Work

Business

I help companies navigate their software modernization journey through AI-assisted architecture evolution, legacy system analysis, and strategic quality improvement. Whether you're facing complex migrations from ancient systems, need architecture enablement for your teams, or want to leverage generative AI for software modernization – I bring practical experience from consulting projects and hands-on implementations. Let's work together to evolve your systems strategically and sustainably.

Markus Harrer

Communities

Beyond client work, I contribute to the software architecture and AI communities through talks, open-source projects, and writing on software analytics, generative AI, and Wardley Maps. This page showcases my external work – articles published on other platforms, conference talks, and side projects.

Markus Harrer
External Articles
Modern Legacy (thanks to AI)
Why AI-driven modernization focusing solely on code can create technically advanced but strategically irrelevant systems, and why questioning business needs must come first.
Software Analytics going crAIzy!
How artificial intelligence enables software analytics to move beyond problem identification toward automated solutions, transforming insights into actionable code improvements.
LLM-assisted Abbreviation Mining for Legacy Systems
Using Claude 3.5 Sonnet and Python to automatically identify and expand abbreviations in a COBOL mainframe codebase to uncover its business and technical concepts.
The Evolutionist — Software Architecture Work on Existing Systems
Proposing the "evolutionist" as a specialized role for managing the evolution of legacy systems, recognizing that nearly 80% of software development involves maintaining existing systems.
Evolving software like an orchardist
Using apple tree pruning as an analogy to explain how developers can modernize complex systems by identifying valuable components and strategically removing unnecessary ones.
more on innoq.com →
Talks & Presentations
Getting to Know Your Legacy (System) with AI-Driven Software Archeology
Learn how AI and data-driven analysis help you understand legacy systems, uncover hidden patterns, and confidently modernize complex codebases.
Software Modernization with GenAI – The Good, the Bad, the Unexpected
Discover how generative AI can be meaningfully used in software modernization today, where limitations exist, and what unexpected effects emerge when working with AI.
Evolutionary Software Quality
A thinking model combining ISO 25010 and Wardley mapping to guide software architects in achieving the right quality level at each stage of system evolution.
Architecture Governance: Finding the Right Balance Between Rules and Freedom (in German)
Learn how to balance constraints and freedom in software evolution, finding the right level of architecture governance that guides developers to success without pain.
Use of Generative AI in Architecture (internal company keynote)
Exploring how generative AI impacts architecture as a discipline, process, and artifact.
more on innoq.com →
Markus Harrer
Academic Papers

Müller, Richard; Mahler, Dirk; Hunger, Michael; Nerche, Jens; Harrer, Markus (2018): Towards an Open Source Stack to Create a Unified Data Source for Software Analysis and Visualization. VISSOFT 2018.

Harrer, Markus; Brockmann, Patricia; Olivares-Ceja, Jesús-Manuel (2014): Teaching Cultural Aspects of Global Software Engineering: A Virtual Mexican-German Team-Teaching Experience. In: Georg Hagel und Jürgen Mottok (Hg.): European Conference on Software Engineering Education. Seeon Monastery. Shaker Verlag. Herzogenrath: Shaker, S. 155–165.

Harrer, Markus (2013): Erkenntnistheoretische Beurteilung von Extreme Programming. Studierendenbeitrag INFORMATIK 2013.

Lempert, Sebastian; Harrer, Markus; Krupp, Michael; Pflaum, Alexander (2010): Transparente und effiziente Prozesse im Erdbau durch ereignisgesteuertes Stoffstrommanagement auf Basis von Smart Objects und Business Rule Management. In: Klaus-Peter Fähnrich und Bogdan Franczyk (Hg.): INFORMATIK 2010. Service Science: neue Perspektiven für die Informatik. Leipzig. GI e.V. (175-176), S. 207–212.

Side Projects

Personal projects, curated resource collections, books, and academic publications that complement my professional work.

Awesome Lists

Books

Microsites

Privacy / Imprint / Contact • Icons by Microsoft Fluent Emoji (MIT License)