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 the use of GenAI forward. For this purpose, the above project was initiated and, as an MVP, the data from the building energy certificate is to be read out with the help of AI and processed further. The corresponding GenAI LMM models (GPT-4o, Gemini, Claude, Mistral) were also to be compared in the delivery of results.

• Challenge: The project is highly political. In addition, governance rules and risk assessments currently speak critically against a solution with GenAI. This is especially true with regard to compliance with the GDPR when personal data is processed via an "externally" connected AI solution. The project is a strategic driver for using German ING GenAI solutions and also obtaining the necessary "approvals" for this within 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

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

• Challenge: After significant turnover among 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 tasked with redesigning this organization, the processes, and the 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 transaction and financial applications (SAP). With the Postbank migration, the data volume will grow to about 2.5 times the current size. In addition to developing migration interfaces for data transfer, functional gaps had to be closed and system performance expanded.

• Challenge: The data processing/delivery in the NSW application was not allowed to be delayed or take longer, because further processing in other systems with fixed delivery times to external third parties (e.g. other banks, the 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: MiFID II added further regulatory requirements for the bank, which serve consumer protection and, in the context of securities/investment business, give customers more transparency about all types of costs and shares and their composition during advisory or quotation processes (thus better comparison options) and during investment execution.

• Challenge: On the IT side, the program had 10 projects and, in the 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 advisory/order and reporting process in the investment area underwent major changes. The complexity also increased because process and technology changes were made that are forward-looking and were seen as useful in the context of 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 technical focus was the regulatory implementation in holdings and cost reporting.

• Challenge: Took over a crisis project: the holdings reporting that went into production at the end of 2017 was not working 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 had to be planned and carried out in parallel in 2018.

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

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

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

• In addition, I also took on the role of test manager in this project. The time pressure and scope of the technical requirements required a different approach in testing to reach the target and reduce risk. I coordinated and introduced the concept and the organizational integration. This made it possible to achieve 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 with about 20 systems. Providing the operating systems and implementing the necessary IT infrastructure and architecture changes. Overall responsibility for ensuring a smooth go-live 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 tasks included coordinating the changes across all projects, bundling them, and identifying and managing project dependencies in a complex environment. As Application Manager, I was involved throughout the full creation process of 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 documentation, as well as for ordering and reporting of transactions and custody 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 had to be adjusted, newly developed, or connected for the first time. What kind of interfaces were involved (real-time, batch, ………). Whether new/changed service levels or non-functional requirements resulted from these changes. 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. This involved 30,000 customers with a volume of about €280 million. This expanded Ikano’s product portfolio. The acquisition also supports the bank’s planned inorganic growth.

• Challenge: The acquisition had to be completed in 2014, because the transferring bank wanted the portfolio off its books by year-end.

With the purchase, no service employees of the transferring bank were taken over. A transfer of business was not desired by either side.

Because of the tight timeline, a direct migration into the bank’s own systems was not possible. The service provider on whose platform the portfolio was operated could no longer support a tenant migration in 2014. The product was new for Ikano, so existing processes could not be reused either. It was also not possible to build up staff for customer support 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 recognition by the tax office). With the SEPA format (introduced in Dec. 2013), this is no longer possible, as the required 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. The IT systems were neither specified nor built in the architecture. With the upcoming SEPA introduction, 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, as a service provider for the German Armed Forces, was tasked with converting the entire telecommunications system to VoIP. In addition, software had to be developed that would largely automate the update of telecommunications and all involved Bundeswehr-owned systems in the so-called "provisioning" when a site was relocated. BWI commissioned T-Systems to implement this. At the time of taking over the project, the telecom system had already been installed in a star topology and configured for operation according to the security requirements. The task was to finalize the software, 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 sites (approx. 1,000) had to be planned and carried out.

• Challenge: At the end of 2011, the project was considered failed because the software delivered in October 2011 was too faulty and could not be put into operation. In January 2012, it was decided to redesign the software and reorganize and replan the project. New software development within 9 months, rollout across all sites starting in 07/2012 and ending in 12/2013. The software delivery milestone and the end of the rollout were both subject to a penalty of €1 million each. The contractual partners were in escalation and conflict at the highest level. Internally, project support was not given because the departments could not agree on responsibility and coverage of 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 changed its processor 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 live operations. 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 the card organizations (VISA/MasterCard) in the range of seconds.

• Politically, the strategy at Commerzbank was supported by the business side. The technical department was against this decision and acted accordingly as a blocker in the project. A high level of conflict management was required. First-time introduction of a real-time interface on the ATOS Worldline 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. With this portal, an integrated software framework was strategically implemented on a technical level, and the other two portals were to be migrated to it afterwards.

• Challenge: Versum.de was a new economy company that had been built from scratch. As a result, the error rate was high and strategic decisions were not always right. Motoversum only had one quarter of the budget available compared to the other portals; at the same time, the software architecture was supposed to be developed in a modular and reusable way. In addition, there was considerable 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 in the context of the euro and Y2K issue, including the corresponding selection of service providers and soft/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)