Appendix C: About Gernot Starke

Dr. Gernot Starke (innoQ Fellow) is co-founder and longstanding user of the (open source) arc42 documentation template. For more than 20 years he works as software architect, coach and consultant, conquering the challenges of creating effective software architectures for clients from various industries.

In 2008 Gernot co-founded the International Software Architecture Qualification Board (iSAQB e.V.) and since then supports it as an active member.

2014 he founded the (open source) Architecture Improvement Method aim42.

Gernot has authored several (German) books on software architecture and related topics.

Gernot studied computer science at the Institute of Technology in Aachen (RWTH Aachen) and finished with a Diploma. He then worked as a developer and consultant for smaller software companies, before coming back to university for international research on methodical software engineering. 1995 he received his PhD from Johannes Kepler University of Linz, Austria (Prof. Gerhard Chroust for his thesis on “Software Process Modeling”.

He then joined Schumann AG in Cologne and did consulting and development work for several years. He became technical director of the “Object Reality Center”, a joint-venture of Sun Microsystems and Schumann Consulting AG and lead the first European Java Project (the Janatol project for Hypobank in Munich).

Since then he has consulted and coached numerous clients from various domains, mainly finance, insurance, telecommunication, logistics, automotive and industry on topics around software engineering, software development and development process organization.

Gernot was an early adopter of the agile movement and has successfully worked as Scrum master in agile projects.

He lives in Cologne with his wife (Cheffe Uli) and his two (nearly grown-up) kids, two cats and a few Macs.

Email Gernot Starke or contact him via Twitter @gernotstarke.