Michael Rosens-Project Manager

• Goal/Motivation: As part of its digitalization and automation strategy for business processes in the area of data extraction from documents, ING wants to push ahead with the use of GenAI. For this purpose, the above project was initiated and, as an MVP, the data from the building energy certificate is to be read and further processed with the help of AI. Corresponding GenAI LMM models (GPT-4o, Gemini, Claude, Mistral) were also to be compared in the result delivery.

• Challenge: The project is highly political. In addition, governance rules and risk assessments currently speak critically against a solution with GenAI. In particular with regard to compliance with the GDPR when personal data is processed via an “externally” connected AI solution. The project is a strategic driver to bring the German ING GenAI solutions into use and to obtain the necessary approvals for this in the group as well.

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

• Goal/Motivation: As part of an outsourcing project, Commerzbank started outsourcing its entire payments business to equensWorldline in 2018. The goal of the transformation is to migrate the entire core payment business (SEPA (SCT/SDD/SCC/cross-border payments) from the bank's legacy systems to the systems of equensWorldline and to move it to the new regulatory MX standard.

• Challenge: After a major fluctuation of responsible stakeholders, in management and in the program on both sides, the program needed a new organization and planning.

• The program included 10 projects.

• I was commissioned to rebuild this organization, the processes and planning, taking into account contractual agreements, compliance and quality aspects (audits).

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 transaction and financial applications (SAP) of the bank. With the Postbank migration, the data volume increases to about 2.5 times. In addition to developing migration interfaces for data transfer, functional gaps had to be closed and system performance expanded.

• Challenge: Data processing/delivery in the NSW application was NOT allowed to be delayed/extended in time, because further processing in other systems with fixed delivery times to external third parties (e.g. other banks, Bundesbank, ….) had to be strictly met.

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: With MiFID II, the bank was faced with further regulatory requirements that serve to protect consumers and, in securities/investment business, give the customer more transparency about all types and shares of costs and their composition during advice or quote creation (thus better comparison options) and investment execution.

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

• With MiFID II, more than 20 systems around the advice/order and reporting process in the investment area underwent major changes. The complexity is also increased by the fact that process and technology changes are taking place, which are future-oriented and are seen as useful in 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 main focus was the regulatory implementation in holdings and cost reporting.

• Challenge: Taking over a crisis project: the holdings reporting put into production at the end of 2017 was not running in the pilot phase and had to be made production-ready by the end of April 2018. In addition, a team restructuring was necessary and two follow-up releases in 2018 had to be planned and carried out in parallel.

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

• Goal/Motivation: responsible for implementing MiFID requirements in investment advisory business. The main content was the regulatory implementation of the PRIIPs requirement, the new ex-ante cost disclosure and the relevant advisory processes via the frontend.

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

• In addition, I also took over the role of test manager in this project. The time factor and scope of the functional requirements required a different approach in testing to achieve the goal and reduce risk. I coordinated and introduced the concept and organizational integration. This resulted in cost savings of around 850k €.

• 11.2015 – 07.2017 – Application Manager:

• Responsible on the IT operations side in the program for a central system that has at least one direct communication interface to around 20 systems. Providing the operating systems and implementing the necessary IT infrastructure and architecture changes. Overall assurance of smooth go-live and coordination with release/transition management and production support.

• Within the program, I supported 5 projects that mainly had changes in core components of the central system. My tasks included synchronizing and bundling the changes across projects and, given the complexity, identifying and channeling the project dependencies. As Application Manager, I was involved throughout the entire creation process of the requirements and changes for the central system. I reviewed all business and detailed specifications and approved technical documentation and operation instructions. The central system provides functions, services and data for frontends and backend systems for the core processes of customer advice and logging, for ordering and reporting of transactions and securities account management. This also gave me extensive knowledge of the end-to-end process of the system's core functions.

• Due to my expertise and experience from large, complex IT projects, I also supported the program in the central area for process and system dependencies. This meant creating transparency about which projects had changes needed in which systems, between which systems interfaces were being adjusted, newly developed or getting a system connection for the first time. What kinds of interfaces are involved (real-time, batch, ………). Whether these changes result in new/changed service levels or non-functional requirements. I 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. This involved 30,000 customers with a volume of around 280 million euros. Ikano is thus expanding its product portfolio. In addition, the acquisition contributes to the bank's planned inorganic growth.

• Challenge: The acquisition has to be completed in 2014 because the transferring bank wants to have the portfolio off its books by the annual closing.

With the purchase, the affected service employees of the transferring bank are not taken over. A "transfer of business" is not desired by either side.

Due to the tight timeline, a "direct" migration into the bank's own systems is not possible. The service provider on whose platform the portfolio was operated could no longer map a "tenant migration" in 2014. The product was new for Ikano, so existing processes could not be used either. Building up staff for customer support is also not possible in all departments in such a short time.

Project: Gold – Transition customer loan portfolio

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 provision of invoice data and reports. 50,000 customers had previously received their invoice via bank statement (with tax office recognition). With the SEPA format (introduced in Dec. 2013), this is no longer possible, as the necessary information can no longer be included.

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

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: Under the Herkules contract, BWI was commissioned as the service provider for the German Armed Forces to switch the entire telecommunications system to VoIP. In addition, a software solution was to be developed that would largely automate updates to telecom systems and all involved Bundeswehr-owned systems in the so-called "provisioning" during site relocations. BWI commissioned T-Systems to implement this. At the time of the project takeover, the telecom system had already been installed in a star topology and configured for operation in accordance with security requirements. 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 telecom components and end devices (approx. 300,000 units) across the locations (approx. 1,000) had to be planned and carried out.

• Challenge: The project was considered failed at the end of 2011 because the software delivered in October 2011 was too faulty and could not be put into operation. In January 2012, a redesign of the software as well as a reorganization and re-planning of the project was decided. New software development within 9 months, rollout of all locations starting in 07/2012 and ending in 12/2013. The software delivery milestone and the end of the rollout were each subject to a penalty of €1 million. The contractual partners were in escalation and conflict at the highest level. Internally, project support was not available because the departments could not agree on responsibility and on covering the additional costs.

Subprogram: Sofia (Bundeswehr program Herkules)

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 planned to outsource the partial processing of its credit card portfolio (1.5 million credit cards) from First Data (formerly GZS) into full processing. In the process, Commerzbank also switched 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 switch had to happen while operations were running. Cards already issued to end customers had to remain usable. Card usage had to be ensured without disruption (24/7). Maximum interruption during the switch of card organizations (VISA/MasterCard) in the range of seconds.

Politically, the strategy at Commerzbank was backed by the business. The technical department was against this decision and acted accordingly resistant in the project. A high level of conflict management was required. First-time introduction of a real-time interface on the mainframe system of ATOS Worldline.

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 3rd portal developed after Jobversum and Immoversum. With this portal, an integrated software framework was strategically implemented in technology, onto which the other two portals were then to be migrated.

• Challenge: Versum.de was a "built from the ground up" new economy company. As a result, the error rate was high and strategic decisions were not always right. Compared with the other portals, Motoversum had only a quarter of the budget available; at the same time, the software architecture was to be developed in a modular and reusable way. In addition, there was significant time pressure, as all three portals were supposed to be live by the end of 2000. Accordingly, the attention and expectations of the company founders (the 10 largest publishers in Germany) 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

• Complete coordination and replacement of hardware and software as part of the Euro and year 2000 issues, including the selection of the relevant service providers / software / 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)