Martin Fowler and ThoughtWorks

martinfowler.com

It still surprises me that I am Chief Scientist for ThoughtWorks. For many years I wouldn't have entertained joining an organisation, far preferring the impartiality and creativity of working independently. Then, in 1999, I started doing some consulting for ThoughtWorks. After a while I realized that I far preferred working at ThoughtWorks to working for other clients, so I accepted their offer to join.

These days I don't do too much client consulting. My passions now are continuing with my writing and in helping to encourage and develop the ThoughtWorks community. When I started with ThoughtWorks my website was just a couple of articles. Now it's grown horrendously big and includes a regular blog. I've also always got a book project (or two) on the go. These could easily be a full-time job.

Being a software author is a nice working life, with refreshingly less travel than the consulting life. It does, however, come with dangers: the one I most fear is getting out of touch with the realities of commercial software development. This is where ThoughtWorkers are so valuable. Spending time with them allows me to find out what the really important problems are and a fast track to many innovative techniques. So despite my preference to stay home I do spend a reasonable chunk of time visiting projects so I can find out what's going on.

Central to this is the knowledge that despite my position in the industry, there are plenty of people who are less well-known than me who actually know far more about software development. Some of them are looking to expand their reputation, and I've enjoyed helping them get articles into print and talks into conferences. Others have great ideas, and little inclination to publicize them. My effort there is to try and get their ideas out as accurately as I can.

ThoughtWorks is also much more to me than a software company. It's heart is a set of values both about software development and a broader social focus - which is why I often refer to it as Roy's Social Experiment. As a result some of my energy goes into trying to foster this unusual community, trying to encourage and help people to come up with ideas that tackle the unusual problems our kind of company faces.

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