Back in 1994, Peter Deutsch and his colleagues at Sun Microsystems identified what they described as the "eight fallacies of distributed computing" — flawed assumptions that often get made when teams move from monolithic to distributed software architectures. In recent years, software architecture experts and regular writing partners Neal Ford and Mark Richards have identified a further three new fallacies of distributed computing: versioning is easy ; compensating updates always work ; and observability is optional . In this episode of the Technology Podcast, Neal and Mark join host Prem Chandrasekaran to talk through these three new fallacies, before digging deeper into other important issues in software architecture, including modular monoliths and governing architectural characteristics. Listen for a fresh perspective on software architecture and to explore key ideas shaping the discipline in 2025. Learn more about the second edition of Neal and Mark's Fundamentals of Software Architecture : https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/fundamentals-of-software/9781098175504/…

What if your AI agents could think more like IT operations staff — and less like tools? In this episode, we catch up with Zichuan Xiong, to explore the Model Context Protocol (MCP) — a powerful new way to give AI agents deeper awareness of the tools, information and history they need to work effectively in the operations space. Unlike traditional APIs that just trigger functions, MCP adds a semantic layer of context that helps AI understand what to do, why it matters and how to do it better. Whether you’re deep in site reliability engineering (SRE) or just curious about the next leap in AIOps, this episode unpacks how MCP could be the missing layer between today’s tools and tomorrow’s autonomous systems. If you want to find out more, check out this piece by Zichuan at al, https://www.thoughtworks.com/insights/blog/machine-learning-and-ai/mcp-critical-ai-driven-sre…

Google I/O 2025 took place in May. It's always a great opportunity to find out how Google is trying to shape the industry agenda, but this year the predominance of Gemini meant the event was a chance to get a better look at how Google will play its hand in the AI market in the months to come. To dissect the headlines from this year's Google I/O and explore what we can learn about Google's strategic focus — and how the company is thinking about AI — host Ken Mugrage is joined by Andy Yates on the Technology Podcast. As Head of Ecosystems Development at Thoughtworks, Andy plays an important role in helping the organization and its clients undertstand, analyze and engage with the major platforms and vendors. This edition of Google I/O, he explains, was significant and particularly useful for helping us understand how the world is going to be consuming AI products and services as the technology becomes more and more embedded in the mainstream. Read more of Andy's perspective on Google I/O 2025 on the Thoughtworks blog: https://www.thoughtworks.com/insights/blog/technology-strategy/google-io-2025-key-takeaways…

Mainframe modernization is hard : there's a huge amount of complexity that needs to be understood before it can be effectively addressed. Generative AI, however, can be a particularly powerful tool for understanding mainframe legacy codebases, something we've been exploring with Mechanical Orchard while working together on its Imogen modernization platform. In this episode of the Technology Podcast, hosts Ken Mugrage and Alexey Boas are joined by Thoughtworks CTO Rachel Laycock and Mechanical Orchard CEO and Founder Rob Mee to discuss the partnership between the two organizations. They discuss how the collaboration began, the challenges of leveraging generative AI tools for such risky projects and what the wider implications are for AI in software engineering. Listen for a fresh perspective on both legacy modernization and generative AI. Learn more about Thoughtworks' partnership with Mechanical Orchard: https://www.thoughtworks.com/about-us/partnerships/technology/mechanical-orchard Read more about our work on mainframe modernization: https://www.thoughtworks.com/insights/blog/rewriting-the-outcomes--how-thoughtworks-and-mechanical-orchard-…

You might think you know software engineering, but what are the really fundamental elements? What are the concepts, ideas and practices that are completely essential? What makes software engineering what it is? Thoughtworker Nate Schutta and Dan Vega are attempting to address those questions in their upcoming book with O'Reilly, The Fundamentals of Software Engineering. Covering topics ranging from reading code through to the importance of learning to learn, it promises to offer a fresh insight into the skills and knowledge needed to be a successful software engineer. In this episode of the Thoughtworks Technology Podcast, Nate and Dan join hosts Neal Ford and Ken Mugrage to discuss the book and to dive into what really are the fundamental elements of software engineering. Listen for a fresh perspective on the discipline and a deep dive that shows it's about far more than just writing code. Learn more about The Fundamentals of Software Engineering : https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/fundamentals-of-software/9781098143220/…

Thoughtworks Technology Radar Vol.32 was published at the start of April 2025. Featuring 105 blips, it offered a timely snapshot of what's interesting and important in the industry. Through the process of putting it together, we also identify a collection of key themes that speak to the things that shaped our conversations. This time, there were four: supervised agents in coding assistants, evolving observability, the R in RAG and taming the data frontier. We think they point to some of the key challenges and issues that industry as a whole is currently grappling with. To dig deeper and explore what they tell us about software in 2025, regular host Neal Ford takes the guest seat alongside Birgitta Böckeler to talk to Lilly Ryan and Prem Chandrasekaran. They explain how the themes are identified and discuss their wider implications. Read the latest volume of the Thoughtworks Technology Radar: https://www.thoughtworks.com/radar…

The term 'vibe coding' — which first appeared in a post on X by Andrej Karpathy in early February 2025 — has set the software development world abuzz: everyone seems to have their own take on what it is, how it's done and whether it's a bold new chapter in the history of programming or an insult to anyone that's ever written a line of code. Clearly, then, we need to talk about vibe coding — and that's precisely what we do on this episode of the Technology Podcast. Featuring Thoughtworkers Birgitta Böckeler (AI for Software Delivery Lead) and Lilly Ryan (Cybersecurity Principal), who join hosts Neal Ford and Prem Chandrasekaran, we dive into the different understandings and applications of the concept, and discuss what happens when a meme collides with reality.…

Nearly ten years after the first edition of Infrastructure as Code was published by O'Reilly, Kief Morris is publishing a third edition of the book. But why a new edition now? What's changed in technology and business over the last decade? Quite a lot, as it happens. To talk about what's new — both in the infrastructure world and in the book itself — Kief Morris joins host Ken Mugrage on the Technology Podcast. They discuss each edition and what's new in this one, and dive into the infrastructure challenges and issues that need to be tackled in 2025, from tooling and deployment to maintenance and infrastructure evolution. Learn more about Infrastructure as Code, Third Edition: https://www.thoughtworks.com/en-gb/insights/books/infrastructure-as-code-3rd-ed…

AI is inherently dynamic: that's true in terms of the field itself, and at a much lower level too — models are trained on new data and algorithms adapt and change to new circumstances and information. That's part of its power and what makes it so exciting, but from a business and organizational perspective, that can make governance and measurement exceptionally difficult. How can we know that our AI is optimized for the right thing? How can we be sure it's oriented towards what we want it to be? This is where the concept of fitness functions can help. Broadly speaking, fitness functions are ways of measuring the extent to which a given solution is fulfilling its goals — so, in the context of AI, they can help teams ensure that AI systems are serving their intended purpose. In this episode of the Technology Podcast, Rebecca Parsons and Neal Ford — authors (alongside Pat Kua and Pramod Sadalage) of Building Evolutionary Architectures, the book which brought fitness functions into the software architecture space — join host Ken Mugrage to explore how the fitness function concept can help us better manage the dynamism of AI and, in doing so, overcome the challenge of bringing such systems into production. Learn more about Building Evolutionary Architectures: https://www.thoughtworks.com/insights/books/building-evolutionaryarchitectures-second-edition…

How can we better define and clarify architectures to ensure consistency and control? If, as Neal Ford and Mark Richards discussed on a recent episode of the Technology Podcast , software architecture intersects with many different facets of software development and delivery, what can we do to better manage architectures in a way that is adaptable and dynamic? Neal and Mark return to the guest seats to speak again to host Prem Chandrasekaran about fitness functions and architecture as code, and explain why rethinking our approach to software architecture can help ensure greater alignment with organizational needs and objectives.…

The release of DeepSeek's AI models at the end of January 2025 sent shockwaves around the world. The weeks that followed have been rife with hype and rumor, ranging from suggestions that DeepSeek has completely upended the tech industry to claims the efficiency gains ostensibly unlocked by DeepSeek are exagerrated. So, what's the reality? And what does it all really mean for the tech industry? In this episode of the Technology Podcast, two of Thoughtworks' AI leaders — Prasanna Pendse (Global Director of AI Strategy) and Shayan Mohanty (Head of AI Research) — join hosts Prem Chandrasekaran and Ken Mugrage to provide a much-needed clear and sober perspective on DeepSeek. They dig into some of the technical details and discuss how the DeepSeek team was able to optimize the limited hardware at their disposal, and think through what the implications might be for the industry in the months to come. Read Prasanna's take on DeepSeek on the Thoughtworks blog: https://www.thoughtworks.com/insights/blog/generative-ai/demystifying-deepseek…

Generative AI's popularity has led to a renewed interest in quality assurance — perhaps unsurprising given the inherent unpredictability of the technology. This is why, over the last year, the field has seen a number of techniques and approaches emerge, including evals, benchmarking and guardrails. While these terms all refer to different things, grouped together they all aim to improve the reliability and accuracy of generative AI. To discuss these techniques and the renewed enthusiasm for testing across the industry, host Lilly Ryan is joined by Shayan Mohanty, Head of AI Research at Thoughtworks, and John Singleton, Program Manager for Thoughtworks' AI Lab. They discuss the differences between evals, benchmarking and testing and explore both what they mean for businesses venturing into generative AI and how they can be implemented effectively. Learn more about evals, benchmarks and testing in this blog post by Shayan and John (written with Parag Mahajani): https://www.thoughtworks.com/insights/blog/generative-ai/LLM-benchmarks,-evals,-and-tests…

Software architecture necessarily intersects with a diverse range of critical things, including implementation, infrastructure, data and engineering practices. All these elements require serious consideration and reflection if you're to architect effectively. To discuss these various intersections, Thoughtworks' Neal Ford and his long-time collaborator Mark Richards join host Prem Chandrasekaran on the Thoughtworks Technology Podcast. They dive into why these intersections matter, what they mean for software architects and how individuals and teams can go about addressing them.…

Who should be involved in the process of making decisions about software architecture? That's a question that's been puzzling Thoughtworker Andrew Harmel-Law for some time — so much so that he decided to write a book about it. The result is Facilitating Software Architecture . Published by O'Reilly in December 2024, it's both an argument for and a guide to involving more people in the architecture decision process. To discuss the topic and the book, Andrew joined hosts Neal Ford and Prem Chandrasekaran on the Technology Podcast. They explore why including more roles in software architecture matters today, some of the common objections to and risks of such an approach, alongside techniques and practices that can make doing it in fast-paced and dynamic organizations easier. "It's quite magical when you see this blossoming of understanding of what it is that architects do... It's not less architecture, it's more. It's just happening in a broader sphere." — Andrew Harmel-Law You can find Andrew's book on the O'Reilly website: https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/facilitating-software-architecture/9781098151850/…

With the rise of generative AI, the concept of the uncanny valley — where human resemblance unsettles, disturbs or disgusts — is more relevant than ever. But is it a problem that technologists need to tackle? Or does it offer an opportunity for greater thoughtfulness about the ways generative AI is being built, deployed and used? In this episode of the Technology Podcast, host Lilly Ryan is joined by Srinivasan Raguraman to discuss generative AI's uncanny valley and explore how it might offer a model for thinking through our expectations about generative AI outputs and effects. Taking in everything from the experiences of end users to the mental models engineers bring to AI development, listen for a wide-ranging dive into the implications of the uncanny valley in our experience of generative AI today. Read Srinivasan's recent article (written with Ken Mugrage): https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/10/24/1106110/reckoning-with-generative-ais-uncanny-valley/…