Michael R.-Project Manager

• Objective/Motivation: As part of its digitalization and business process automation strategy, ING wants to drive the use of GenAI for extracting data from documents. The above-mentioned project was initiated for this purpose. As an MVP, data from the building energy certificate is to be extracted and further processed using AI. The relevant GenAI LLM models (GPT-4o, Gemini, Claude, Mistral) were also to be compared in terms of the results they deliver.

• Challenge: The project is highly political. In addition, governance rules and risk assessments are currently critical of a GenAI solution, particularly with regard to compliance with the GDPR when personal data is processed through an externally connected AI solution. The project is a strategic driver for implementing GenAI solutions at ING Germany and obtaining the necessary approvals across the Group.

Project: ValidatING

Budget: €3.0 million

Team: 10/50 employees (full-time/part-time); 2 vendors/providers

Integration: 3 (subsystems/interfaces)

Applications: SmartFix, OCR; AI-based application

Tools: MS Office; Jira, Confluence, SharePoint

Methods: Hands-on; Prince2; BPMN

• Objective/Motivation: As part of an outsourcing arrangement, Commerzbank began outsourcing its entire payments business to equensWorldline in 2018. The objective of the transformation is to migrate the entire core payments business (SEPA (SCT/SDD/SCC/international payments)) from the bank's legacy systems to equensWorldline's systems and bring it in line with the new regulatory MX standard.

• Challenge: Following significant turnover among responsible stakeholders, in management and within the program on both sides, the program required a new organization and plan.

• The program included 10 projects.

• I was responsible for rebuilding this organization, its processes and planning, taking contractual agreements, compliance and quality aspects (audits) into account.

Program: Commerzbank – Payments Outsourcing

Budget: €40 million

Team: 100/200 employees (full-time/part-time); 3 vendors/providers

Integration: 20 (subsystems/interfaces)

Tools: MS Office; MS Project; Jira, Confluence

Methods: Agile; Prince2; SAFe; Scrum; Kanban; BPMN

• Goal/Motivation: NSW is the bank's data hub between the bank's transaction and financial applications (SAP). With the Postbank migration, the data volume will increase to approximately 2.5 times its current size. In addition to developing migration interfaces for data transfer, functional gaps had to be closed and system performance improved.

• Challenge: Data processing/delivery in the NSW application was NOT allowed to be delayed or extended in terms of time, as the subsequent processing in other systems had to meet fixed delivery times to external parties (e.g. other banks, the Bundesbank, ….) without exception.

Program: Unity (Postbank Integration) – Subproject “NSW”

Budget: €1.8 million

Team: 5/50 employees (full-time/part-time); 2 vendors/providers

Integration: 15 (subsystems/interfaces)

Tools: MS Office; MS Project; HPQC; Jira, Confluence

Methods: PMI; Waterfall

• 03.2015 – 12.2018 – Program – MiFID II:

• Goal/Motivation: MiFID II introduced additional regulatory requirements for the bank to protect consumers and provide customers with greater transparency regarding all types and portions of costs and their composition during investment advice and offer preparation, thereby enabling better comparisons, as well as during investment execution.

• Challenge: On the IT side, the program included 10 projects and matrix workstreams for test management, process/system dependencies, and service transition. MiFID II entered into force in January 2018. The program was scheduled to be completed by the end of 2018, including follow-up work.

• MiFID II resulted in significant changes to more than 20 systems involved in the investment advisory, order, and reporting processes. The complexity was also increased by the fact that both process and technological changes were being implemented, which were future-oriented and considered appropriate as part of the further development toward “digitalization.”

• 03.2018 – 12.2018 – Project Manager – MiFID II Customer Reports:

• Goal/Motivation: Responsible for implementing MiFID requirements in investment reporting. The functional scope involved the regulatory implementation of position and cost reporting.

• Challenge: Taking over a project in crisis: The position reporting that had been put into production at the end of 2017 was not operational during the pilot phase and had to be made production-ready by the end of April 2018. In addition, the team had to be restructured, while two subsequent releases for 2018 had to be planned and implemented in parallel.

• 03.2017 – 02.2018 – Project Manager – MiFID II Advisory Process:

• Goal/Motivation: Responsible for implementing MiFID requirements in the investment advisory business. The functional scope involved the regulatory implementation of the PRIIPs requirements, the new ex-ante cost disclosure, and the related advisory processes via the frontend.

• Challenge: Due to the complexity and scope, the requirements were divided into 2 projects running in parallel. The remaining time and prioritization of the functional “must-haves,” as well as the cross-project functional/technical dependencies.

• I also took on the role of test manager for this project. The time constraints and scope of the functional requirements required a different testing approach to achieve the objectives and mitigate risks. I coordinated and introduced the design and organizational integration. This resulted in cost savings of approximately €850,000.

• 11.2015 – 07.2017 – Application Manager:

• Responsible on behalf of IT Operations within the program for a central system that has at least one direct communication interface with approximately 20 systems. Provision of the operating systems and implementation of the necessary IT infrastructure and architecture changes. Cross-project assurance of a smooth operational launch and coordination with Release/Transition Management and Production Support.

• Within the program, I supported 5 projects that mainly involved changes to core components of the central system. My responsibilities included synchronizing and consolidating the changes across projects, as well as identifying and managing project dependencies within the overall complexity. As Application Manager, I was involved in the entire process of creating requirements and changes for the central system. I reviewed all functional and detailed specifications and approved technical documentation and operating instructions. The central system provides functions, services, and data for frontend and backend systems supporting the core processes of customer advisory and documentation, transaction ordering and reporting, and portfolio management. I therefore also gained extensive knowledge of the system's end-to-end core processes.

• Based on my expertise and experience in large, complex IT projects, I also supported the program in the central area of process and system dependencies. This involved creating transparency regarding which projects needed changes to which systems, between which systems interfaces were being adjusted or newly developed, and which systems were receiving a connection for the first time. I also identified the types of interfaces involved (real-time, batch, ………). I assessed whether these changes resulted in new or modified service levels or non-functional requirements. I then fed the analysis results back into the projects as requirements for implementation.

Program: MiFID II – Securities Business

Budget: €150.0 million (program) / €2.0–5.0 million (project)

Team: up to 250 employees (program) / 7-15/30-50 employees (project); 3 vendors/providers

Integration: 40 (program) / 5 (project)

Tools: MS Office; MS Project; HPQC; Jira, Confluence

Methods: PMI; Waterfall; Scrum; BPMN

• Goal/Motivation: Ikano Bank GmbH acquired a customer loan portfolio from a bank. The portfolio consisted of 30,000 customers with a volume of approximately €280 million. This expanded Ikano's product portfolio and supported the bank's targeted inorganic growth.

• Challenge: The acquisition had to be completed in 2014 because the selling bank wanted the portfolio removed from its books by the end of the financial year.

The purchase did not include the transfer of the selling bank's service employees. Neither party wanted a “transfer of operations.”

Due to the tight timeline, a “direct” migration to the bank's own systems was not possible. The service provider operating the portfolio on its platform could no longer implement a “tenant migration” in 2014. The product was new to Ikano, so “existing” processes could not be used either. Building up staff for customer service in all departments was also not possible within the short timeframe.

Project: Gold – Customer Loan Portfolio Transition

Budget: €5.0 million

Team: 5/40 employees (full-time/part-time); 8 vendors/providers

Integration: 5 (subsystems/interfaces)

Tools: MS Office; MS Project

Methods: Hands-on

• Goal/Motivation: Introduction of a customer portal for customer self-services and the provision of billing data and reports. Until then, 50,000 customers had received their invoices via their bank statements, which were accepted by the tax authorities. With the SEPA format, introduced in December 2013, this was no longer possible because the necessary information could no longer be provided.

• Challenge: The project had already been running for 2.5 years. It was managed by the product owner, who changed twice during this period. Go-live dates were postponed several times between 2012 and mid-2013. Requirements were constantly added and changed. IT systems had neither been specified nor built in the architecture. With the upcoming introduction of SEPA, customers would no longer receive invoices.

Project: myeasycash

Budget: €450,000

Team: 3/15 employees (full-time/part-time); 2 vendors/providers

Integration: 3 (subsystems/interfaces)

Tools: MS Office; MS Project; HPQC

Methods: Hands-on

• Goal/Motivation: As part of the Herkules contract, BWI was commissioned as a service provider for the German Armed Forces to convert the entire telecommunications system to VoIP. In addition, software was to be developed that would automatically update the telecommunications system and all involved German Armed Forces systems during a site relocation, as part of the so-called “provisioning” process. BWI commissioned T-Systems to implement the solution. At the time I took over the project, the telecommunications system had already been installed in a star topology in accordance with the security requirements and configured for operations. The task was to complete the software development, test it, implement it in BWI’s IT landscape, and integrate it with the subsystems. In addition, the rollout of the telecommunications components and end devices, approximately 300,000 units, across the sites, approximately 1,000, had to be planned and carried out.

• Challenge: The project was considered a failure at the end of 2011 because the software delivered in October 2011 contained too many errors and could not be put into operation. In January 2012, a decision was made to redesign the software and reorganize and replan the project. The new software was to be developed within 9 months, with the rollout to all sites starting in 07/2012 and ending in 12/2013. A penalty of €1 million was to be imposed for each software delivery milestone and for completion of the rollout. The contractual partners were involved in the escalation and conflict at the highest level. Internally, project support was not available because the departments could not reach an agreement regarding responsibility and the assumption of additional costs.

Sub-program: Sofia (German Armed Forces Herkules program)

Budget: €60 million (approx. €50 million hardware, €10 million software development)

Team: 20/150 employees

Integration: 5 (subsystems/interfaces)

Tools: MS Office; MS Project

• Goal/Motivation: Commerzbank intended to outsource the partial processing of its credit card portfolio (1.5 million credit cards) from First Data (formerly GZS) to full processing. As part of this, Commerzbank also changed processors from First Data to ATOS Worldline.

• Challenge: 100% replication of existing functions, interfaces, and reporting. No changes to the card products. The migration and processor change had to take place during ongoing operations. Cards issued to end customers had to remain usable. Uninterrupted card usage (24/7) had to be ensured. The maximum interruption when switching the card organizations (VISA/MasterCard) had to be limited to a matter of seconds.

• Politically, the strategy at Commerzbank was supported by the business. The technical department opposed this decision and acted accordingly in resistance to the project. Strong conflict management skills were required. First-time implementation of a real-time interface on ATOS Worldline's mainframe system.

Client: Commerzbank - Credit card migration

Budget: €2.3 million

Team: up to 20/100 employees (full-time/part-time); 4 vendors/providers

Integration: 10 (subsystems/interfaces)

Tools: MS Office; MS Project

Methods: Hands-on; Prince2

• Goal/Motivation: Motoversum was the third portal developed after Jobversum and Immoversum. This portal was used to strategically implement an integrated software framework, onto which the other two portals were subsequently to be migrated.

• Challenge: Versum.de was a new economy company that had been “built from the ground up.” Accordingly, the error rate was high and strategic decisions were not always correct. Compared with the other portals, Motoversum had only one quarter of the budget available; at the same time, the software architecture had to be developed in a modular and reusable way. In addition, there was considerable time pressure, as all three portals were already supposed to be operational by the end of 2000. Accordingly, the attention and expectations of the company founders (Germany's 10 largest publishing houses) were also high.

Portal development (Motoversum)

Budget: €1.5 million

Team: 5/30 employees (full-time/part-time); 1 vendor/provider

Integration: 5 (subsystems/interfaces)

Tools: MS Office; MS Project

• Full coordination and replacement of hardware and software as part of the euro and Year 2000 issues, including the corresponding service provider selection and data migration.

Euro / Y2K

Budget: up to €1.0 million

Team: up to 2/10 employees (full-time/part-time); 4 vendors/providers

Integration: up to 10 (subsystems/interfaces)