Revolutionizing Legacy Systems: AI's Role in Tackling Technical Debt

 

Insights from WeAreDevelopers World Congress 2025, Berlin

Yesterday at the WeAreDevelopers World Congress in Berlin (thanks Julia Kordick), I attended a fascinating session on AI-powered COBOL migration. As a management consultant working with public sector clients, this resonated deeply with our ongoing challenges in legacy system modernization.


The Technical Debt Crisis

Technical debt in public administrations and large organizations has reached critical levels. Like compound interest on a loan, postponed modernization efforts are making systems increasingly expensive and risky to maintain.


AI as the Game-Changer

Let me share two concrete examples of how AI is revolutionizing legacy system modernization:


Example 1: Tax Processing System

Traditional Migration:

20 developers × 18 months = 360 person-months

Cost: ~$5.4M (at $15K/month)

Quality: 85% code coverage

AI-Assisted Migration:

8 developers × 6 months = 48 person-months

Cost: ~$720K

Quality: 95% code coverage

Productivity Gain: 7.5x improvement ($5.4M/$720K)


Example 2: Healthcare Claims Processing

Traditional Approach:

Processing speed: 100 claims/hour

Error rate: 5%

Migration time: 24 months

AI-Modernized System:

Processing speed: 1000 claims/hour

Error rate: 0.5%

Migration time: 8 months

Productivity Gain: 10x improvement in processing speed, 10x reduction in errors


Here's a code snippet to create a visualization of technical debt accumulation over time:


Conclusion

The productivity gains from AI-assisted modernization are not just theoretical - they're being realized today. Organizations that embrace this transformation will gain significant competitive advantages, while those that delay risk falling further behind.

This technological shift represents one of the most significant opportunities for organizational transformation in the coming decade.


[This blog post was written based on observations at WeAreDevelopers World Congress 2025 in Berlin]









Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Some funny memories - from a previous millennium

Image
Ah, the passing of time—the ultimate thief in the night! If human memory were a goldfish, we'd be swimming in a bowl of forgetfulness. Honestly, who among us can recall the intricacies of every project or the names of all the people we’ve collaborated with? It’s a wonder we manage to remember our own birthdays, let alone the details of a career that’s spanned decades! And let’s be real, the irony of a curriculum vitae—that glossy snapshot of one's professional prowess— fizzling out to little more than a dry list of job titles is a missed opportunity of epic proportions.  So, dare we dive into the vault of memories? Picture it: 1996, when my youthful self-walked through the hallowed halls of SAP, ready to tackle whatever techno-terrors lay ahead. I was the go-to guru of network and Microsoft wizardry, tasked with ensuring those clunky Windows NT 4.0 servers didn’t turn into blue-screen holes of despair. Remember the glorious chaos of Windows 95? The struggles were real, ...
Read more

OMG!!! Nearly a year...

It can't be possible!! Nearly 9 months without a word, no picture, no comment, no tweet...how can that be? Well, this illustrates probably how busy we are in our sector, advising one client and then another, organizing meetings, calls, workshops and realizing that nine months have passed. During all those weeks, I have been working on two specific Belgian public sectors assignments (one in Brussels, the other in Wallonia), tackling their technical debt issue. The story is quite complicated, as both entities have been running quite old back office solutions. The modernization pathways is not simple and implies a strong architecture work...but we will get there 😆!! On the Blue Soft Belgium side, we have recruited new colleagues, proposed new client engagements (and won the majority of them, focusing on consultants profiles and a right match with the client's needs). It is a fantastic team we are building here and I'm thrilled to see what the future will bring us... BTW, if y...
Read more

2024, nearly there...

Image
Waw...time flies...Already five years working back as a business consultant, advising clients every day (and coping with the traffic jams folks, what a nightmare) - trying to help where and when I can, providing support with concrete and realistic feedback. In a nutshell, this year, I've been busy consulting for two major public entities, both located in Belgium. One where I currently conduct a technical debt reduction strategy (see my previous post on that matter) and another one dealing with the whole delivery department (PMO management, testing and development teams)...and it has been a lot of hard work!! The current complexity in IT architecture, cloud knowledge, generic and broad technical concepts, down to earth KPIs, are nowadays mandatory to run a workshop, to present some convincing arguments (why should the client change, right?)...and all that in a secure (security by design, of course) environment (should use plural here)... And again, this year has been full of great m...
Read more