Blog

Alternatives to U.S. Artificial Intelligence

Claude and GPT have transformed the way I write software, but I’m becoming increasingly uncomfortable with rising costs, vendor lock-in, and our growing dependence on a handful of U.S. providers. After exploring local models and open-weight alternatives hosted in Europe, I was surprised to discover that some lesser-known models can already handle much of my day-to-day work.

Was ECST-Events, Domain Events und ECST wirklich sind

„ECST-Event", „Domain Event", „ECST" – diese Begriffe fallen in fast jeder Diskussion über Event-Driven Architecture und Domain Driven Design. Erstaunlich oft haben in der Praxis verschiedene Leute ein unterschiedliches Verständnis davon.

Faster Is Not Better: On Experimentation Culture and What It Costs

OpenProject: A Real Alternative to Jira?

In his article “Using Jira Data Center with AI Features”, my colleague Nicolas Inden showed how to connect a self-hosted Jira instance with an AI model. One point stands out: Atlassian will only support Jira Data Center until early 2029. After that, support ends. Sales of Data Center licenses to new customers were already discontinued at the end of March 2026. So what do we do if we don’t want to return to Jira Cloud after 2029 - or want to move away from Jira right now?

The Agentic Trio

The Product Trio separated discovery from delivery because delivery required a larger team. Agentic development removes this constraint. That changes what a product team can look like.

RAG and Fine-Tuning

Stronger together

Die 1%-Methode für Code und Architektur: Modernisierung als Gewohnheit

„Wir wollen ja modernisieren, aber das Tagesgeschäft kommt immer dazwischen." Diesen Satz höre ich in Kundengesprächen jede Woche. Das Problem ist nicht der Wille, sondern die Vorstellung, dass Modernisierung ein Projekt sei. In diesem Beitrag zeige ich, warum kontinuierliche Modernisierung als tägliche Team-Gewohnheit funktioniert, wo individuelle Vorsätze scheitern und wie zehn Minuten am Tag über Monate eine Architektur entstehen lassen, die ein Big-Bang-Projekt nie hinbekäme.

Using the space, not optimizing the treadmill

Features per unit of time is not a meaningful metric. What counts is whether they satisfy a real user need and contribute to a desired outcome. Agentic development opens up the space to finally take that seriously.

The Missing Half of Your Data Strategy

Why Data Literacy Makes or Breaks Data Product Oriented Architectures

Nebu: Self-made sovereignty

There are plenty of open-source alternatives to Slack. None of them deliver real sovereignty. Community editions are deliberately pared down so no company can run them in production, while enterprise features sit behind commercial licenses. This article shows why “building it yourself” is no longer a utopian idea today, but a realistic option for anyone with a product vision and a bit of DIY courage.

Accidental Complexity in the Heart of Software

Domain-Driven Design went mainstream over the last ten years – in parallel with a wave of digitalization and modernization projects. That is not a coincidence. And it explains a lot about why so many of these projects fail to deliver what they promise.

From Vibe Coder to Agentic Engineer

How to Take Ownership of AI-Generated Code

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.

The Right Kind of Hard

More structure, more output, more exhaustion. Spec-driven development has helped me get better results from AI agents – and drained my energy in the process. About dead weight, false clarity, and hidden costs I didn’t plan for.

AI Features for Jira Data Center – No Atlassian Cloud Required

Our Digital Independence Day recipe for going off-cloud

Where AI Helps (and Hurts) Across Different Coding Scenarios

Where does LLM-assisted software development improve developer productivity—and where does it fall short? Instead of treating AI in software development as a one-dimensional productivity booster, we explore the question across several dimensions suggested by a Stanford-adjacent study: project maturity, task complexity, and the popularity of the programming language. The goal is to create a more realistic expectation baseline for both software developers and leaders—well away from today’s hype.

Spec-Driven Architecture: When Agents Build, Architecture Must Speak

Spec-Driven Development gives agents a clear foundation for implementation. What it doesn’t solve is how a portfolio of systems stays coherent. Spec-Driven Architecture applies the same principle at the architecture level, using contracts as versioned boundaries and guarantees—enforceable in agentic workflows and in the CI/CD pipeline.

REST Beats MCP

How AI agents actually benefit from hypermedia

Spec-Driven Development is Domain-Driven Design’s Impatient Cousin

Spec-driven development tools like BMAD promise to fix the requirements bottleneck that agentic development teams face. But is it actually a good fit for your organisation?

The right size of a Data Product

Setting the boundaries of data products incorrectly can lead to integration issues, unclear ownership and duplicated logic. This guide offers practical heuristics for creating data products of the right size.

Agents good in the end?

A story of unleashed productivity and mental load

Understanding AI Coding Patterns Through Cognitive Load Theory

AI coding assistants either severely harm learning or enhance it beyond manual coding—depending entirely on interaction patterns. A recent study reveals six distinct patterns with dramatically different outcomes. We’ll examine why through cognitive psychology and explore the study’s limitations.

Ein Überblick der AI-assistierten Softwareentwicklung in 2026

Birgitta Boeckeler (ThoughtWorks), Heinrich Hartmann (Zalando) und Sven Johann haben sich über den aktuellen Status der AI-assisted Software Entwicklung unterhalten: was ist wirklich Wichtiges in 2025 passiert? Welche stabilen Muster können wir ableiten? Was gibt Orientierung und Einordnung? Und natürlich ein paar Einblicke in den Future of Software Engineering Retreat in Utah an dem Birgitta teilgenommen hat. Die Unterhaltung gibt es natürlich auch als Podcast. Dieser Artikel ist aber eine menschlich kuratierte Zusammenfassung.

Features für einen schnelleren JVM-Start

Class Data Sharing, Project Leyden, CraC und mehr

Neuland reloaded

When Angela Merkel said in 2013 that the internet is ‘Neuland’ (uncharted territory) for all of us, the amusement online was considerable. Viewed from some temporal and substantive distance, one can now recognize a perspective from which she was indeed correct.