I wrote a lot about the staggering complexity in IT, its detrimental effects, and what we can and should do about it (see, e.g., my “Simplify!” blog series. I wrote about the embedding of the complexity problem in a bigger context in my “Responsible IT” blog series). I also identified several drivers that usually increase accidental complexity, i.e., complexity in the solution which not needed to…

I think a lot about AI-assisted and AI-based coding. The first one is a human who writes code with more or less support of an AI solution. We see it all the time already now. The second one is a human leaving the coding part to a fleet of AI agents. If the human does not even look into the code created but treats it as a black box and looks at the solution only from the outside, i.e., only watches what it is doing, it is usually called vibe coding.

When a company is small and young, work is often done in a seemingly ad hoc fashion. People briefly discuss and then do what appears to be the best solution for the task at hand. As the company is small and most people in the company have a good idea what is important and what is not, this approach tends to work quite well. Sometimes, a wrong decision may be made but in general, this sort of ad hoc approach works quite well.