We research and develop ways to
make systems explainable
We believe that software explainability is paramount and that it 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 it much faster than by reading the source code.
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 so paves the way for making systems explainable.
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 muscles
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: Myths we tell ourselves
Software is a domain of invisible knowledge work. It’s hard to see progress, quality or risks in the way that you can with building bridges. As a result myths flourish.
Chapter 7: Coming soon
Wardley Map about how Moldable Development enables hypothesis-driven decisions
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 makes Moldable Development 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 demo how Glamorous Toolkit enables Moldable Development.
Wardley Maps
Situational awareness and achieving consensus are crucial to any business assessment. That 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 in Glamorous Toolkit with abilities such as AI-generated and AI-analyzed Wardley Maps, comparisons across multiple maps, and integration with other data-driven narratives.
We actively use Wardley Maps in our projects in collaboration with Simon Wardley himself.
Watch a demo of analyzing multiple Wardley Maps.