to business stakeholders, listen for a fresh perspective on a topic that's likely to remain at the top of the industry's agenda for the forseeable future.   Read the DevEx Framework paper: https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=3595878 Read Abi's article (co-authored with Tim Cochran) on martinfowler.com: https://martinfowler.com/articles/measuring-developer-productivity-humans.html