Architecture Consulting

Assistants amplify whatever structure they encounter. Point one at a system with tangled boundaries and shared databases and you do not get a cleaner system — you get the same problems, replicated faster and with more confidence.

That is why this sits alongside the AI practice rather than apart from it. A codebase with clear ownership and stable contracts is one an assistant can contribute to safely. One without is a codebase where more output means more risk, and where moving up the maturity levels is actively unsafe: you cannot let automated review replace human review when nobody can predict what a change will touch.

Where I focus

Service boundaries and data ownership — which service owns what, and what happens at the seams. Event-driven integration where the coupling is genuinely reduced rather than merely made asynchronous, which is a distinction a lot of event-driven architectures quietly fail. Schema design that lets consumers translate into their own model instead of inheriting the producer’s.

The hard rule I start from: a service owns its data exclusively, and no service reads another’s database. Share the database and you no longer have two services — you have one deployment unit with two names.

Most of my hands-on history is JVM and Spring; the archive gives a sense of the depth, even where the library versions have moved on.

Pricing

Architecture review — €9,000

Fixed scope. I examine the system, interview the people who maintain it, and deliver an assessment of boundaries, coupling and data ownership with a sequenced roadmap. Typically two to three weeks. You own the output regardless of what follows.

Hands-on implementation — €1,600 per day

The work itself. Available as a closed package with a defined scope and fixed price where the problem is well understood, or as an agreed block of days drawn down as you need them where it is still moving.

For well-defined problems I prefer the closed package — it gives you cost certainty and gives me a reason to be efficient rather than present.

All prices exclude VAT. Travel within the Netherlands is included; elsewhere it is billed at cost.

Engagement shape

This is the service most often delivered hands-on, and the one most likely to run alongside something else — an architecture review frequently follows an adoption review that concluded the real constraint was structural.