We research and develop ways to make systems explainable
We believe software explainability is of paramount importance and can be achieved through systematic means and dedicated tools.
Moldable Development
We invented Moldable Development, a way of programming through contextual tools built for each problem. This approach can involve thousands of tools... per system. These tools compress the system and help us learn about the system much faster than by reading the sources.
This then introduces a new feedback loop that leads to new opportunities for creating value through software engineering.
Watch Tudor Girba and Simon Wardley chat about Moldable Development
Read the Rewilding Software Engineering book
A book written in the open by Tudor Girba and Simon Wardley
Chapter 1: Introduction
Why there is a need to rethink software engineering, and what rewilding means in this context.
Chapter 2: How we make decisions
Why software engineering should be regarded primarily as a decision making activity, and how doing paves the way to making systems explaianble.
Shows a case study of how recovering a data lineage helped modernize a legacy system.
Chapter 3: Questions and answers
The role of questions and answers. Introduces time to answer (ttA) and time to question (ttQ). Shows how decreasing them leads to better decisions.
Chapter 4: Flexing those thinking musles
The importance of both defined and dynamic explorations. Explained through a couple of distinct case studies.
Chapter 5: Different folks for different strokes
The inside of systems can be made explainable to non-technical people, too. And once systems become explainable, to vibe or not to vibe code is not the only choice.
Chapter 6: To come soon
Selected publications
Moldable Development Patterns, Oscar Nierstrasz, Tudor Girba — EuroPlop 2024
Moldable Exceptions, Andrei Chis, Tudor Girba, Oscar Nierstrasz — Onward! 2024
Example-driven development: bridging tests and documentation, Oscar Nierstrasz, Andrei Chiş, Tudor Girba — Live 2024
Moldable Development: Guiding Technical Decisions without Reading Code, Tudor Girba — InfoQ, 2022
Glamorous Toolkit
We develop Glamorous Toolkit, an extensive open-source environment that documents Moldable Development and makes it practical. It empowers developers to make systems explainable through thousands of contextual tools.
We actively use the environment for all our projects and we evolve it to capture what we learn.
Watch Tudor Girba's demoing how Glamorous Toolkit enables Moldable Development.
Wardley Maps
Situational awareness and achieving consensus are crucial components of any business assessment. This is why we are passionate advocates of Wardley Maps, a powerful method for visualizing business landscapes and facilitating executive consensus on strategic decisions. We continually enhance our mapping capabilities within Glamorous Toolkit to incorporate various abilities such as AI-generated and analyzed Wardley Maps, comparisons across multiple maps, or integration of Wardley Maps with other data-driven analyses and narratives.
We actively use Wardley Maps on our projects in collaboration with the leading authority in the space - Simon Wardley himself.
Watch a demo of analyzing multiple Wardley Maps.