Blog

The Shifted Complexity: From Waterfall through Agile to AI

Software projects have always been complex, but that complexity has kept shifting: from project management to the team, from the team to the individual developers. AI is accelerating this shift dramatically. Looking through the Cynefin lens reveals a pattern that keeps repeating itself and is currently escalating. The consequence: a massive increase in mental load for developers and the question of how we want to deal with this going forward.

The Data Dilemma, Part 1

When AI agents fail in a company, it is rarely the model’s fault. The real problem is the data: semantics, quality, and context are written down nowhere, they live in the heads of the domain experts. Data Mesh addresses exactly this problem, but it organizationally overwhelms many mid-sized companies. This first part describes why that is and derives a Minimum Viable Data Mesh from it. The second part shows the implementation in four layers.

The Agentic Trio

Hail Mary: Why domain knowledge cannot be extracted from experts

AI agents promise to replace weeks of requirements workshops with hours of structured interviews. The pitch is compelling. The cognitive science is not.

AI Features for Jira Data Center – No Atlassian Cloud Required

Imagine this: after every customer meeting, structured Jira issues are created automatically. You just paste your notes into an AI, and it does the rest. Atlassian already offers that kind of magic in Jira Cloud: natural-language search, automatic summaries, and issue creation from unstructured text. But not everyone wants to move to the cloud, and many teams plan to keep using Jira Data Center through 2029. In this article, we show how to get many of the same benefits on-premises with Jira Server and your own AI stack: GDPR-compliant, resilient to Cloud Act exposure, and without data leaving your environment.

Neuland reloaded

AI and Elaboration: Which Coding Patterns Build Understanding?

AI tools let you complete coding tasks without connecting new information to your existing mental models—a cognitive process known as elaboration that is crucial for building understanding. But some AI interaction patterns preserve this elaboration while others bypass it entirely. Let’s explore what elaboration is, why it helps with learning, and how we can use AI tools in a way that helps with this process rather than circumventing it.

Speed vs. Skill

Every AI coding tool promises the same thing: unprecedented speed, effortless productivity, freedom from tedious work. The pitch is compelling. But what if feeling more productive and being more capable aren’t the same thing? Research shows that automation makes us feel more productive while eroding our skills. Let’s examine this tension through the lens of cognitive psychology.

A Governance Framework for Digital Sovereignty

Think Locally: On-Premise LLMs as Drivers of Competitive Advantage

Consider this scenario: Your organisation has integrated AI tools into critical business processes, your legal team has carefully reviewed data processing agreements, and your IT department has configured systems to comply with GDPR requirements. Then, a foreign court issues an order that overrides all these protections, requiring your AI provider to indefinitely retain data that should be deleted—including potentially sensitive corporate information shared by your employees.

Digital Sovereignty as Self-Understanding

How implementation teams can escape the we-are-not-Google trap and collectively take responsibility for European solutions to European problems.

Common Approaches in the Field of Socio-Technical Architectures

Enabling Stakeholders as a Success Factor

Sociotechnical architectures consider both technical and human-organizational aspects and promote their effective collaboration. To ensure the successful design and implementation of these systems, it is crucial to actively involve stakeholders and address their interests. In this article, we explore why enabling stakeholders represents a key function in sociotechnical projects and how you can implement this approach effectively.

Socio-Technical Architectures: Informality from Mining to Today

Informal structures are hard to spot – but they can make or break a technical solution. Sociotechnical systems show why that matters, and what mining has to do with building apps.

Socio-Technical Architecture as a Competitive Advantage

Platforms, Teams, and APIs: How Do They Fit Together?

One of the major trends in recent years has been Platform Engineering, as many organizations strive for more efficient and fasterdevelopment practices. The term has gained traction since 2018, particularly following an influential article by Evan Bottcher. Looking at the origins of this concept provides valuable insights into the relevance of Platform Engineering today and its potential future developments.

Compliance in hybrid operating environments

Compliance is a key element of corporate governance. It helps ensure that developed software upholds the necessary legal conformity and quality. It is also an unavoidable criterion for modernizing a system landscape, which often goes hand in hand with migration to the cloud.

Communicating organizational changes with “Team Topologies”

Does BI Software Make Sense for Development Teams?

Time is a valuable asset, and it is easily consumed by the analysis and preparation of data. In other words, there may be good reason to come to grips with BI software.

Why Your Team Needs Data Products

Have you ever had the feeling that you or your team spends too much time on individual data research tasks or makes too many decisions based on your gut? Then it might be time for your team to start engaging with data products.

How to prepare a (not only technical) talk

Happy without a Service Mesh

It does not always have to be a service mesh. Even microservices are not a good idea per se. For good decisions we have to get a deep understanding of the problem first.

Integral Evolutionary Organizations

Most companies face the major challenge to get as many employees as possible actively involved, that they do not only do service as a small cog in the big gear, but that they contribute actively, creatively with their various skills and abilities. In his book Reinventing Organizations [1] Frederic Laloux presents integral evolutionary forms of organization as a solution. This text presents the core ideas supported also by other sources.