Harten’s mission
Harten · Specialist consultancy supported by Wayfinder (MaaS).
Harten helps organisations understand complex applications well enough to make defensible decisions about them.
Establish what the system does, where risk sits and what can change safely before committing significant money to delivery.
What Harten delivers
For one bounded application, allow around three to four weeks. Harten examines the available evidence, reviews important findings with your team and prepares a specification and proposed plan where the evidence supports one. Scope and dates depend on access and reviewer availability.
Application understanding
Connect business capabilities to their implementation, data and interfaces. Identify the questions that require operational or domain expertise.
Application specification
Give architects, developers and business owners a common account to inspect. Record corrections and distinguish existing behaviour from intended change.
Modernisation planning
Assess the target against the application and its constraints. Set out dependencies, delivery slices, migration, rollback and verification requirements.
The target follows business needs and application evidence. The review defines the tests, reconciliation and operational evidence needed to accept the proposed change.
Explore Wayfinder (MaaS) and the review process · The economics of modernisation · What an engagement includes · Download the Harten brochure (PDF)
Inspect the work
Public examples show selected Harten analysis, the source support behind material findings and the engineering decisions those findings create.
Payment application
Inspect balance settlement, stale-update protection and batch rejection behaviour, then follow those findings into specification and planning.
Complex public service
Inspect date rules, guarantee transitions and shipment eligibility, including what still requires service-owner review.
Why modernisation programmes fail
Independent reviews repeatedly identify weak understanding, planning and governance as risks to digital change. Harten addresses the application evidence and decisions within that wider challenge.
01 · Business and technology
The National Audit Office found recurring underperformance where programmes were not sufficiently thought through before key technology decisions, and where legacy risk was poorly reflected.
How Harten responds
Bring business objectives and application evidence into one review. Test whether the proposed scope and architecture support the intended outcome.
02 · Dependencies and commitments
The Public Accounts Committee found weak understanding of system complexity, contracts awarded before dependencies were understood, and no agreed integrated plan.
How Harten responds
Reconstruct business rules, data relationships and interfaces. Make unknowns explicit so scope, estimates and sequencing can be challenged before further commitment.
03 · Planning and retirement
The US Government Accountability Office found incomplete plans for critical legacy systems, including missing milestones, modernisation work and intended system disposition.
US Government Accountability Office · Legacy systems, 2025 →
How Harten responds
Set out dependencies, delivery sequence, data transition, verification and conditions for retiring or retaining components. Implementation remains separately evidenced.
04 · Governance and challenge
The Public Accounts Committee found weak risk management and a good-news culture deprived oversight bodies of information needed for scrutiny.
How Harten responds
Connect material findings to source, consequence and review questions. Distinguish confirmed behaviour from unresolved interpretation so decision-makers can challenge the evidence.
These reports document programme risks. Harten’s demonstrated capability is application analysis, specification generation and planning with specialist review; delivery outcomes require separate evidence.
Wayfinder (MaaS) · Software intelligence
Wayfinder is Harten’s software intelligence platform for turning application evidence into reviewable understanding, a current-system specification and a defensible basis for change.
Start with an authorised application repository and a clear boundary for the analysis.
Reconstruct behaviour, dependencies, data relationships, interfaces and material uncertainty from the available evidence.
Inspect the generated account of the current system, correct unsupported interpretation and make open questions explicit.
Carry the reviewed understanding into architecture, modernisation planning and the next investment decision.
Harten
Lavan Nallainathan is the Founder and Director of Harten and a former Microsoft Director. He brings two decades of technology leadership and modernisation experience across regulated, national-scale estates.
Lavan leads engagement scoping, architectural challenge and interpretation of findings. Harten is independent; customers retain authority over priorities, risk acceptance and release. Public profile.
Tell us what you need to understand or decide, and what is making the next step difficult. We’ll suggest where to start and what the work would involve.
Speak with HartenDo not send credentials, production data, source code or personal information through public email.
UK-based · Vendor-neutral · Evidence-first