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Organization and Communication

Articles, podcasts, talks, and more about Organization and Communication.

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

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.

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.

Socio-Technical Architectures: Informality from Mining to Today

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 Architecture as a Competitive Advantage

In today’s business world, technological progress is not just about increasing efficiency—it also unlocks entirely new business opportunities that would be unthinkable without these technologies. As a result, leveraging new technologies effectively has become a key competitive advantage. However, IT decision-makers are increasingly realizing that technology alone is not enough. Instead, companies must understand themselves as socio-technical systems, where technical systems and human interactions are deeply interconnected. This article explores why socio-technical architectures matter for IT decision-makers and how they can create a competitive edge for organizations.

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

Common Approaches in the Field of Socio-Technical Architectures

In the age of digitalization and modernization, companies face the challenge of not only keeping up with technological advancements but also optimizing their organizational structures. Socio-technical architectures play a crucial role in this process by focusing on the flow of work, team collaboration, and the seamless integration of technical and social systems. This article explores two key approaches—Team Topologies and Domain-Driven Design (DDD)—and demonstrates how they can help organizations take the first steps toward consciously designing their socio-technical architecture.

Communicating organizational changes with “Team Topologies”

Whenever the need arises to set up a new team, split a team into two or move responsibilities between teams it is necessary to have a good idea of where you are and where you want to be after the change. Additionally to the current and final states you will very likely have phases with intermediate states. To help everyone involved to have a shared understanding of which phases you will transition through - and when responsibilities and communication channels have to be created or changed - a visual representation of these states can be used to paint a (literal) common picture.

Compliance in hybrid operating environments

A socio-technical view

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.

Case Study

DEVK: Standardizing Security and Compliance Across a Complex Software Landscape

Agile meets Architecture 2026: Program Announced

Agile meets Architecture 2026

Agile meets Architecture 2025

Agile meets Architecture 2023