Thank you for sharing your time with us in 2014. I hope that we have inspired you to think differently - about your career, about technology, or people around the world.
Our blogs are authored by Thoughtworkers and friends who wish to share their disruptive thinking. We try to improve your day in some small way, either by sharing valuable tech tips or our thoughts on innovation in the workplace, for example.
I hope we have succeeded. Please let us know how we are doing in this short survey. Your thoughts will help us as we shape our 2015 plans.
For your reading pleasure, here's a list of 2014's most viewed content by channel. Be sure to check out our Top Technology Content from 2014 for the top stories in Software Testing, Continuous Delivery and Technology.
Agile Project Management
7 Step Agenda for an Effective Retrospective by Paulo Caroli and Taina Caetano
Paulo and Taina have been cataloguing many ideas and activities for retrospectives. In this post, they share their 7-step agenda with steps and activities to help you to structure your next retrospective.
Big Data Analytics
NoSQL Databases: An Overview by Pramod Sadalage
The past five years has seen a huge disruption in the data storage and management arena. A variety of NoSQL database technologies has caused a sea change in the options CIOs have for retaining, consolidating, and managing data. These technologies are challenging the three decades long dominance of relational databases. Is it the end of the era of relational database dominance?
Career Hacks
A Good Programmer: Why You Need to Avoid Being One by Deon Thomas
Deon shares his thoughts in this tongue-in-cheek take on what makes a good programmer. Read it and let us know your thoughts on what makes a “good” programmer.
Experience Design
Lean Product Design in Practice by Natalie Hollier
Lean product design is a software development process for creating innovative new products. It enables businesses to get their product to market fast, validate it frequently with users, and continuously respond to feedback. The process, as described by Natalie, involves interweaving lightweight design and user research throughout an agile development process, rather than relying on most of the product design and research to be done up front.
Stop Jumping to Solutions and Think About the Problem by Paul Sullivan
Over and over again, Paul writes that he has seen teams get lost by not understanding the problem they are solving. And over and over again he has seen strong resistance to taking simple steps to defining the problem. This blog post urges readers to stop and first think about the problem they are trying to solve.
Inclusivity
4 Ideas to Nurture More Female Speakers by Mangalam Nandakumar
Why were there fewer women speaking at tech conferences? Is it possible that women were just less keen on speaking? Or was there something else stopping women from speaking? In this post, Mangalam writes how a group of Thoughtworkers in India decided to find out and hopefully change this outcome through mentorship.
Mobile
5 Minute Overview - What is iBeacon? by Andrew McWilliams
In this part-one of two blog posts, Andrew helps you understand what Beacons are and what they can do. Beacons are small, cheap physical devices that you can place around some location to represent the things you want to read distance from. Basically, it's a proximity system. It means that apps on your smartphone, tablet, wearable or other computing device can respond to fine-grained distance readings from 'beacons'.
Organizational Agility
5 Steps to an Innovative Organization by Jie (Jeff) Xiong
The innovation and the development process can be thought of as a funnel, which consists of the following stages: discovery of pain points => problem solving => experience sharing => generalization => promotion.
Product Strategy
How to Implement Hypothesis-Driven Development by Barry O’Reilly
We do not do projects anymore, only experiments. In this post, Barry argues that we need to change our mindset to view our proposed solution to a problem statement as a hypothesis, especially in new product or service development – the market we are targeting, how a business model will work, how code will execute and even how the customer will use it.
Progressive Change
Software by Africans for Africans by Jen Stille, Uchenna Moka, and Rolf Russell
What factors would you consider when opening a professional services office in a new country? Proximity to clients, to talent, to other similar organizations? In February 2012, Thoughtworks made the unconventional choice to open its first office in Africa in Braamfontein (Braam), a rejuvenated neighborhood in Johannesburg's city center. Read more about our presence in Africa.
Retail
Predictions for Retail 2020: A New Brick and Mortar Experience by Daniel Pallozzi
Is the physical store dead? Absolutely not. Is the physical store undergoing an incredible metamorphosis? Absolutely. Daniel writes that the future belongs to the retailers who leverage the advantages of both online and offline retail. Read his post to see what’s in store (pun intended) for retailers.
Serving the Social Sector
Why Hackathons Suck (and Don’t Have to) by Jeff Wishnie
Techies love hackathons. What could be better than getting together for an evening, or a weekend, with food, friends, maybe a beer, and using one’s magic powers to create a piece of technology that saves the world? But is this the right approach? Jeff writes that there are several problems with the typical hackathon model and offers suggestions so that hackathons can succeed in the future.
Society + Technology
Thoughtworks Withdraws Support for Weakened USA FREEDOM Act
Thoughtworks endorsed the original USA FREEDOM Act in October 2013 as a good first step towards reining in mass surveillance. However, we withdrew support in September 2014. Read more about the surrounding issues in this post.
Disclaimer: The statements and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the positions of Thoughtworks.