8 years at ThoughtWorks

Friday marked eight years since working at ThoughtWorks and thought it’d be a useful exercise to reflect on it. During that time, I’ve seen the company grow and the number of opportunities grow with it as well. I was at the pub last night (one of those ThoughtWorks UK traditions) and was trying to explain my role to someone. On my business card, it’s the title of Generalising Specialist. I’m a developer most of the time and although as a Technical Leader you don’t develop 100% of the time (who does?) I still get to do a huge amount.

Reflecting on the past
I’ve had plenty of opportunities to do a lot of public speaking and was proud to be invited to speak at Øredev, QCon and this year to Goto Aarhus (formerly JAOO). I see it as a great way to share knowledge and contribute back to the development community and to continue to spread great ideas. As I always tell people there is a lot of value in being a meme-carrier and helping introduce memes into newer communities.

At the same time, I’ve worked as a trainer, facilitator and an advisor doing some short term pure consulting engagements working with CTOs and CIOs on how they run their software organisation, how they’ve architected their software systems and helping them build a roadmap to a better pace. My passion for Systems Thinking, Lean thinking and the belief of constantly being open to new approaches and ideas helps me see and explain things that others often get stuck on.

Work wise, I’ve now worked in many places. Last year I spent a significant portion of that time in Germany, Berlin to be exact. It’s not the best place to learn German, but my passion for learning drove me to self-learn enough that I can hold a conversation in a bar reasonably well. I’ve got plenty more to go before I can start writing any blog entries or immerse myself in a completely German speaking work environment but pretty happy with the progress so far. Overall I’ve worked in Australia, Canada, Denmark, Germany and the United Kingdom for my clients with travel for conferences to many more.

I continue to appreciate the different opportunities and the continuous mix of people that I get to work with. As an example, we have a project of about 15 people all representing about 12 different nationalities. We have four females on our project (2 of which are developers) and so many interesting approaches and conversations with a consistent focus on trying to do the right thing for the client. I have to always remind myself other companies or contractors do not stand for the same values and I constantly appreciate.

Thinking about the future
Although I’ve been published in a book before, my goal is to finish a book, The Retrospective Handbook some time this year. Leave a comment to let me know what you think or tell me about your interest.

I will continue to write code, although this year I plan to specifically deepen my javascript and ruby skills. I will continue applying systems thinking but deepen its application into the software realm and how it can be made more appropriate.

I plan on cutting back on the number of speaking engagements. Last year it was almost one or more every month and the variety proved rather stressful at times when trying to balance life and work.