Rolf Russell
Head of Continuous Delivery
Tell us about your role
I’m working with Jen Stille to open and run ThoughtWorks newest office – Johannesburg. South Africa is going to be different than any other office. We have the chance to really rethink how we combine software excellence, social impact and commercial delivery, to do something atypical. And we are going to bring in folks from all over Africa to make Joburg our basecamp for work across Africa. Lots of exciting times and late nights ahead
Why did you join ThoughtWorks?
Met a bunch of sharp, bright people.
What happened in your first year here?
Worked my butt off on the biggest team I had ever seen. Learned how to write good unit tests by creating a test that wasted hundreds of hours for the team.
About me
Outside of a short (well five year) interlude as an English teacher, I have been in software for 16 years. I joined ThoughtWorks nine years ago, which really let me scratch my need to change-up work regularly. In ThoughtWorks I’ve held a diverse set of roles, such as developer, project manager, innovation facilitator and, most recently, leading the Continuous Delivery Practice.
Most of my work focuses on helping organizations become nimble and reactive in meeting their customers' needs. How do you most effectively provide for your users by combining learning and delivery into one rapid feedback loop? This has lead me, somewhat counter-intuitively, to focus on engineering practices such as build, release and test automation as well as IT organization.
Many years ago I received an MSc in Artificial Intelligence from the University of Edinburgh and a BS in Computer Science from Cornell University.