Program Manager in Germany

Business development and professional exchange

• Developed a consulting offer for digital transformation, AI adoption, and Operating Models; built industry and partner relationships.

Industrial sector: Transport

Tasks: Continuation of existing projects, advice on artificial intelligence (AI), implementation of regulatory requirements, management of external service providers

Subprocesses: Order clarification, role clarification, consolidation, effort estimation, activity planning, status reporting, progress tracking, stakeholder discussions, risk analysis

Background: Cloud computing, artificial intelligence (AI), predictive maintenance, compliance, governance, standing orders compliance, KRITIS

Software: Cherwell, Docker, IoT, MS Sharepoint, MS Teams, SQL Server

• Coordinate technical delivery across eight concurrent operator and consumer-platform programmes spanning Android TV, Operator TV and connected audio, targeting a combined audience of more than 500,000 end users.
• Delivered Tier 1 operator TV and Android TV deployments, managed senior stakeholder relationships, and supported additional business wins from existing customers, resulting in five further programmes.
• Led Netflix Hailstorm and Self-Serve certification programmes, supporting certification readiness and accelerating OTT deployment.
• Owned end-to-end delivery of Europe’s first Amlogic X5-based connected soundbar ecosystem and a hybrid DVB/OTT TV platform, coordinating the programme from requirements through integration and delivery.
• Introduced programme governance and supplier-delivery frameworks to improve delivery predictability, coordination and quality.
• Re-engineered CE-marking and regulatory-compliance frameworks across EU markets to strengthen compliance processes and regulatory adherence.

• Advising executive teams on digitalization, AI and change management
• AI prototypes in around 14 days; business cases and rollout plans with measurable productivity gains

MOVE-ZPD – Strategic Infrastructure Project | Total Program Budget 48 Mio. € | Data Center Migration Hannover → Hamburg

Responsibility for a central subproject for migrating business-critical specialist applications to a highly available data center architecture.

• Management of a central subproject for migrating business-critical specialist applications to a highly available data center architecture.
• Independent management of around 30 of approximately 100 business-critical specialist applications, including Exchange (approx. 30'000 users), LDAP, DNS and cross-state applications.
• Management of project structure, milestones, dependencies, risks and escalations, as well as coordination of the required business and technical stakeholders.
• End-to-end coordination of the managed migrations, from planning and structuring through environment provision, testing and acceptance to production deployment and go-live.
• Stakeholder management between business units, Product Owners, data center operations, program organization and external service providers.
• Development and implementation of a standardized server request and change process to speed up VM provisioning and reduce manual coordination.
• Management reporting as well as preparation and moderation of steering and decision-making bodies and workshops.

Technologies & Tools: MS Project, MS Teams, SharePoint, Oracle APEX, CA Automation Manager, Visio, MindManager

Interim Lead ITSM Transformation

Industry: Retail & Industry – Optics (partly critical infrastructure)

Mandate: Transition of ITSM governance to the product- and capability-oriented governance model already established across the Group, as well as acceleration and partial automation of service volumes through optimized entry channels. Design and system-based implementation of an ITSM target operating model.

• ITSM target process design based on the capability owner model: target processes and ownership for Incident, Service Request, Problem, Change Enablement, CMDB, Service Level, Supplier and Knowledge Management, derived from the Group-wide target operating model
• AI-supported Enterprise Service Management: Reorganization of currently mixed requests into a structured, cross-functional service model including a new self-service portal. AI-supported classification and automation considered in the architecture model
• Migration & Cloud Architecture: Planning and management of the end-to-end migration, coordination of cutover management and go-live support; ensuring productive stability during the hypercare phase. Consideration of a multi-source CMDB (~500,000 assets), connection of go-live-critical field service and vendor interfaces
• Scaling & Blueprint: Central instance for headquarters and production, designed as a blueprint for additional international retail and production sites
• Delivery and Stakeholder Management: End-to-end management from target vision to go-live with regard to time, budget & quality. Building consensus and balancing interests between independently managed IT units up to CIO level

Following the Vaillant engagement, established independent practice focused on senior SAP advisory and building ASTRA — a methodology, not a tool. ASTRA is independent and unbiased: the same four pillars serve CIO / Business Leadership, SI / SAP Practice, and Programme Director / Principal with equal weight. No audience is primary.

ASTRA serves three audiences with equal weight — CIO / Business Leadership · SI / SAP Practice · Programme Director / Principal. ASTRA is independent and unbiased — it does not sit inside any SI practice and does not serve any single audience as primary customer. Each audience receives a role-calibrated output from the same analysis.

One methodology, two outcomes:

OUTCOME 1 — SAP TRANSFORMATION GOVERNANCE:

Any active SAP programme: ECC→S/4HANA Greenfield, Brownfield, Global Rollout, AMS. The four pillars answer the four questions that determine whether a transformation succeeds — for any of the three audiences.

• Are business requirements clean — or is the SI building what SAP standard already covers? (Functional Auditor → all three audiences)
• Is the custom object inventory healthy — or accumulating debt that blocks upgrades? (RICEFW Auditor → Director and CIO)
• Is the SteerCo reporting accurate — or is leadership seeing a Watermelon? (Truth Engine → CIO and Director)
• Are people ready for the system they are receiving? (Human Signal → CIO and Director)

OUTCOME 2 — AUTONOMOUS ENTERPRISE READINESS:

Any programme deploying Joule, pursuing RISE, or planning an AE migration. The same four pillars answer the questions SAP does not — again, calibrated per audience.

• Which custom objects block the 224 Joule AI agents? (RICEFW Auditor → SI gets remediation paths, Director gets verdicts, CIO gets financial impact)
• Is the Fiori deployment complete enough to activate Joule? (Truth Engine → all three audiences)
• Is the workforce trained for AI-native working? (Human Signal → CIO and Director)

Four pillars (each serves all three audiences):

• Functional Auditor: Clean Core Score 0–100. Section A (CIO): KG fidelity risk in €. Section B (Director): SI challenge questions, man-day saving. Section C (SI): Language Translation Ledger, SAP alternatives.
• RICEFW Auditor: Joule API Pathway Audit, Clean Core Level A–D, Technical Debt Index 1–10. Section A: financial impact of blocked AI agents. Section B: RETIRE/MIGRATE/REDESIGN/KEEP verdicts. Section C: BTP remediation paths.
• Truth Engine: Watermelon Detection, Fiori Deployment check, Programme Truth Score 0–100. Section A: 3 SteerCo questions. Section B: 48-hour action list. Section C: vendor friction map.
• Human Signal: three-stage Fiori adoption model, HITL Policy readiness, Human Signal Score 0–100. Section A: GUI training weight, AE adoption financial risk. Section B: go-live recommendation, stakeholder resistance map.

On-Demand SAP Advisory:

• SAP Programme Management — end-to-end governance, factory management, multi-stream delivery, vendor oversight, SteerCo reporting for Greenfield, Brownfield, Rollout and AMS programmes.
• Delivery Management — RICEFW oversight, Data Migration governance, Release & Cutover management, Hypercare, SLA/KPI management.
• Due Diligence & Landscape Assessment — SAP landscape review, AS-IS/TO-BE roadmap, RFP structuring, SI selection advisory.
• IT Strategy & CIO Advisory — transformation roadmap, Clean Core strategy, Autonomous Enterprise readiness planning.
• Programme Recovery — distressed programme assessment, rapid governance setup, escalation resolution.

Operating through senior professional networks across EMEA.

AI Assistance and Target Vision for Partially Autonomous Energy Portfolio Management

Building an AI control layer directly on the up-to-date daily live portfolio of a large energy provider — not as an isolated pilot, but as an operational extension of the existing DB1 and portfolio management. The goal is the gradual development from assistance through monitoring/alerting to analysis agents with Human-in-the-Loop approvals, supplemented by a role-specific System of Engagement alongside the BI System of Record. At the same time, the business case, target vision and management pitch compared with static monthly reporting are being developed.

• AI control layer: Design and build on the existing live portfolio data product (several million contracts) — development stages assistance → monitoring/alerting → agents with Human-in-the-Loop approvals.
• LLM-supported data analysis: Semantic queries, SQL/tool integration and additional RAG components based on portfolio, plan-versus-actual and data quality data (Azure OpenAI, Snowflake), with drill-downs to individual contract level.
• Analysis agents: Multi-stage agents for variance and driver analyses of churn, price adjustments, volumes and procurement costs.
• Views concept: Role-specific interfaces for business units, management and C-level as a System of Engagement alongside the BI System of Record.
• Business case & pitch: Target vision and cost-benefit argumentation compared with static monthly reporting.
• LLM setup (privacy & security): Coordination with IT Security and Data Protection — EU region, data separation and approval processes.
• Agent architecture: Multi-stage agent pipelines (analysis → validation → summary) with documented data sources, tool calls, review steps and source references for each statement.
• Data foundation: Built on the up-to-date daily DB1 data product (Snowflake, dbt) — portfolio, plan-versus-actual and data quality metrics as the common basis for all AI analyses.
• Guardrails & evaluation: Evaluation and approval processes for LLM responses relating to management-relevant statements — test sets, metrics and human review.
• Prototyping & validation: Iterative validation of agent responses with the business unit — test question catalogue, feedback loops and response quality for each release.
• Roadmap & development stages: Detailed stages from assistance → monitoring/alerting → partially autonomous management, including transition criteria and governance for each stage.
• Integration: Integration into the existing BI and data landscape — BI remains the System of Record, while the AI layer provides interactive drill-down paths as the System of Engagement.
• Enablement: Enablement of business users — prompting guides, training and an operating model for ongoing use.
• Management: Coordination of business units, Data Engineering, IT Security and Data Protection.
• Change Management: Communication and expectation management with business units and management throughout the development stages.

Results:

• Built on an existing up-to-date daily data product with several million contracts
• Established an LLM setup coordinated with Data Protection and IT Security in the EU region, including data separation and approvals
• Defined three development stages through to partially autonomous management
• Designed role-specific views for business units, management and C-level
• Developed the business case and management pitch for the development stages
• Established an iterative response-quality validation process with the business unit
• Designed the operating model for assistance operations and initiated validation

Stack: Azure OpenAI, Azure AI Foundry, Snowflake, dbt, React, TypeScript, Entra ID, RAG, Agentic AI, analysis agents, Human-in-the-Loop, Prompt Engineering, LLM Evaluation, LLMOps, GDPR / EU region, Azure DevOps, Python, SQL, Change Management

Business Hub AI implementation space Implementation support

• Managing Director of Vishnu Artists GmbH in Berlin (since 01/2025, together with Benedikt Irsch).
• Responsible for the company's finance, planning and reporting; working with DATEV.
• Reporting with Power BI as well as planning and analysis models in Excel as a basis for management decisions.
• Selection, development and implementation of AI-supported tools in the company, including Flow Compass.
• Co-host of the Vishnu AI Freelancer Meetup, which takes place every four weeks on Miro; exchange about the practical use of AI applications in coaching and facilitation.

GenAI – Chat & Voicebot

Setup of a GenAI solution with a knowledge base as well as chat and voicebots.

• Definition of use cases and chat/voicebot functionalities
• Project setup for cloud, knowledge base, LLMs and RAG
• AI guardrails, IAM concept
• Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC)

Result:

Setup of an enterprise GenAI solution with knowledge base, chat/voicebots, IAM and governance.

1000 Satellites (Coworking Space, Scale-up, 50–250 employees)

Support for a scale-up with up to 30 open positions, from defining job profiles and preparing offers through to negotiations

• Project Management Lead for AI and Modernization implementation (Operations)
• Led the end-to-end RFP process for a predictive maintenance & asset health platform — requirements, evaluation criteria, and vendor selection.
• Negotiated the SOW — scope, timeline, and commercial terms (license split, credits) with the selected vendor.
• Product Owner for the POV pilot — defined scope, KPIs (OEE/downtime), success criteria, and go/no-go milestones.
• Aligned global and site stakeholders across engineering, operations, procurement, and legal — incl. GxP and scalability requirements for multi-site rollout.

Region: EU