THOUGHTWORKS OPENS NEW OFFICE IN BRAZIL

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 20:34:12 +0000

Global Software Firm Expanding Delivery Capability in South America

CHICAGO, January 21, 2010 - ThoughtWorks, the global leader in Agile methods of software development, is proud to announce its newest office location in Porto Alegre, Brazil. The office, which opened in December 2009, marks the firm's entrance into South America and is located in the Tecnopuc Technology Innovation Park on the campus of Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul.

ThoughtWorks' Brazil office is an important part of the firm's strategic plan, which includes continued support for software excellence by expanding its global footprint into economic regions beyond its existing operations in North America, Europe, India, China and Australia.
Brazil is an important part of the firm's strategy due to the country's wealth of highly skilled information technology workers, its commitment to the advancement of emerging technologies such as dynamic languages, and its support for the advancement of Open Source software.

For ThoughtWorks' clients, the new office location offers numerous benefits such as a closer time-zone proximity to the U.S. and the opportunity to engage in one of the top ten global economies.

Craig Gorsline, managing director of ThoughtWorks U.S., says that the new office reinforces the firm's dedication to the satisfaction and success of its clients.

"Our clients operate in competitive environments. We are constantly looking for ways to meet their needs for timely and cost-effective delivery of mission critical software," said Gorsline.

"This expansion brings even greater value to our clients while maintaining the highest levels of service and quality. This is an excellent opportunity for ThoughtWorks to further our mission to continuously cultivate talent and relationships around the globe."

Roy Singham, ThoughtWorks' founder and chairman, says that expansion into Brazil is important to the firm's technology strategy as well as to its commitment to the global community.

"Brazil is positioned to emerge in the next decade as the world's fifth largest economy, in part because of its long history of supporting autonomous and indigenous technologies but also because Brazil also has many outstanding universities and numerous active software communities. The Free, Open-Source software movement is ideal for developing innovative software and Brazil will play an increasingly important part of the new global innovation network that is no longer focused solely in western countries."

The Brazilian office expands ThoughtWorks' diverse distributed development capability. ThoughtWorks' strategic plan includes targeting its services to the Brazilian market and offering its expertise to clients.

About ThoughtWorks
ThoughtWorks, Inc. is a global IT consultancy providing Agile-based systems development, consulting and transformation services to Global 1000 companies. It has pioneered many of the most advanced and successful Agile methods of software development and best practices used in the industry today. At its core, ThoughtWorks helps its clients maximize investment performance across a portfolio of complex, business-critical applications, while reducing time and risk. Its products division, ThoughtWorks Studios, offers tools to manage the entire Agile development lifecycle through its Adaptive ALM solution^TM, comprised of Mingle®, Cruise® and Twist®. ThoughtWorks employs 1,300 professionals to serve clients from offices in Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, India, the United Kingdom and the United States. For more information please visit: www.thoughtworks.com.
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THOUGHTWORKS STUDIOS NOW SHIPPING MINGLE 3.0 FOR IMPROVED COLLABORATION AND PROGRAM MANAGEMENT FOR AGILE ALM

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 20:13:44 +0000

Mingle 3.0 includes Tasktop integration, extends collaboration via
social communication and enables program management

LONDON and SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 9, 2009 - ThoughtWorks Studios (www.thoughtworks-studios.com), a global leader in Agile ALM tools and training, today announced it is shipping Mingle® 3.0, its industry leading Agile project management tool. Mingle 3.0 provides new levels of team collaboration, and extended reporting and management visibility across projects for improved program management. In addition, Mingle 3.0 is now fully integrated with Tasktop Pro (www.tasktop.com), the enterprise version of Mylyn, the most widely adopted ALM integration platform for the Eclipse IDE.

"At its core, successful software development is all about collaboration and the ability for stakeholders across the enterprise to share information and track progress in a timely and efficient manner," said Cyndi Mitchell, managing director for ThoughtWorks Studios. "In Mingle 3.0, our new Murmurs functionality offers new levels of enterprise communication that brings previously unstructured conversations into projects. Additionally, the integration of task-level activities directly into Mingle through Tasktop improves developer productivity and the accuracy of status reporting."

Mingle is the project management component of ThoughtWorks Studios' Adaptive ALM^TM solution that supports all aspects of the software development and delivery lifecycle - from requirements definition and portfolio management to test automation, quality assurance and release management. In addition to Mingle, Adaptive ALM includes Twist® (test automation) and Cruise® (release management).

Major new features in Mingle 3.0 include:

Online Team Collaboration - to help teams work more efficiently and collaboratively, ThoughtWorks Studios has designed an entirely new communications platform called "Murmurs^TM." Murmurs captures conversations that would otherwise have been lost through unstructured communications - such as IM chats, emails, etc. - and instantly associates team dialogs with Mingle project artifacts. All software development team members can share ideas, track progress in real-time, and improve intra-team and cross-team visibility and traceability. The first external integration of Murmurs uses Jabber^TM chat.
Program Management Capabilities - new program-level management features provide cross-project visibility, traceability and extended reporting capabilities. Features include a pre-built cross-project reporting macro that extends the Macro Developer Tool Kit for flexible reporting from multiple projects in real time. Managers now can easily copy cards and create links between projects to manage work among them.
Enhanced Usability and Support - additional reporting capabilities include a Macro Creator for developers. This helps simplify and automate syntax for powerful reporting within Mingle projects when creating reports and previewing charts. Other enhancements add support for software configuration management (SCM) through Subversion® 1.6.5, API updates that provide better access to information within Mingle for integration with external applications or systems, and updates to available MQL database queries. Personalization upgrades allow end-users to manage history notification subscriptions and add personal icons to a user profile page.

In addition, Mingle 3.0 provides rich client access and Eclipse development environment integration for project team members by way of Tasktop Pro. The ThoughtWorks Studios Mingle Mylyn Connector, now included in Tasktop Pro, allows Mingle users to access Mingle artifacts directly from their development environment. The connector provides cross-repository accessibility and dependency management so team members can easily relate Mingle cards to artifacts within numerous other tracking systems supported by Tasktop Pro. In addition, Tasktop's automated time-tracking solution integrates with Mingle, providing a much needed integration layer between developer tools and project management tools in the Agile ALM stack. This allows team members to accurately track actual hours on the desktop, adjust as needed, and submit them to Mingle, providing improved visibility for the entire team. Tasktop Pro also enables team members to enrich their day-to-day conversations via direct integration with the new Murmurs collaboration feature in Mingle.

"Being able to bring the new Murmurs social collaboration capability available in Mingle 3.0 directly into the Eclipse IDE will further streamline developer communication and knowledge transfer around a project or specific development task," said Mik Kersten, CEO of Tasktop Technologies and creator of the open source Eclipse Mylyn project. "We look forward to working with ThoughtWorks Studios to help teams reach a new level of collaborative development and project visibility by connecting Mingle with development activity on the desktop."

Pricing and Availability
Mingle 3.0 is available immediately directly from ThoughtWorks Studios and pricing starts at $566 per user, per year. For more information or to download a free trial please visit http://www.thoughtworks-studios.com/mingle-agile-project-management/mingle-releasing-with-murmurs. The ThoughtWorks Studios Mingle Mylyn Connector is available now and included in Tasktop Pro for $99. A free Tasktop Pro trial is available from http://tasktop.com/download. Eclipse Galileo (3.5) users also will be able to install it directly from Mylyn's Connector Discovery in Eclipse. For more information, visit http://tasktop.com/connectors/thoughtworks-studios.

About ThoughtWorks Studios
ThoughtWorks Studios is a global leader in Agile ALM tools and training. Its products and services are used by organizations as a foundation for sustainable Agile adoption, where project management, automation and engineering best practices are required. The company's Adaptive ALM solution provides a platform for managing all aspects of the software development lifecycle, from requirements definition and project management to test automation, quality assurance and release management. The three products that make up Adaptive ALM, Mingle (project management) Twist (test automation) and Cruise (release management), are available as an integrated solution or as stand-alone products. The company also provides in-depth training courses that cover all aspects of Agile ALM through its Agile Workshops series. Backed as an independent division of ThoughtWorks®, the pioneering leader in Agile development and best-practices, ThoughtWorks Studios' customers include 3M, Barclays, BBC, eBay, Honeywell, McGraw-Hill, Rackspace and Vodafone. It is headquartered in San Francisco and Bangalore, with offices in London and select cities in Europe, Asia and Australia. For more information, please visit www.thoughtworks-studios.com.

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THOUGHTWORKS OPENS NEW OFFICE IN BRAZIL

THOUGHTWORKS STUDIOS NOW SHIPPING MINGLE 3.0 FOR IMPROVED COLLABORATION AND PROGRAM MANAGEMENT FOR AGILE ALM