ThoughtWorks

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ThoughtWorks Inc.
Type Private
Founded 1993
Headquarters Chicago, USA
Key people Neville Roy Singham, Chairman
Trevor Mather, CEO
Graham Webster, CFO
Martin Fowler, Chief Scientist
Industry IT Consulting
Management Consulting
Products studios.thoughtworks.com
Employees 900 (Jul 2007)
Website www.thoughtworks.com

ThoughtWorks is a global IT consultancy which focuses on Agile software development. The company has contributed a range of open source products including CruiseControl, NUnit 2.0, Selenium.

Contents

[edit] History

Former activist[citation needed] Neville Roy Singham founded Singham Business Services in 1992 as a management consulting company servicing the equipment leasing industry. After three years of helping businesses use software, he changed the company's name to ThoughtWorks and the focus became building software. Roy describes the change as "We grew to eight people, mostly MBA types. We then realized we had to recruit some top techie weenies, because we needed people who could write coherent code."[1] ThoughtWorks's technology capabilities have evolved from its use of Forte 4GL in the mid-nineties to include Java in the late nineties, the .NET Framework in 2001, and Ruby in 2004. The services have expanded beyond software development and into areas such as the organizational transformation of business. The company prefers to use agile methodologies, and the languages Ruby, C#, and Java.

In early 2007, ThoughtWorks announced the launch of ThoughtWorks Studios, its software development division. The first product to be released by ThoughtWorks Studios is Mingle, an Agile project management application.

[edit] News

  • March 2nd 2007 : ThoughtWorks announces Trevor Mather as the new CEO.[2]

[edit] Open Source Contributions

A view of ThoughtWorks Bangalore
A view of ThoughtWorks Bangalore
  • CruiseControl [8] - Java-based framework for a continuous build process. Often considered the de facto standard for continuous integration, but now with many easy to use competitors.[3]
  • CruiseControl.NET [9] - a Continuous Integration server for the Microsoft .NET platform.
  • CruiseControl.rb [10] - CruiseControl for Ruby
  • DamageControl [11] - a Continuous Integration server for Ruby. Not actively used, more of a testing ground for technologies than a product.
  • Frankenstein [12] - Java SWING testing framework
  • NUnit - unit testing framework for all .NET languages
  • Selenium - testing tool for web applications
  • Sahi [13] - testing tool for web applications
  • JBehave - Behaviour Driven Development testing framework
  • Buildix - bootable CD with Subversion, Trac and CruiseControl
  • SharpRobo - testing tool for .NET applications

[edit] ThoughtWorks Locations

ThoughtWorks has offices in Bangalore, Beijing, Calgary, Chennai, Chicago, London, Manchester, Melbourne, New York City, Pune, San Francisco, Sydney, Toronto, and Xi'an.

[edit] Controversies

ThoughtWorks claims to be a big supporter of open source but generally does not give their consultants paid time to work on open source projects, though does allow them do so whilst not working on client projects. Sometimes, ThoughtWorks consultants will only briefly work on an open source project, such as QuickFix, though they often write almost the entire application (the original CruiseControl). With the start of ThoughtWorks Studios the company has also started producing closed source, proprietary software.

ThoughtWorks has been quick to adopt new technologies, but also removes the less popular ones from the company's history. For example, in 2004 Python was thought to be the next big innovation, and ThoughtWorks undertook a few Python projects on behalf of their clients.

ThoughtWorks is currently in a legal battle with SV Investment Partners (SVIP). [4] In 2000, SVIP invested approximately $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 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.5 In effect, on April 5, 2005 (five years from the closing date), SVIP had a right to put, or have the company redeem, all of its preferred shares for approximately $43 million.

Thoughtworks has recently announced (but not yet released) a commercial product continuous integration server called Cruise. Despite the name, this is not a derivative of the open source Cruise Control, but instead a new product written from scratch, which is due to be released under a commercial license.

[edit] Timeline

  • 1992: Singham Business Services founded
  • 1995: ThoughtWorks comes into existence in Chicago, after Singham Business Services changed its business model, goals and name.
  • 1998: ThoughtWorks begins opening international offices (starting with Brisbane, Australia)
  • 1999: Extreme Programming becomes the preferred methodology.
  • 1999: Software Watchdog Collects $480,000 for claims relating to unlicensed copies of software programs. [5]
  • 2000: ThoughtWorks receives $25 million private equity investment from Schroder Venture Partners LLC.
  • 2001: ThoughtWorks opens an office in Calgary, Canada resulting from the acquisition of Servidium Inc.[6][7][8]
  • 2002: ThoughtWorks opens an office in Bangalore, India and London, UK
  • 2005: ThoughtWorks University comes into existence
  • 2005: ThoughtWorks opens an office in Xi'an, China
  • 2005: ThoughtWorks opens an office in Toronto, Canada
  • 2006: ThoughtWorks opens an office in Beijing, China
  • 2006: ThoughtWorks opens an office in Pune, India
  • 2007: ThoughtWorks starts the product division ThoughtWorks Studios.
  • 2008: ThoughtWorks opens an office in Chennai, India

[edit] External links

[edit] References

  1. ^ [1],Chicago Sun-Times (Chicago), October 23, 2003.
  2. ^ [2], Business Wire, March 2, 2007.
  3. ^ [3], Continuous Integration Server Feature Comparison Matrix
  4. ^ http://courts.delaware.gov/opinions/(5iwbml55qliqzireoy5eoe45)/download.aspx?ID=79250 ThoughtWorks vs SCHRODER (Delaware) 2006
  5. ^ [4], Business Software Alliance
  6. ^ [5], CanadaIT.com Company Profiles
  7. ^ [6], Vencom.ca General Consulting Activities
  8. ^ [7], CanadaIT.com, "ThoughtWorks(R), Inc. To Acquire Calgary Firm Servidium(TM) Inc." September 20, 2001.