Agile Book Club interview on Refactoring

James Shore's Art of Agile Development is my favorite single-volume book on agile software development. A reason for that is its serious emphasis on the technical practices that are essential to making it work effectively. James and I discuss the role of refactoring for software development, the nature of design changes we...

4w

How I use Twitter

A couple of recent conversations about Twitter were nudging me into writing about how I use Twitter even before The Muskover developed. Twitter has become an important part of my online life, and my online life is a big part of what I do. But like any tool, Twitter can be used in many different ways, and how you use it affects...

5w

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Heian-jingu Shrine Kyoto, Japan (2004)

Apr 2022

Transitional Architecture

The core to a successful legacy displacement is the gradual replacement of legacy with new software, as this allows benefits to delivered early and circumvents the risks of a Big Bang. During displacement the legacy and new system will have to operate simultaneously allowing behavior to be split between old and new....

Mar 2022

Investing in the hiring process

Tim Cochran and Roni Smith complete their article by looking at how scaleups need to invest in the hiring process to overcome the talent bottleneck. They add a case study from our experiences with talent acquisition at Thoughtworks. more…

Mar 2022

How to get out of the talent bottleneck

Tim Cochran and Roni Smith explore how scaleups can get out of the hiring bottleneck by using technology and innovation as a hiring differentiator, hiring T-shaped and non-senior developers, and embracing remote working. more…

Mar 2022

How scaleups get constrained by talent

The second bottleneck in the series looks at talent, and how scaleups struggle to hire enough good people. Tim Cochran and Roni Smith explain how the small network and informal processes that allow early stage startups to grow begin to fail during the scaleup phase, and what signs indicate a new approach is needed. more…

Mar 2022

How to get out of the tech debt bottleneck

Tim Cochran and Carl Nygard finish their examination of the tech debt bottleneck by looking at how to get out of it. This includes close collaboration betwen product and engineering, a strategy for the four phases of a startup's journey, and empowering teams to fix the tech debt problems. more…

Mar 2022

Bottlenecks of Scaleups: How did you get tech debt?

In its early days, a startup searches for a good product-market fit. When it finds one it looks to grow rapidly, a phase known as a scaleup. At this time it's growing rapidly along many dimensions: revenues, customer, headcount. At Thoughtworks, we've worked with many such scaleups, and our work has focused on how to help...

Mar 2022

Using the Four Key Metrics to assess an infrastructure platform

Poppy Rowse and Chris Shepherd complete their article on infrastructure platforms with a warning on over-complicating a platform and a section on how to use the Four Key Metrics to assess a platform's success. more…

Feb 2022