Ursula Helfer-Product Owner | Scrum Master | Finance Expert

Subproject management in an agile IT environment

Leading a software development team (10 employees)

• Leading a software development team with 10 employees
• Budget responsibility approx. 3 million Euros per year
• Conducting employee and job interviews
• Responsibility for resource planning (budget and employees)
• Digitalization of a web interface
• Regular reporting to clients and stakeholders (C-level)
• Product management: developing and implementing product strategies; defining requirements to steer product development
• Designing product development & continuous testing efficiently to quickly incorporate feedback & compliance points
• Close collaboration with stakeholders & various teams to understand requirements, define priorities, ensure rollout, and increase user-friendliness
• Project experience in an energy industry company, including the functioning of energy markets, the basics of energy generation and distribution, as well as current challenges and developments in the industry
• Project experience in the railway sector - including the structure and operation of railway systems.
• Project experience within the 16.7 Hz traction power sector including knowledge of regulatory processes
• Formulating the subproject charter and the project profile according to the project standard together with the project management
• Steering performance delivery according to the project charter
• Planning and steering human resources including budget planning for the subproject
• Ensuring the working capacity of subproject participants, e.g., by requesting access rights and documents for the subproject team
• Planning and steering for the respective subproject (Time, Scope, Budget) including the creation of necessary documents
• Coordinating with the department and Product Owners to plan the subproject scope and the corresponding implications
• Conducting milestone planning according to the agreed process model
• Effort estimation and support of subproject controlling as well as overall project controlling in forecasting and planning
• Reporting subproject status (according to status slide template) including progress (according to progress measurement)
• Analyzing, preparing, and addressing needs for action and decisions
• Escalating subproject issues to project management
• Creating and managing Change Requests (CR)
• Quality assessment of completed task packages from a project management perspective (Time, Scope, and Budget)
• Steering the implementation of cross-cutting specifications and requirements in the subproject, supported by cross-functional roles on the business and technical side.
• Identifying, steering, documenting, and communicating opportunities, risks, and dependencies within and across subprojects
• Supporting project management in creating the overall project plan and overall status reports
• Preparing and steering commissioning including required documents and protection requirements assessment

Scrum Master in an agile IT environment supporting a software development team in the fullstack area (7 people)

• Close collaboration with stakeholders & various teams to understand requirements, define priorities, ensure rollout, and increase user-friendliness
• Introducing the selected Scrum method, including the required events, meetings, artifacts (Product Backlog, Sprint Backlog, Burndown Charts), metrics, and conducting required training in an agile IT environment
• Preparing Scrum events such as Daily, Retrospectives, Review, Sprint Planning, Estimation, and Refinement (agile way of working)
• Facilitating retrospectives and removing impediments to drive the team and product forward
• Preparing action points and retros via Whiteboard and Figma
• Applying and improving agile methods such as Kanban, Scrum, SAFe, or Scrum of Scrums
• Tracking the "Definition of Done" and "Definition of Ready" for all work results of the development team
• Advising on information flow and communication improvements between Product Owner and project team
• Experience with automation, validation such as mandatory field checks, notification functions, creating filters, boards, and reports via JQL, and setting up Cycle Time
• Using Jira & Confluence
• Setting up progress measurement for project management to transparently map planned vs. actual team capacities and actual effort for user stories
• Measuring team progress: creating team KPIs: "Velocity", "Burn-Down Chart", "Throughput", "Costs", "Quality", "Scope"
• Evaluating agile metrics, process management, and process modeling methods (BPMN, EPC, UML)
• Communication and moderation know-how
• Proven methodological competence in conflict resolution discussions

• Conducting Scrum workshops and designing Scrum events by transferring the structure and framework of Scrum to the financial education sector (Scrum, Kanban, Jira, Excel, PPT)
• Acquiring companies that offer their employees educational workshops via their individual training budgets
• Developing an own homepage using Wordpress and HTML
• Creating information material for agile workshops
• Developing a workshop guide to scale Finance Helfer
• Creating Instagram, LinkedIn, and TikTok posts with corresponding design and content (Figma)
• Communication and moderation know-how, methodological competence
• Elaborating the wealth building concept of a company
• Conducting several workshops in Munich + online
• Trading & Agile Helfer for experts (4 people)
• Since 2022: Lecturer for Investment and Finance at the University of Applied Sciences in Munich (Master's program)

Product Management

• Responsibility for the plausibility checks and validation of FX options and IRS, credit derivatives, structured products
• Improving efficiency, e.g., through automation of IT processes
• Management and knowledge input for a new trading system that required both hardware and software components
• Product Owner: Digitalization of payment workflows such as incoming and outgoing invoices, payment processing
• Describing user stories and visualizing the roadmap
• Increasing process efficiency: setting up the IT architecture to increase the level of automation in process and project management tools (Jira, Confluence, Miro)
• Leading a team of 10 software engineers
• Contact person for informational visits and organization of technical training within the unit. Agile Coach for experts (2 people)
• To meet time and budget targets: managing resources and setting milestones (team size of 10 people).

Venture Capital

• Research of investment inquiries regarding seed and growth capital, (private equity, venture capital), real estate and other assets
• Support in calculating key figures and valuations based on balance sheets (DCF, multiples, CAPM)
• Networking at investor congresses across Europe (Pirate Summit, DLD, Bits & Pretzels, Web Summit, Mobile World Congress)
• Acquisition of potential start-ups; leading meetings with the management team and overseeing the formulation and presentation of ideas and strategies (roll-out)
• Research and process handling for participation in funding programs and assessment of MVPs (99chairs, Amorelie)
• Review of personal traits, ideas and strategies (roll-out)
• Analysis and evaluation of information (due diligence)
• Research of deals (approx. 500 per year) in areas such as automotive, e-commerce, eHealth, SaaS, IoT - financial data via SAP S/4HANA Cloud
• Implementation of accounting systems in start-ups via SAP (ERP)
• Evaluation of manager traits, markets, ideas and processes
• Leading (contract) negotiations (Amorelie)
• Training interns and working students to introduce them to pitches and business plans, contract structures: term sheet, LOI, liquidation preference, drag-along, tag-along, vesting, anti-dilution,
• Driving compliance with agreed agile processes, definitions and methods (team sizes between 5-80 people).