ThoughtWorks

1980s to 1990s

In the late 1980s Roy Singham founded Singham Business Services as a management consulting company servicing the equipment leasing industry in a Chicago basement. According to Singham, after two-to-three years, Singham started recruiting additional staff and came up with the name ThoughtWorks in 1990. The company was incorporated under the new name in 1993 and focused on building software applications. Over time, ThoughtWorks' technology shifted from C++ and Forte 4GL in the mid-1990s to include Java in the late 1990s.

1990s to 2010s

Martin Fowler joined the company in 1999 and became its chief scientist in 2000. In 2001, ThoughtWorks agreed to settle a lawsuit by Microsoft for $480,000 for deploying unlicensed copies of office productivity software to employees.

Also in 2001, Fowler, Jim Highsmith, and other key software figures authored the Agile Manifesto. The company began using agile techniques while working on a leasing project. ThoughtWorks’ technical expertise expanded with the .NET Framework in 2002, C# in 2004, Ruby and the Rails platform in 2006. In 2002, ThoughtWorks chief scientist Martin Fowler wrote "Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture" with contributions by ThoughtWorkers David Rice and Matthew Foemmel, as well as outside contributors Edward Hieatt, Robert Mee, and Randy Stafford.

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, Gauge(formerly Twist), Snap CI and GoCD. On 2 March 2007, ThoughtWorks announced Trevor Mather as the new CEO. Singham became Executive Chairman. Also in March 2007, Rebecca Parsons joined ThoughtWorks as Chief Technical Officer.

2010s to present

In 2010, Jim Highsmith joined ThoughtWorks. Also in 2010, CTO Parsons was named as one of Fast Company's "Most Influential Women in Technology". At the start of 2012, ThoughtWorks moved its 40-person sales team on straight salaries instead of commission. In early 2012, Aaron Swartz joined the company. In May 2012, Ken Collier joined the company.

In April 2013, ThoughtWorks announced a new collective leadership structure and appointed four co-Presidents of the global organization. The appointments followed the announcement that the then current CEO, Trevor Mather, was leaving ThoughtWorks to take up the role of CEO for the used car sales business Trader Media Group.

In May 2013, Dr. David Walton was hired as Director of Global Health to "lead its practice in serving the technology needs of healthcare institutions in resource-poor environments." Walton has done work in Haiti since 1999, including helping establish a 300-room, solar-powered hospital and the establishment of a noncommunicable disease clinic. In 2015, Guo Xiao, who started as a developer in ThoughtWorks China in 1999, became the Chief Executive Officer and President. Also in 2015, Chinese marketing data company AdMaster acquired Chinese online form automation platform JinShuJu from ThoughtWorks.

In early 2016, ThoughtWorks closed their Toronto offices, the last remaining Canadian office after the closure of their Calgary offices in 2013.

ThoughtWorks has more than 4000 employees, working from 36 offices in 14 countries.

Corporate philosophy

ThoughtWorks has a tri-pillar system of corporate beliefs, inspired by Ben & Jerry's model. These beliefs, referred to as the "3 Pillars" include (1) Sustainable Business (2) Software Excellence and (3) Social Justice.

Social justice work

ThoughtWorks launched its Social Impact Program in 2009. This program provided pro-bono or other developmental help for non-profits and organizations with socially-driven missions. Clients included Democracy Now! (mobile content delivery site), Human Network International (mobile data collection), and the Institute for Reproductive Health (SMS-based fertility planner). In 2010, ThoughtWorks provided software engineering services for Grameen Foundation’s Mifos platform. In 2012, the company paired with the GSMA Development Fund to launch an online knowledge-sharing platform designed to help underprivileged populations globally. Since 2013, ThoughtWorks has devoted full-time work to Bahmni, an open-source software for hospital systems in low-resource settings in South Asia. In 2015, ThoughtWorks coordinated with activists for Hands Up United to provide technical training, and its many offices support organizations like Black Girls Code, Systers, MotherCoders, and other organizations that help historically excluded groups to gain technology learning.

On June 1, 2015 ThoughtWorks and the Media Development Foundation (MDF) at the Asian College of Journalism, Chennai (ACJ) announced the institution of the ThoughtWorks Chair Professor of Rural India and Digital Knowledge. The Chair, first of its kind exclusively dedicated to journalism across all of rural India. Veteran Indian journalist, former Rural Affairs Editor of The Hindu and founder of People's Archive of Rural India, Palagummi Sainath became the first ThoughtWorks Chair Professor in Rural India and Digital Knowledge at the Asian College of Journalism.

Hiring and diversity

ThoughtWorks has been known for its rigorous interviewing and hiring processes. Between 2010 and 2015, ThoughtWorks increased its percentage of women in tech roles from 17% to 32%. ThoughtWorks has increased its percentage of females in tech roles by hiring developers who have degrees outside of computer science and ensuring female candidates are interviewed by females. As of 2015, 8% of the company's employees identified as black and 3% as Hispanic. In Australia, ThoughtWorks practices quota hiring (requiring one female hired for every male) and conducts pay reviews to ensure female employees receive equal pay and status. On October, 2016, the company won the Top Companies for Women Technologists program by The Anita Borg Institute, for having rates of 59.6/46.2/30/23.8% for Entry, Mid, Senior and Executive positions respectively.

Agile adoption and leadership

ThoughtWorks has long been a vocal advocate of Agile and Lean principles and practices, speaking often on the topic at conferences and creating Agile self-assessment tests. Part of ThoughtWorks' client services includes helping large enterprises like GE move to Agile. The company employs well-known signatories of the Agile manifesto--Martin Fowler and Jim Highsmith—and uses Agile in client projects. Rebecca Parsons, CTO of the company, has served as the Director of the Agile Alliance.

Books by ThoughtWorkers

An abbreviated list of books written by ThoughtWorks employees

Continuous integration and continuous delivery

ThoughtWorks created the first known Continuous Integration server, Cruise, in 2001. This Java-based tool was later open-sourced and renamed CruiseControl. Around 2005 ThoughtWorker Jez Humble, working with Chris Read, Dan North, and several other people, encountered problems with deployment for a large client in London. The group's insights about better deployment practices were summarized in a co-authored paper—"The Deployment Production Line"—presented at the Agile 2006 conference. The paper contained one of the first depictions of the modern-day deployment pipeline. Around 2007, after finding CruiseControl limiting, Humble worked alongside a ThoughtWorks team in Beijing to create the tool that later became Go (now styled GoCD). In 2010, Humble and ex-ThoughtWorker Dave Farley published the first book on continuous delivery. The book was based on ThoughtWorkers' experiences with client deployments. The book outlined key principles in continuous delivery, such as frequent releases and trunk-based development. Since then, ThoughtWorks has advocated for continuous delivery through its evangelists, speakers, blog posts, and in client projects such as one at The New York Times and another at the UK Guardian.

Software and services

The company’s primary service is the creation of custom software applications for corporate clients. Projects for North American, European or Australian clients are often delivered from India, China, Brazil or Ecuador. The firm also provides consulting services related to software development, design, architecture, operations and IT transformation among others.

Proprietary software

ThoughtWorks' products division was launched in 2006. The department creates, supports and sells products for agile project management, software development, test automation, and continuous delivery and deployment. In 2012, Chad Wathington and David Rice were announced as co-Managing Directors of the products division. In 2016, Wathington left to join ThoughtWorks' global leadership team. Rice is currently sole Managing Director.

Open source software and contributions

Aside from the above products, ThoughtWorks employees regularly work on open source software and create smaller open source products. Open source products and contributions include EBDeployer, an AWS Elastic Beanstalk blue-green deployment automation tool; CSS Critic, a lightweight framework for regression testing CSSs; SandForms, an open-source survey/forms application; coyIM, an instant messaging desktop app for XMPP protocol.