Thoughtworks

ThoughtWorks is a privately owned, global technology company with 40 offices in 14 countries. It provides software design and delivery, and pioneering tools and consulting services. The company is closely associated with the movement for agile software development, and has contributed to a range of open source products.

In the late 1980s Roy Singham founded Singham Business Services as a management consulting company servicing the equipment leasing industry in a Chicago basement. According to Singham, after two-to-three years, Singham started recruiting additional staff and came up with the name ThoughtWorks in 1990. The company was incorporated under the new name in 1993 and focused on building software applications. Over time, ThoughtWorks' technology shifted from C++ and Forte 4GL in the mid-1990s to include Java in the late 1990s.

Martin Fowler joined the company in 1999 and became its chief scientist in 2000. In 2001, ThoughtWorks agreed to settle a lawsuit by Microsoft for $480,000 for deploying unlicensed copies of office productivity software to employees.

Also in 2001, Fowler, Jim Highsmith, and other key software figures authored the Agile Manifesto. The company began using agile techniques while working on a leasing project. ThoughtWorks' technical expertise expanded with the .NET Framework in 2002,C# in 2004, Ruby and the Rails platform in 2006. In 2002, ThoughtWorks chief scientist Martin Fowler wrote "Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture" with contributions by ThoughtWorkers David Rice and Matthew Foemmel, as well as outside contributors Edward Hieatt, Robert Mee, and Randy Stafford.

ThoughtWorks Studios was launched as its product division in 2006. The division creates, supports and sells agile project management and software development and deployment tools including Mingle,Gauge(formerly Twist), Snap CI and GoCD. On 2 March 2007, ThoughtWorks announced Trevor Mather as the new CEO. Singham became Executive chairman. Also in March 2007, Rebecca Parsons joined ThoughtWorks as Chief Technical Officer.