Neal Ford
Live online courses, books, and videos on O’Reilly
Upcoming live online training courses
December 5, 2025
Software Architecture Characteristics: Defining, Discovering, and Protecting Architecture
Defining, Discovering, and Protecting Architecture Software systems consist of designs to both satisfy requirements and architecture characteristics, also known as non-functional requirements. Identify and preserving architecture characteristics is a key responsibility ...
December 9, 2025
Software Architecture Superstream: Enterprise Architecture in the Age of AI
What you’ll learn and how you can apply it Understand how AI is transforming the role of enterprise architects and how you can be prepared to evolve Explore how enterprise architects ...
December 10, 2025
Communication Styles for Distributed Architectures and Microservices
True success depends on knowing when to choose synchronous versus asynchronous communication between services and how to address reliability with domain and operational synchronization, transactions, and a host of other issues. ...
December 15, 2025
Software Architecture Styles
But you may not yet have been exposed to the breadth of architecture patterns, particularly if you’re early in your career as an architect. Join experts Neal Ford and Raju Gandhi ...
January 5, 2026
Architecture for Modern Engineering Practices
Continuous delivery—a process for automating the production readiness of your application every time a change occurs to code, infrastructure, or configuration—enables you to better address these shifts head-on. Neal Ford leads ...
January 7, 2026
Software architecture by example
While you can learn a great deal about practices, patterns, coupling, cohesion, and all the other facets of software architecture, you don’t really understand them until you put them in practice. ...
January 26 & 27, 2026
Architecture as Code
Architects are expected to not only design new systems but also continuously govern what they’ve already built and ensure that their architecture is aligned with the technical and business environment. Join ...
March 5, 2026
Software Architecture Superstream: Software Architecture and the Age of Agentic AI
It isn’t just about adding a new component to your tech stack; it’s about rethinking the entire system. Your host, Neal Ford, leads an examination into how this shift from static ...
Books
Bio
Neal is Director, Software Architect, and Meme Wrangler at ThoughtWorks, a global IT consultancy with an exclusive focus on end-to-end software development and delivery. Before joining ThoughtWorks, Neal was the Chief Technology Officer at The DSW Group, Ltd., a nationally recognized training and development firm.
Neal has a degree in Computer Science from Georgia State University specializing in languages and compilers and a minor in mathematics specializing in statistical analysis. He is also the designer and developer of applications, instructional materials, magazine articles, and video presentations. He is also the author of 6 books, including the most recent Presentation Patterns and Functional Thinking. Given his degree, Neal is a bit of a language geek, with affections including but not limited to Ruby, Clojure, Java, Groovy, JavaScript, Scala and C#/.NET. His primary consulting focus is the design and construction of large-scale enterprise applications. Neal is an internationally acclaimed speaker, having spoken at over 300 developer conferences worldwide, delivering more than 2000 presentations. If you have an insatiable curiosity about Neal, visit his web site at nealford.com. He welcomes feedback and can be reached at nford@thoughtworks.com.