Project Management Director in Germany

• Elevator emergency call reorganization project: Project to evaluate and define a new technical solution for connecting elevator emergency calls for all facilities of DB InfraGO passenger stations.

• Objectives: Secure, redundant connection of all locations across Germany. Definition of the technical solution, documentation, subject-matter support and management of specialist and line organizations.

• Identification and commissioning of technical solutions.

• Management of documentation and approval of the technical solution in DB regulations.

• Definition and tracking of the roadmap for describing the solution.

• Preparation of a rollout plan to avoid shutdowns.

• Coordination and implementation of decision proposals for steering committees.

• Communication of the solution to all committees and regional areas.

International Family-Owned Company | Revenue of more than 1 billion EUR | CONFIDENTIAL

• Established and operationalized a company-wide PMO; took over the initial management function during ongoing operations.
• Structured a portfolio of more than 15 strategic transformation initiatives across several countries and functions.
• Designed project intake, decision levels, responsibilities and regular steering meetings; management reporting as well as risk and dependency management.
• Established the PMO environment with Microsoft 365, Planner Premium, Teams, SharePoint and Forms; planned reporting and prepared the structured handover to an internal PMO organization.

Context: Corporate transformation - Establishment of a central unit for Corporate Management & Transformation

• ▪ Established and managed the newly created Corporate Management & Transformation department on an interim basis
• ▪ Defined the Target Operating Model as well as the tasks, responsibilities and governance structures of the new unit
• ▪ Established company-wide project portfolio management for the transparent prioritization and management of strategic projects and initiatives
• ▪ Developed governance, decision-making and escalation processes for transformation and change initiatives
• ▪ Designed company-wide process management with an end-to-end process map, defined process responsibilities and consistent process governance
• ▪ Further developed standards and methods for project management, change management and organizational development
• ▪ Managed and supported strategic transformation, digitalization and organizational projects across the company
• ▪ Established systematic benefits realization to measure and track the benefits of change initiatives
• ▪ Advised the management on the prioritization, governance and organizational integration of company-wide change initiatives---

Time-limited interim assignment filling a vacant program leadership position: joint leadership of a complex software project and orchestration of several agile teams (business, development, and DevOps teams), as well as actively driving change processes.

• Program Management & Planning: Responsibility for creating and updating milestone, resource, and budget plans to ensure project objectives using agile and hybrid methods.
• Cross-functional Collaboration: Promoting cooperation and knowledge sharing across teams; resolving blockers through proactive conflict management and targeted facilitation.
• Stakeholder Management & Transparency: Ensuring transparent and audience-appropriate communication within and outside the project organization using modern project management tools.

Project: Consulting & Concept Development Programmatic Print / Donor Communication

Tasks:

• Analysis of existing print advertising materials and donor communication
• Development of a new thank-you letter and dialogue marketing concept
• Advice on emotional and target-group-specific communication with donors
• Concept development for a cross-channel on- and offline marketing mix
• Coordination of print, email, and CRM communication as part of new marketing processes
• Support in introducing new communication workflows around the future email software
• Creation of briefing materials and campaign approaches for different target groups
• Research, selection, and management of suitable print and production service providers
• Advice on personalization and automation options in the programmatic print environment

Technical implementation:

• Coordination of print and digital processes
• Management of external service providers and print providers
• Support in integrating new marketing and communication processes

Reporting:

• Analysis of existing response mechanisms
• Assessment of optimization potential in donor communication
• Recommendations to improve impact, personalization, and efficiency Markets: Germany [link]

AI telephone assistant platform

Claude Code, Google AI Studio, Python, LLM / Voice-AI, PostgreSQL

• Conception and hands-on development of an AI-supported telephone assistant platform (voice AI / LLM) – from idea and architecture to MVP/product.
• Built agentic workflows and full automations with Claude Code and Google AI Studio.
• Also delivered AI-supported work in client engagements: used Claude Code for governance documentation, requirement drafts, and automations.

• Transition strategic business development: product before customer in <4 months instead of 10
• Transition strategic business development: development cost reduction to plan: 40% (-250 k EUR)
• Executive mentor & coach for CEO & CPO: CEO too busy to improve - portfolio, company structure and strategy
• Executive mentor & coach for CEO & CPO: PO→CPO transition to take over full product responsibility for Lohnpulse
• Interim CIO: scouting / onboarding / handover of general contractor service providers to CPO
• Interim CIO: transition from MVP to a fully operable product by the CPO

Successful delivery of projects on behalf of customers:

• -> 2023 – present: Project management for the consolidation of sites/data centers for a large telecommunications provider (infrastructure project, customer: Telefonica)

• Opening and preparing new sites

• Application migrations

• Decommissioning and handover of old sites

• -> 2021 – 2022: IT multi-project management for a large car leasing company (customer: Athlon)

• Migration of applications to the cloud and to another data center

• Additional projects to expand and optimize the application landscape

• -> 2021: Project management for the development of a platform providing internet access on aircraft operated by various airlines (customer: m3Connect/German Telekom)

• -> 2017-2020: Responsible management of an IP network consolidation (infrastructure project, customer: Cisco/Vodafone) at a large telecommunications provider

• Planning and coordination of migrations and their rollout

• Team leadership and integration of different teams (network operators, hardware and service providers)

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

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.

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.

• Lead and coordinate complex cross-functional projects within LiDAR and software development environments.
• Develop and maintain critical project schedules, monitor work packages, track project baselines, and manage milestone progression via Gantt plans.
• Drive robust project controls by preparing detailed project forecasts, cost analyses, workload planning, and resource tracking.
• Monitor and report core KPIs related to cost, timing, quality, and delivery performance to ensure alignment with organizational goals.
• Design and present executive dashboards, management reports, and steering committee presentations for senior leadership.
• Facilitate seamless communication and alignment between R&D, Quality, Purchasing, Manufacturing, Finance, and international stakeholders.
• Proactively identify risks, maintain comprehensive risk registers, and contribute to mitigation planning and escalation processes.
• Coordinate engineering change requests, assessing their operational impact on project scope, timing, resources, and budgets.
• Drive efficiency through AI-powered process improvements using LEA Suite, structured prompting, workflow automation, and automated meeting documentation.

• 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

• Led the data migration from ImageMaster to SharePoint in compliance with strict data security standards
• Developed an optimized process concept to increase efficiency
• Created and managed a detailed project plan with MS Project, including milestone and resource management
• Coordinated all stakeholders and created governance documentation up to go-live
• Used SAP Project System for project control
• Led a team of 4 people