This May, Thoughtworks is proud to celebrate 30 years of helping their clients across the world to build the modern digital businesses of the future through the application of strategy, technology and design. Since launching in 1993, Thoughtworks is now over 12,500 people strong with 50 offices in 18 countries.

Thirty years of leadership in any industry is a remarkable accomplishment. But especially in the rapidly changing technology industry, it demonstrates a relentless, company-wide commitment to innovation and client impact.

“It’s about more than just luck for us,” said Chris Murphy, Thoughtworks’ CEO of North America. “We’ve built into our culture this ability to proactively stay ahead of the industry, by attracting, growing, and retaining the passionate, diverse technologists who want to bring that thought leadership to our industry, to our clients, and to society.”

Murphy, who’s been with Thoughtworks for almost 20 years, has seen much of this growth firsthand. Thoughtworks was an early pioneer of agile software development, and has been fundamental to multiple industry innovations including CI/CD, microservices, evolutionary architectures, infrastructure as code, lean portfolio management, and data-mesh. They have helped hundreds of businesses to use technology to build leaner, more responsive, and more adaptive organizations.

“We’re constantly asking ourselves, ‘Are we still relevant? Are we still innovating? Are we still continuing to bring unique, differentiating value to our clients?’” Murphy said. “And I’m proud to say that as long as we’re asking ourselves those questions, we’ll be able to see over the next 30 years the success we’ve seen over the last 30.”

Most recently, Thoughtworks launched its Engineering Effectiveness solution, which helps businesses empower their software engineering teams to deliver more customer value, more efficiently and more effectively.

“Since the pandemic, many organizations have invested in top-notch engineering talent but they’re seeing dwindling productivity,” Murphy said. “Now, how can they empower and retain that talent while delivering more customer value, more quickly, and with less wasted time? How can they improve the developer experience? These are just a few of the areas where Engineering Effectiveness can help.”

In Thoughtworks’ experience, some organizations utilize as little as 30% of their engineering function’s optimum capacity. Engineering Effectiveness helps developers to spend more of their time delivering value, while reducing friction and waste in their workflows. “This, to me, is really the next evolution of agile,” Murphy said. “It’s this systematic, scalable way of increasing productivity, so you can be nimble and get to market faster.”

Murphy now looks forward to the next 30 years — and beyond — of Thoughtworks industry innovation and thought leadership. As he said, “There’s no room for complacency. With the industry changing so quickly, organizations like Thoughtworks must continue to innovate and adapt.”

Of course, no one can predict exactly what the future will bring. But Thoughtworks plans to be there for it — continuing to innovate and lead technology-led business transformation.

“Thoughtworks has a 30-year history of providing a curated understanding of technological evolutions and applying them in real, practical terms to get real, practical outcomes,” Murphy said. “Our continued focus on that will give us the best opportunity to be at the forefront of embracing new technological changes as they come. And I think that’s very exciting.” Learn more about how to accelerate business-wide transformation with Engineering Effectiveness.

Digital Transformation, Innovation

While crystal ball technology is notoriously fallible, tech leaders say there are a handful of changes to IT work that we’ll likely see half a decade from now.

IT pros will work in environments that are more task-based than position-based, experts say, relying more on automation and AI, and using tools that are increasingly portable yet powerful. At the same time, automation through AI in particular will need a human touch, to review processes and results, creating a need for soft skills in the IT ranks that’s greater than ever.

Here’s a look at how IT workforces will operate and collaborate in the near-future enterprise.

Automation takes aim at IT productivity

Driven by AI advancements, IT work will increasingly be automated over the next five years, according to those on the forefront of those changes. In addition to general workplace enhancements, automation will play a vital role across IT domains, including software development, both streamlining IT processes and increasing IT productivity.

“IT leaders have led their organizations through immense workplace changes in the last three years, and it will only become more complex in five years’ time,” says Asana CIO Saket Srivastava. “Organizations are facing a shortage of resources and talent, so we need automation to be our ally to automate mundane, repetitive, and low-value tasks so that our talent can work on more impactful projects.”

Srivastava says companies will automate low-skill tasks to reduce mental load and save time. “Think about how you can implement advanced data science models to understand customer pain points and improve service,” he says.

Jim Flanagan, CIO at Hanscom Federal Credit Union, predicts natural language processing (NLP) will work in tandem with automation to improve the technology that IT staff rely on in the near future.

“NLP has the ability to discern intent, context, and ambiguity within written text and speech,” Flanagan says. “Our calendars will automatically plan our workday based on variables such as deadlines and estimated timeframes, and our inboxes will automatically group emails by priority, considering the sentiment of the sender’s message, ensuring that the most important emails get the quickest attention at our convenience. AI-driven do-not-disturb features will prevent us from getting emails when we need to focus, and this technology will help us to write email replies faster, often with minimal effort on our part.”

AI augments the value of IT work

Like many other industry experts, Mike Hendrickson, vice president of tech and dev products at Skillsoft, sees a bright future for AI in the IT workplace. But as Hendrickson sees it, IT’s AI future will be one of collaboration between IT staff and AI technologies. And as more work is handled by AI, literal people skills will be more important than ever, especially around troubleshooting automated processes.

TripActions CIO Kim Huffman agrees, saying that AI will reduce the number of repeated internal support requests that require human intervention, freeing up IT support employees for more personal interaction.

“We will see AI usage increase in software development and testing functions shifting the role of these employees” toward higher-level, personal-touch tasks, Huffman says. Mike Bechtel, chief futurist for Deloitte Consulting, cautions that adoption of AI for enhancing IT operations and employee productivity will require a new level of trust in the technology.

“An augmented workforce experience — across recruiting, productivity, learning, and more — will certainly be something to watch, as the level of trust that we will likely put in our AI colleagues may be surprising,” Bechtel says. “High confidence that AI is delivering the right analytics and insights will be paramount. To build trust, AI algorithms must be visible, auditable, and explainable, and workers must be involved in AI design and output. Organizations are realizing that competitive gains will best be achieved when there is trust in this technology.”

Moreover, increased reliance on AI for IT support and development work such as entry-level coding, as well as cloud and system administration will put pressure on IT pros to up their skills in more challenging areas, says Michael Gibbs, CEO and founder of Go Cloud Careers.

“With artificial intelligence replacing hands-on tech work, tech workers must increase their business acumen, leadership abilities, communication abilities, emotional intelligence, and architecture skills,” Gibbs says. “The world will need more people with deep architectural experience to further tie the new technologies together to maximize business performance.”

Skills-based teaming and dynamic sourcing

Speaking of skills, that emphasis on business acumen and deeper technical know-how will be coupled with a shift in which organizations in the next few years will seek flexibility by prioritizing skills over jobs, according to Deloitte research.

Deloitte’s Bechtel points to Mercedes-Benz, which he says has “organized some of its IT talent into ‘capability sets’ to improve flexibility for assigning staff to new roles or new products.” And Bechtel says the results speak for themselves: “Skills-based organizations are over 100% more likely to place talent effectively and 98% more likely to retain high performers.”

IT pros who tend to change jobs every few years may, in fact, be just what future organizations are looking for, and we may see a shift in the way the organizations think about long-term careers, he says. 

“Enterprises ahead of the curve are already crowd-sourcing talent, through gig workers or contractors, to fill gaps and free up their internal resources to focus on the most challenging and interesting work, and to the delight of those bored IT pros, we expect more organizations to take this approach,” Bechtel says.

Remote in full force

The pandemic accelerated the development of remote and hybrid teams, and that trend will only continue in the future, Bechtel says. Organizations whose IT employees who prefer working from home will also benefit by sourcing talent from all over the world.

“Given the rate of digital transformation, enterprises are demanding more from their technology teams and are sourcing talent globally,” he says. “Many technology workers have opted to stay remote, creating a more fluid workforce. In fact, 85% of IT divisions plan to be hybrid or fully remote going forward.”

Frank Opat, chief architect and vice president of architecture at Versapay, sees remote support work evolving in both scope and how the work is accomplished. 

“IT pros already know what it’s like to be on call, but with the continued rise of remote and hybrid work, geography and time zones are becoming less relevant,” Opat says. “I expect to see the continued need to adapt so that IT services are available around the clock. I’d imagine that this continued demand will see the rise of natural language process AI to handle things like tier 2 issues or frequently asked questions, much like you see in chat on websites for marketing and customer support today.”

As the impact of widely distributed organizations unfolds over the next few years, Wiley CTO Aref Matin says increasingly sophisticated ways of working remotely will improve collaboration. 

“Virtual and hybrid work is here to stay,” Matin says, “and I think that’s a great thing for technologists. In terms of culture, putting teams in a silo is the fastest way to dishearten them. In a physical workplace, this can be easy to do. I’m hoping that virtual work environments have shown leaders not only the benefit but the necessity of better connectivity between day-to-day work and business outcomes.”

Rehman sees a trend, especially among younger workers, of using mobile devices for IT work instead of being tied to a computer at work, or a desk for that matter.

“I see the next generation using phones for writing an entire doc,” he says. “I saw a kid coding on his phone the other day, not like C emulator stuff, but actual coding. Remember, languages are changing, and I see this more and more. There is a change in how tech workers use our attention span.”

And while it’s difficult to say how all these forces will impact IT salaries on the horizon, Hendrickson sees the confluence of AI and remote work freeing up additional budget for IT talent.

“The days of physical monitoring or fixing are gone. Most everything can be done remotely, and with cloud services and major providers being the future of tech infrastructure, there will be little need to go into a physical office, at least from an infrastructure point of view,” he says. “With the coupling of continued automation and the reliance on cloud technology, organizations can prioritize investments in talent, R&D, and skills and career development ahead of real estate.”

Either way, it’s going to be interesting seeing how the next five years unfold in the IT workplace.

Careers, IT Skills

It’s human nature — as well as the nature of this magnificent planet — that change is constant. But sometimes, change can be perceived as bad. We see and feel this in the form of climate change, supply chain issues, and sustainability challenges, just to name a few. But are these problems insurmountable? No. Rather, we see these as opportunities to innovate and make positive changes.

This is why I hold the annual SAP Innovation Awards very dear to my heart. This program celebrates and honors the world’s best innovators and disruptors that utilize SAP solutions to help the world run better. To see the power of SAP technology brought to life by organizations to serve different use cases is very fulfilling.

A decade of innovation

They say time flies when you’re having fun. And that’s certainly been the case with these awards. It’s hard to believe, but the SAP Innovation Awards will be celebrating its 10th anniversary in 2023 — and in style! With more categories and winners, the 2023 event will be bigger and better than ever before. Hence, more chances for you to win and share your innovation journey with the world. Winners are celebrated globally with an exclusive event at SAP Sapphire Orlando 2023, a trophy, a celebration kit, and many amplification and promotional opportunities. So, submit your story now, and don’t miss out on this great opportunity.

To honor this incredible milestone, I’d like to share some of my favorite submissions over the years.

GENYOUth fought food insecurity

GENYOUth partnered with SAP and Clockwork Inc. to launch the SAP4Kids initiative. The purpose here is to help families find food and other resources — connecting organizations offering support with the people that need them the most. With the use of SAP Extension Suite, the SAP4Kids initiative helped over 10,000 visitors to find over 36,000 feeding sites and other resources across 50 states and the District of Columbia. I can’t stress how important this initiative was as a precedent for similar projects in the future.

NTT DATA’s AI Learning Helper

There are many reasons why some children can’t attend school. But homeschooling has become the most viable alternative — despite it being very time- and energy-consuming for students, teachers, and parents. Imagine having a ‘learning friend’ that is available 24/7, anytime and anywhere. NTT Data developed the ‘AI Learning Helper’ that helps children learn to read through AI disciplines like micro expression and body language detection, emotional feedback, summarization algorithms, and Q&A generation, to name a few. This great innovation would help children’s learning processes become more efficient and fun.

XANTAS cuts medical error to save patient lives

A medical error led by incorrectly interpreted lab diagnostics results could prove to be fatal to a patient’s well-being. XANTAS uses SAP HANA technologies in hospitals as a basis for the clinical decision support system AMPEL, which detects critical conditions for physicians and nurses to ensure that patients are attended to. AMPEL has proven its effectiveness, as there was a 20% reduction in the progression of acute kidney injury and 21% more cases with timely control for severe hypokalemia. This way, more lives would be saved, as prevention is always more effective than reaction.

The future is ours to make

These are great examples of intelligent enterprises that separate themselves from the competition with never-ending innovations and great adaptations.

Who knows what the Innovation Awards for 2023 will bring? I personally look forward to seeing new and inventive solutions addressing supply chain, energy management, and inflation challenges. That is why real-time data and decisions are more relevant than ever. The potential is endless, and I’m looking forward to seeing everyone’s innovative thinking come to light at the Awards. 

So, come on and join us! Submit your innovation now, and let’s continue to make the world a better place for all.

Digital Transformation