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From Black Box to Blueprint: AI-Assisted Legacy Reverse Engineering
Fri, 24 April
Every enterprise has mission-critical legacy systems that no one fully understands anymore. Documentation is missing, experts have moved on, and every change feels like a gamble. These “black boxes” slow innovation and raise the cost of modernization.
In this talk, you will learn how to transform those systems into actionable blueprints using a structured, AI-assisted reverse-engineering approach. We will explore how to combine human expertise with machine intelligence to reconstruct functionality from the outside in, starting with user interfaces and databases, then iteratively uncovering logic through binaries, logs, and behavioral traces.
You will see how techniques like UI flow reconstruction, change data capture for data lineage, and binary archaeology work together to reveal system behavior, enabling confident refactoring, cloud migration, or full rewrites.
By the end of this session, you will take away a repeatable methodology for turning opaque legacy systems into transparent, well-understood architectures, ready for modernization without the guesswork.
What You Will Learn
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How to extract functional blueprints when source code is missing
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A multi-lens AI-assisted approach for mapping system behavior
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Practical techniques for UI flow analysis, data lineage, and binary archaeology
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How to validate AI-generated insights with human review
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Steps to transition from reverse engineering to forward engineering
Who Should Attend
Software architects, modernization leads, and engineers tackling legacy transformation projects who want a practical, low-risk path to understanding and rebuilding critical systems.
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About the speaker
Thiyagu Palanisamy
Global Head Of Technology - Retail, ThoughtWorks
Thiyagu Palanisamy is a global technology leader with 25 years of experience, including two decades at Thoughtworks. He has led complex digital transformations worldwide, blending enterprise architecture, data platforms, and distributed systems to build business platforms that deliver measurable outcomes. Passionate about helping businesses harness data and AI responsibly to accelerate growth and reimagine customer engagement, his current focus is on AI-powered modernization, predictive analytics, and agentic AI adoption at scale. A frequent voice in technology strategy, Thiyagu champions the role of technologists in shaping business impact and the future of digital platforms.
