Our history
ThoughtWorks is a social and commercial community whose purpose is to revolutionize software creation and delivery while advocating for positive social change in the world. Roy Singham, the Chairman, founded ThoughtWorks in 1993 to attract and employ the best knowledge workers - "ThoughtWorkers" - who would share some basic core values: attitude, aptitude, integrity.
Building outstanding business software is primarily a social activity achieved by teams of brilliant people, not a mechanistic process where individuals are interchangeable cogs in some master plan. Hence our hiring model focuses on finding outstanding talent, not the mastery of this or that tool. This principle has proven out a founding idea: that intellectuals can also deliver outstanding business value. And it has been borne out in ThoughtWorks' innovations that are at the foundation of our products - Mingle, Go, and Twist - as well as our contributions to development practices such as Distributed Agile.
Over the years ThoughtWorks has grown from that small group of passionate people in a factory-district office in Chicago to a company of 1800 spread across 24 offices in 10 countries: Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Germany, India, Singapore, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Our desire to grow comes from a recognition that technology connects people around the world as never before and an understanding that innovation is no longer solely in the hands of the 20th century economic powers but also very much driven by important emerging countries like Brazil, China, and India. ThoughtWorks feels it's the duty of every person and every company to be a responsible global citizen and it is committed to having a presence in these areas, as well as the usual 'western' business centers.
Our success has only increased our ambitions. To continue expanding into more countries, developing industry-changing products, and solving our customers' most difficult problems. Our growth is only constrained by our ability to find enough talented people to join.
The New Methodology
In this essay I explore the reasons for agile methods, focusing not so much on their weight but on their adaptive nature and their people-first orientation.
ThoughtWorks Studios
ThoughtWorks Studios is a global leader in Agile ALM and software development tools. Our products are used by organizations as a foundation for sustainable Agile adoption ...