Program Manager in Vienna

Technologies: Azure DevOps, Jira, Confluence, Office 365 (Teams, PowerPoint, Copilot, Excel, SharePoint, Forms, OneNote, PowerAutomate, Word), DataDog, Conceptboard, Python, AWS, Claude, Perplexity Methodology: Scrum

• Steering and supporting the organization in introducing Scrum and a SAFe-inspired quarterly roadmap and portfolio planning at program level.
• Servant leadership for Scrum teams and managers to achieve quarterly goals and measurably increase value creation for internal and external customers.
• Designing and building efficient communication and collaboration structures between multiple development teams and central stakeholders in the organization.
• Moderating and facilitating cross-functional workshops and management meetings to align on shared goals.
• Coaching leaders, Product Owners, and development teams on agile values, role understanding, and scaled ways of working (Scrum, SAFe, Business Agility).
• Removing structural obstacles at team and organizational level through targeted impediment management and escalation processes.
• Enabling teams to become more self-organized, accountable, and end-to-end responsible along the value streams.
• Individual coaching of key people (Product Owners, Chapter Leads, Scrum Masters) to strengthen their impact in the transformation program.
• Organization-wide identification, planning, and implementation of process, structure, and tool improvements to sustainably increase efficiency, throughput, and value creation.
• Close support for Product Owners in stakeholder management, business value prioritization, product strategy, roadmap planning, and effective collaboration with development teams.
• Introducing, governing, and scaling Azure DevOps as the central project and product management tool, including coaching the organization on usage, reporting, and alignment at all levels.

Achievements:

• Clear increase in visibility, transparency, and perceived value creation of the development teams within the overall organization.
• Noticeable improvement in communication between development, business, and other stakeholders.
• Optimization of work processes, workflow, and backlog structures, which reduced lead times, sharpened priorities, and sustainably increased team effectiveness.

• From 02/2023 to 05/2024: IT interim manager within an international construction chemicals group headquartered in Germany as Global TSA Manager in a carve-out project responsible for the IT workstream.

• End-to-end management of an international IT carve-out and TSA program, including transition of five service providers, governance and operating structures, service continuity, provider performance, SLA/KPI and cost management, SIAM and supplier management, security services, operational readiness, and transition into stable operations.

• From 06/2024: IT consulting in project management and IT service management areas, providing PM/PMO coaching and support.

• Program planning and management – time, costs, resources, sub-projects
• Stakeholder management – coordination and communication with executives, employees, and employee representatives
• Risk and opportunity management – identification and management of risks and success factors, as well as cultural change and transformation processes

• NIS2/IT-OT infrastructure project for network and firewall: PoC, roll-out, and blueprint
• Coordination of IT, OT/operations, information security, business units, and external suppliers
• Risk and escalation management
• Direct evidence of security, multi-vendor delivery, and operational context.

• Challenge: poor project results and team performance, very poor work environment
• Solution: introduction of agile planning processes, teaching agile principles within the SAFe framework
• Innovation: consistent use of agile methods; introduction of requirements engineering, story writing
• Leadership: interface with the board, program management Opel Europe, GM USA and international markets
• Result: most productive team in the ART; increased planning accuracy to over 85%
• Team size: 10

• Setup of a new Data Warehouse (Budget ~€15M 2025 – 2026)
• Backend modernization project (Budget ~€5M 2025 – 2026)
• Standard software rollout with custom programming (Budget ~€9M 2025 – 2026)