Google Gemini Expert

• Fixed a broken “ScrumBan” process, then established a pure Kanban system; increased output in the Kanban flow by 22 % in four weeks

• Increased team autonomy and decision-making ability by implementing new decision-making strategies, resulting in up to 25 % better outcomes

• Redesigned retrospectives (including through one-on-one coaching and workshops), leading to consistent implementation of the resulting action items

• Intensive coaching of Product Owners (POs) to develop and promote “Empowered Teams,” alongside leadership development to provide a realistic perspective (“disillusionment”) on agile frameworks and methods

• Supported change management processes to promote an agile company culture among management and teams, while improving internal communication to increase transparency and effectiveness in agile processes

Agile Transformation: introducing agile principles and transforming traditional IT departments into Scrum and Kanban teams

IT Operating Model: redesigning the IT organization and introducing modern delivery structures and roles

Flight Levels: building up Flight Levels practices within IT to align strategy, coordination and operational execution

Leadership & Coaching: recruiting Agile Coaches and coaching Scrum Masters and IT leaders

ERP Operations: acting as Interim Product Owner for the existing ERP landscape and ensuring business continuity

ERP Transformation: reorganizing and supporting the ERP migration as a Project Manager; Phase 1 (financial accounting) live since October 2025

Operational Core (ERP): establishing dedicated teams for ERP Support, Feature Development, and ERP Migration

Modern Workplace: initiating the transition towards a Microsoft 365-based cloud workplace environment

Integration: establishing a dedicated team to drive integration and connectivity initiatives

Warehouse Operations: building a cross-functional team to support logistics and warehouse-related capabilities

Maintenance & Operations (M&O): introducing a dedicated team for system engineering, security, stable operations and continuous improvement

AI Initiatives: identifying and promoting practical Artificial Intelligence use cases across the IT department

As Interim Head of IT for a German medium-sized industrial distributor, I am responsible for 31 IT employees and lead the digital and organizational transformation, reporting directly to executive leadership. I took over an IT department with almost no basic structures – no clear roles, processes, documentation or ticket system – and with significant technical debt that tied up most of its capacity. Introduced agile principles and ways of working in the IT organization and transformed the traditionally structured IT department into cross-functional Scrum and Kanban teams focused on transparency, collaboration, and customer value delivery.

Redesigned the entire IT organization by establishing a modern operating model, introducing new roles such as Product Owner, Scrum Master and Solution Architect and strengthening the organization through strategic hiring and targeted capability development. Recruited and onboarded Agile Coaches to accelerate the transformation and personally managed and coached Scrum Masters as well as IT department leaders to foster servant leadership, self-management and a culture of continuous improvement.

Aligned IT-internal planning across eight teams to three Flight Levels based on Klaus Leopold (strategy, coordination, team), laying the foundation for later company-wide portfolio management. Consolidated the backlog of more than 10 workstreams and prioritized it by business value and cost of delay. Introduced a ticketing system to increase transparency and enable data-driven decision-making, flow-based work management, and greater accountability at all levels.

Established and supported multiple cross-functional teams, including the Operational Core (ERP) domain with dedicated streams for Support, Feature Development and ERP Migration, as well as teams responsible for Warehouse Operations, Maintenance & Operations (M&O) including system engineering and security, Modern Workplace, Data Quality and integration initiatives. Worked closely with Agile Coaches to support team development, remove impediments, and continuously improve delivery effectiveness.

Acted as Interim Product Owner for the operation and enhancement of the existing ERP landscape while supporting the ERP migration as a Project Manager. Reorganized the project organization and had the already negotiated contract with the implementation partner realigned with a focus on approach and overall responsibility; Phase 1 (financial accounting) has been live since October 2025. Collaborated with the selected implementation partner to design and establish the project organization and target operating model for the ERP transformation, introducing agile delivery structures and ways of working. Facilitated the alignment between business, IT and the external vendor and played a key role in negotiating the contractual framework and delivery model to ensure a sustainable foundation for the transformation program.

Initiated the strategic modernization of the workplace environment through the adoption of Microsoft 365 cloud capabilities, establishing the foundation for enhanced collaboration, scalability and future digital services.

Launched AI initiatives to identify practical business use cases and promote the responsible adoption of Artificial Intelligence across the IT department. Encouraged self-management and empowered teams to take ownership of decisions, delivery and continuous improvement.

Project: Digital Sovereignty – Toll Collect

Workshop: Digital Sovereignty Recognize dependencies, reduce risks, remain capable of acting

Format

• One-day practical seminar

Target group

• Executive management
• IT managers
• Data protection officers
• Compliance functions

Content and objectives

• Systematic analysis of digital dependencies
• Assessment of legal and operational risks
• Development of a concrete plan to increase digital sovereignty
• Mapping of the entire IT infrastructure by participants
• Identification of critical dependencies on non-European providers
• Creation of a prioritized risk matrix based on:
• GDPR
• NIS2
• EU AI Act
• Joint development of options for action – from a hybrid model to complete migration to European solutions
• Development of an individual sovereignty roadmap with:
• Responsibilities
• Milestones
• Budget framework

Agenda

• Preliminary self-assessment (current infrastructure)
• Digital sovereignty? Nothing but an illusion
• Digital sovereignty 2026 – Germany’s dangerous dependency in focus
• Digital sovereignty & open source
• What is digital sovereignty?
• Three questions raised by digital sovereignty
• Reflection: Digital sovereignty in your own life
• Why is digital sovereignty existential now?
• Practical examples of digital sovereignty
• Schleswig-Holstein initiative
• Benefits of digital sovereignty for your company
• Assessing strategy options (cost-benefit matrix)
• Sovereign provider? 10 questions
• What does digital sovereignty specifically mean for your company?
• How do you shape digital sovereignty?
• Digital sovereignty and psychological safety
• Psychological safety: The key to high-performing teams
• Why psychological safety in your company?
• Benefits of psychological safety
• Invitation to group work: PsySafety Check (PS-C)
• The “Braintrust” experiment
• Creating a risk matrix
• Creating a roadmap & project plan
• European alternatives to US Big Tech
• 10-point plans:
• NIS2
• EU AI Act
• GDPR
• ISO 27001

• Architected, Deployed and Supported hosted email solutions in Linux and Windows environments with enterprise-grade anti-spam and security architecture for service-provider environments.
• Managed Microsoft Azure environments including Virtual Machines, VNets, Storage, VPN, and Firewall configuration.
• Administered Microsoft Exchange Server (2010-2019), Microsoft Exchange Server SE, Active Directory, PKI, Hyper-V and Zimbra environments with disaster recovery planning and operational support.
• Led Microsoft 365 onboarding and migration projects from Exchange, IMAP, and Zimbra platforms to Microsoft 365.
• Prepare security and compliance to support Microsoft 365 Copilot.
• Implement information protection and data loss prevention by using Microsoft Purview.
• Implement retention, eDiscovery, and communication compliance in Microsoft Purview.
• Integrated Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS), Active Directory Certificate Services (AD CS), and Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS).
• Delivered secure hybrid infrastructure solutions integrating Microsoft Windows Server and Linux-based enterprise environments.
• Supported enterprise integration projects involving Debian, Ubuntu, CentOS, Red Hat, Barracuda ESG, Qmail and Zimbra Platforms.

• Advise early-stage startups on product vision, roadmapping, and GTM strategy, combining PMP and Stanford PM training with hands-on technical execution.
• Lovable: built and led a 200+ member community program for AI-native founders, bridging real-time founder feedback into product roadmap decisions.
• Lead customer discovery and OKR design engagements, scoping AI integration opportunities across client products.

Developed the product vision and outcome strategy for a new registry platform, designed a management workshop for strategic alignment, conducted BPMN process mapping across systems and roles, analyzed user story practices and further developed them on an outcome basis, and brought together stakeholders from business departments, management and the external development partner.

Skills: Product Strategy, Outcome Roadmapping, Stakeholder Workshops, BPMN/Process Analysis, Miro, Linear

Building a company to "support people over 50 as they start a new career"

Focus: "AI first" approaches to establish all relevant processes reliably in the shortest possible time

Core areas:

• Business development (including competitor monitoring, channel selection, B2B and B2C strategies)

• Marketing (building and optimizing funnels, organic and with paid ads)

• Sales (direct B2B and B2C outreach resulting from marketing funnels)

• Fulfillment (platform and process development, AI optimization)

• Product management (developing the offering and MOAT)

• One-to-one coaching and mentoring, platform development and operations

• Wrote the book chapter “Entwicklung eines digitalen Geschäftsmodells” for the Springer Gabler collection “Praxishandbuch Digitales Management”.

Stabilization of a critical logistics outsourcing setup in the context of an SAP S/4HANA transformation. The focus was on restoring a reliable operational fact base between the client, logistics service provider, international supplier plants and the SAP/IT organization.

• Coordination between the client, global logistics service provider, international supplier plants, SAP/IT teams, Quality Management and the operational shop floor.
• Management, monitoring and operational correction of Inbound Deliveries; integration of Outbound Delivery processes.
• Analysis of interface, posting, batch and master data errors between SAP S/4HANA, logistics service provider, supplier plants and internal business functions.
• Significant reduction of critical inventory differences between the client and logistics service provider.
• Improved operational management capability in the logistics environment and creation of a common fact base.
• Reduction of recurring error patterns in the areas of Inbound Deliveries, inventory, interfaces, batch/posting logic and service provider processes.

• Goal/Motivation: PAYONE urgently needs a 360° view of its customers. PAYONE has not had an overarching master data strategy so far. It is not possible to identify customers across all relevant systems.

The organization should be enabled to identify customers across all relevant systems. Establishing the basis for master data management at PAYONE

• Challenge: Due to company acquisitions, the system landscape is very heterogeneous. The company is very dynamic and burdened with many system harmonization and integration projects, meaning resource shortages and changes in project priorities repeatedly make this an almost impossible task.

Due to BaFin findings, the project has a central task and role. The initial focus is on migrating all customers, including their AML/KYC data, from the master-data-leading backend systems to Salesforce. This is intended to resolve one of the largest findings and establish the relevant ODD/EDD processes.

In addition, customer data must be harmonized in Salesforce. Some customers were entered multiple times as a result of earlier migrations. The aim is for only one customer record to remain in Salesforce and for the relevant information from the backend systems to show which products the customer uses and in which processing systems they receive Payone services.

Project: ONE Customer

Budget: 1,5 Mio. €

Team: 10/30 employees (full-time/part-time); 4 vendors/providers

Integration: 8 (subsystems/interfaces)

Applications: Salesforce; SAP S4/HANA; in-house developments

Tools: MS Office; Jira, Confluence, Sharepoint

Methods: Hands-on; Agile (SAFe); Prince2

• I support medium-sized clients with their funding needs.
• I evaluate operational business processes and translate complex legal and regulatory requirements into business requirements, target models and actionable roadmap epics.
• I use Generative AI tools and automation in a targeted way to efficiently create requirements documentation, process analyses, evaluations, meeting preparation materials, customer analyses and decision papers.

• Industry: Insurance, Trade, IT
• Customers & Projects: Consulting and selling insurance and similar services
• Main tasks: Insurance consulting (health insurance, retirement planning, wealth building); commercial services, inside and field sales; sales data analysis and forecasting; customer consulting and support; opening a new sales headquarters for private and business customers; business development & innovation management; business use case development; process optimization; stakeholder management; team leadership and training; preparation and delivery of trainings;
• Technologies used: Microsoft Office 365, Microsoft Teams, Jira, Draw.IO, Camunda 8, Java (8, 17,21,25), Git, Spring Boot, Spring Batch, Spring Data REST, Spring Web, Spring Security, J-Unit, Playwright, Lombock, Vaadin, H2, PostgreSQL (16, 17 18), pgAdmin, Docker, LLMs, JasperSoft Studio, JasperReports

Reporting and controlling using Power BI for a production ERP system

• Analysis of ERP data and interfaces for use in Power BI dashboards
• Evaluation and migration of existing reports (e.g. Excel) to Power BI
• Development of an authorization concept for selective data access
• Documentation and training on the use and customization of Power BI dashboards

Label: Power BI, Excel, SelectLine ERP, Microsoft SQL, SQL Server Management Studio

Non-custodial staking and digital-asset infrastructure for Web3 wallets, exchanges, and institutional custodians

Advised the COO on delivery for staking and digital-asset infrastructure serving institutional custodians, exchanges and wallets across regulated markets.

• Ran the company-wide KPI and OKR process across the organisation, raising company-wide OKR achievement from 50% to 65%.
• Designed and implemented OKR/KPI frameworks enabling structured quarterly delivery cycles and executive-level execution visibility.
• Defined, documented and improved the P2P governance and operating processes across programmes and operations.