| Type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | IT Consulting Management Consulting |
| Founded | 1993 |
| Headquarters | Chicago, USA |
| Key people | Neville Roy Singham, Chairman Trevor Mather, CEO Daniel Goodwin, CFO Martin Fowler, Chief Scientist |
| Products | www.thoughtworks-studios.com |
| Employees | over 1700 (Jul 2011) |
| Website | www.thoughtworks.com |
ThoughtWorks is a privately owned global IT consultancy that delivers custom software, software tools, consulting, and transformation services to Global 1000 companies. It has a products division, ThoughtWorks Studios, which creates and markets software development and project management applications. The company is closely associated with the movement for agile methods of software development (see Agile software development).
ThoughtWorks describes itself as “…A social and commercial community whose purpose is to revolutionize software creation and delivery while advocating for positive social change in the world.” [1] Founder and Chairman Roy Singham has said “I believe the world should have access to the best ideas in software for free. My goal is a technically-superior infrastructure to solve the world's problems." [2] The company has contributed to a range of open source products.
As of June 2011 the company had 1700 employees, with 22 offices in 8 countries: Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Germany, India, England, and the United States.[3]
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In the late 1980s Roy Singham founded Singham Business Services as a management consulting company servicing the equipment leasing industry in a Chicago basement.[4][5]
In 1993 the company was incorporated and the name changed to ThoughtWorks. The focus became building software applications.[6]
ThoughtWorks' technology capabilities have evolved from its use of C++ and Forte 4GL in the mid-1990s to include Java in the late 1990s.[7]
The company began using agile techniques while working on a leasing project[8] Martin Fowler began working with ThoughtWorks in 1999 and was hired in 2000 as Chief Scientist.[9] In 2000 Martin Fowler and Matthew Foemmel first described the use of the technique of Continuous Integration for large-scale software projects. This resulted in the Open Source project CruiseControl created by ThoughtWorks as the first continuous integration server.[10]
The Agile Manifesto was published in 2001, with Chief Scientist Martin Fowler one of the co-authors.[11][12] This document propounded the core principles that are the basis for agile software development.
ThoughtWorks’ technical expertise expanded with the .NET Framework in 2002,[13] C# in 2004, Ruby and the Rails platform in 2006.[14]
ThoughtWorks Studios was launched as its product division in 2006. The division creates, supports and sells agile project management and software development and deployment tools including Mingle, Twist and Go.
On 2 March 2007, ThoughtWorks announced Trevor Mather as the new CEO.[15]
ThoughtWorks initiated a Social Impact Program in 2009.[16]
The company is now working with a software practice known as Continuous Delivery. Continuous Delivery aims to make software production-ready throughout its lifecycle, so that potentially every good build can be released into production and run effectively.[17] The goal is to “…Minimise the cycle time from idea to delivery, and allow that cycle to be repeated frequently and reliably.”[18]
The company’s primary service is the creation of large-scale mission-critical custom software applications for global corporate clients. Projects for North American, European or Australian clients are often delivered from India, China or Brazil, in accordance with client financial and resource constraints.[19] The firm also provides consulting services related to software development, design, architecture, operations, and IT Transformation among others.[20]
Founded and still headquartered in Chicago, the company’s leadership is distributed. Central functions are chiefly performed in Chicago, London and Bangalore.[21]
ThoughtWorks grew and established its first regional office, in San Francisco, in 1997.
The company opened its first office outside the US, in Brisbane, Australia, in 2000. The company continued expanding with new offices opened in Canada, London, and Bangalore in 2001.
China operations were launched in 2005, followed by offices in Pune in 2006 and Chennai in 2007. Latin American operations were launched in 2009 with the firm's first office in Brazil, in Porto Alegre.
Operations further expanded in India with an office in Gurgaon and a second office in Bangalore in 2010. An office in Germany, situated in Hamburg, also was opened in 2010.
The firm designates its core organization values as the Three Pillars:
The three are examined and elaborated upon by ThoughtWorks’ founder, Roy Singham in an interview with The Economic Times[22] and in an essay by the firm’s Chief Scientist Martin Fowler.[23]
To support the firm’s core values,[24] the company established a Social Impact Program that builds partnerships with social mission organizations that need help with technology.[25]
The firm also has a special staff resourcing model and tools that allow employees to contribute non-billable time and volunteer time to social impact projects. Examples of work include the OpenMRS project,[26] CycleTelTM[27] and an emergency online donation system to help flood victims in Australia.[28]
The company develops and supports Open Source projects. Employees are encouraged to contribute to Open Source Software projects, and the firm often advocates Open Source Software for use in corporate enterprise IT.[29]
With the start of ThoughtWorks Studios, the company has also started producing closed source proprietary software.
On July 28, 2008, ThoughtWorks Studios released a proprietary product continuous integration server called Cruise. Despite the name, this is not a derivative of the open source CruiseControl, but instead a new product written from scratch, which is due to be released under a proprietary license.[37]
On July 10, 2010, ThoughtWorks Studios released a new agile release management platform called Go. Go (release management). Go includes the functionality of Cruise, which is no longer sold.[38]
Mingle is software to facilitate agile project management and collaboration, built by ThoughtWorks Studios. Released in May 2007, Mingle was the first commercial application to be created using JRuby.[39]
Twist is software to facilitate the process of agile testing, built by ThoughtWorks Studios.
ThoughtWorks is currently in a legal battle with SV Investment Partners (SVIP).[40] In 2000, SVIP invested approximately US$26.6 million in ThoughtWorks. SVIP invested in Thoughtworks in large part because it was attracted to the possibility of an IPO in the near term. Both parties believed that ThoughtWorks would in the next few years undertake an initial public offering that would allow SVIP to cash out its investment. To guard against the possibility that such a transaction would not occur, the parties negotiated a provision in the ThoughtWorks corporate charter for the mandatory redemption of SVIP’s preferred stock after five years. In effect, on 5 April 2005, five years from the closing date, SVIP claims they should have had a right to put (i.e., have the company redeem) all of its preferred shares for approximately US$43 million.
This case was decided in 2006. [41] The company then began a process to redeem preferred shares on a quarterly basis with what it determined to be the legally available funds for redemption. In 2007 SVIP initiated another suit to force the company to redeem all its shares at once. [42] In 2010 the Delaware court ruled in ThoughtWorks’ favor, [43] and SVIP is appealing the decision to the Delaware Supreme Court.