Agile Leader, Transformation Management Expert, Agile Project Manager, SAFe Program Consultant - Trainer & Coach, Agile Coach

2/2023 – 6/2024

As Head of Transformation, I’ve steered transformative change within a dynamic start-up over 15 months, serving a high-profile automotive client. The organization, with a multi-million annual turnover and over 1,000 employees, operates as a high-speed Marketing Operations Machine, accelerating the client’s marketing operations and sales transformation.

With a dedicated Transformation Department that I established and led with a budget exceeding €1MM, we built a cornerstone team from scratch. Today, this department includes 10 consultants and a network of company-wide ambassadors, all committed to driving change.

As member of the management team, I’ve led the organization through rapid transformations in a fast-paced environment. By leveraging strategic leadership, agile methodologies, financial acumen, and innovation, I’ve fostered a culture of continuous improvement and operational excellence. I’ve embraced a visionary mindset, aligning with the core values of being Visionary, Proud, and United. My personal core values—strategic thinking, valuing people, result-orientation, and integrity—have guided the organization to achieve sustained excellence.

Strategic Leadership and Vision

1) Vision Framework Implementation: In alignment with the CEO, utilized Jim Collins' Vision Framework to establish a clear and compelling direction for the organization, defining a core ideology and an envisioned future that inspired and unified the company's efforts. Led the management team in creating strategic themes to guide the organization for the next 3-5 years, ensuring all efforts were tightly aligned with achieving impactful, long-term objectives.

2) OKR Framework Execution: Implemented the OKR framework to make this vision actionable, connecting the strategic themes directly to measurable quarterly goals. These goals were executed across all departments, ensuring alignment and measurable progress throughout the organization.

Achievement: OKR Implementation and Quarterly Success: Fostered a connected, agile, and outcome-driven culture across the company, evidenced by successive quarterly achievements: 25% in Q1, 40% in Q2, 65% in Q3, and 60% in Q4. This approach enhanced departmental synergy and operational agility.

Project Management Office and Operational Excellence

1) Agile PMO Establishment and Governance: Co-created with the COO, built and led a transformative Agile PMO focused on delivering value and achieving outcomes. This PMO guided teams across agencies, markets, and continents through a comprehensive shift to a new delivery model aligned with business goals. Implemented robust governance and risk management practices to restructure staffing levels for scalability, while maintaining high-quality standards and ensuring strategic alignment through centralized decision-making and budgeting processes.

2) Driving Alignment with Essential SAFe Framework: Implemented and coordinated multiple Scrum Teams within the Essential SAFe framework, including large-scale Big Room Planning events every 8 weeks with over 100 participants. These events integrated customers and suppliers to ensure transparency, alignment, and continuous improvement ensuring that all teams were working towards common objectives.

Achievement: Enhanced Cross-Functional Alignment and Continuous Improvement: Achieved a 50% improvement in cross-functional alignment, increasing stakeholder engagement by 40% and customer satisfaction by 35%.

Strategic Financial Management

1) Financial Strategy Support and Collaboration: Partnered with the CFO to facilitate the organizational financial strategy by leveraging the OKR framework to guide departments in meeting quarterly financial goals and strategic objectives. This collaboration enhanced financial operations and accountability company-wide, strengthening financial discipline and transparency.

Achievement: Leadership in Financial Accountability: Streamlined P&L responsibilities across departments, mandating clear financial accountability. This allowed project managers to focus on operational excellence, refining financial management practices and enhancing overall financial discipline.

Agile Leadership

1) Agile and Lean Methodologies Implementation: Directed substantial digital transformation projects by applying Agile and lean management methodologies to improve operational efficiency and nurture a culture of continuous improvement.

2) Servant Leadership and Culture Transformation: Advocated for a servant leadership model within the management team, promoting a growth mindset, systems thinking, and a feedback-driven culture. Guided teams in adopting hypothesis-driven approaches, which fostered greater innovation and responsiveness to market changes. Actively participated in the culture core team to reinforce organizational culture and core values.

Achievement: Agile Consulting Services Development: Capitalized on agile transformation initiatives by launching a suite of agile consulting services and training offerings. This strategic extension of services addressed growing market demands and client needs for agile expertise, directly leading to a 30% growth in agile consulting service offerings and increased revenue through service diversification.

Strategic Change Management and Communication

1) Strategic Change Leadership: Played a pivotal role, alongside the COO, in managing the most significant transformation of the agency. This involved implementing a new delivery model both internally and for top-tier automotive clients, integrating performance marketing and digitalized sales for superior customer relationship management. Implemented robust change communication strategies to ensure transparency, alignment, and engagement through regular updates, feedback loops, and stakeholder engagement sessions.

Achievement: Strategic Transformation and Efficiency Gains: Successfully navigated the transition of multiple autonomous European markets into a centralized decision framework, significantly reducing operational costs by 20% and improving process efficiencies.

Organizational Development

1) Organizational Structure Transformation: Executed the transition from a traditional hierarchy to an agile organization, fostering an agile culture through continuous improvement. Conducted extensive training, workshops, and public speaking to promote agile practices, ensuring long-term sustainability of the transformation.

2) Agile Transformation and Implementation: Orchestrated the agile transformation by adopting and integrating a suite of methodologies. This required reorganizing departments to align with strategic business goals, maximizing value creation. Utilized agile change management practices, including iterative development, feedback loops, and Design Thinking workshops to enhance adaptability and responsiveness.

Achievement: Employee Engagement and Adoption Rates: Achieved a 90% adoption rate of continuous learning methods such as retrospectives and futurespectives. Additionally, 30% of teams conducted experiments driven by consultants from my team to gradually integrate agility and enhance value delivery. These services were also monetized, generating additional revenue.

Achievement: Training and Skill Development: Established robust training programs, achieving a 70% proficiency rate in agile practices. This initiative resulted in a 35% increase in on-time project deliveries and a 30% reduction in project cycle times for the teams actively experimenting with agility.

Innovation Excellence

1) Standardized Innovation Process: Implemented a company-wide innovation platform and process using the "Innovation Funnel" or "Innovation Stage-Gate Process", providing a structured pathway for managing innovation from idea generation to implementation. This ensured alignment with strategic goals and optimized resource allocation.

Agile Methodologie, Analysen der Wertschöpfungsstruktur, Change Management, Design Thinking, Führungstraining, Innovationsmanagement, Kanban, Lean Prozesse, Lean Startup, Management-Schulung, Management (allg.), Marketing-Organisationsanalyse, Marketing, Moderationstraining, Organisationsentwicklung, Personalentwicklung, Personalführung, PMO, Programm-Management, Projektleitung / Teamleitung (IT), Projektmanagement - Krisenmanagement, Projektmanagement (IT), Workflows, Prozesscoaching, Prozessoptimierung, Schulung / Coaching (allg.), Schulungskonzepte, Scrum, Team Building, Transformation Management, Transition Management, Strategisches Management, Web Entwicklung

7/2019 – 2/2023

At Sapient, serving as a Senior Manager of Agile Program Management, I spearheaded large-scale digital transformations across various industries, including electronics distribution, home appliances, and telecommunications. My role involved managing complex programs, driving lean-agile transformations within established companies, and delivering impactful solutions while fostering innovative, customer-centric environments.

In my project roles, I led globally distributed teams, serving as an Account Delivery Lead, Agile Transformation Lead, and Program Lead & Release Train Engineer (RTE). As an Account Delivery Lead, I created a lean startup from scratch within an organization, strictly following lean startup principles to disrupt the market. My role as an Agile Transformation Lead involved guiding organizations through their agile journey, implementing tailored frameworks, and driving cultural change towards agility. As a Program Lead & RTE, I orchestrated the relaunch of a major online platform within an Essential SAFe environment, ensuring seamless coordination across multiple teams.

Throughout my tenure at Sapient, I also held several responsibilities independent of specific projects. I supported pitch processes as a leading expert in transformation, served as a People Manager for a team of 10, and acted as a Mentor, Coach, and Trainer for local and global courses on SAFe and transformation.

My work at Sapient consistently involved enhancing efficiency and alignment through agile methodologies. By leading end-to-end transformations, developing new operating models, and providing leadership and mentorship for Lean-Agile Transformation, I delivered high-impact solutions. My strategic implementation of agile frameworks effectively led to improved alignment across teams and departments, faster time-to-market, higher product quality, and increased employee engagement across diverse industries.

Lean Startup rs-thinkhub.com
• Account Delivery Lead, managing a complex program with tailored agile frameworks and tools
• Established a digital platform and community using lean startup principles

Innovating with a Lean Startup
o Led a C-Suite initiative to demonstrate the power of lean-agile frameworks in a traditional organization
o Crafted a strategy and roadmap for a centralized digital factory, aimed at revolutionizing industrial engineering
o Built a marketplace connecting numerous suppliers with a broad customer base seeking electronic components, and created a think hub for product data enrichment, community support, discussions on new technologies and industry learning
o Leveraged a broad pool of ideas to disrupt the market, engaging researchers, experience strategists, and various RS suppliers
o Identified and prioritized top 10 ideas with the biggest impact and highest contribution to corporate strategy
o Built and scaled four MVPs, on a Java tech stack and Outsystems platform, hosted in AWS cloud (SaaS architecture)

Account Management and Leadership
o Managed program delivery, aligning strategy with execution, and ensuring scope and risk management
o Ensured profitability by managing service quality, costs, and profit and loss
o Facilitated resource planning and developed hiring strategies to build a capable team
o Supported sales in exploring, validating, and pursuing new opportunities

Digital Business Transformation – European Marketing Organization
• Agile Transformation Lead
• Transformed and enabled the European marketing organization to adopt a new agile operating model, emphasizing value-based and customer-centric Customer Journey Management.

Agile Operating Model Transformation
o Designed and implemented continuous agile maturity assessments, driving appropriate continuous improvement measures (CIP).
o Developed new operating models, managed resources and budgets efficiently, and oversaw transformation program governance, ensuring optimal project delivery and team performance
o Optimized the flow of value from portfolio to team level, adopting hypothesis-driven approaches for make-and-break moments, measuring success with metrics, and leveraging fast feedback to pivot as needed
o Adopted the SAFe framework for portfolio, solution, and team levels, integrating prioritization mechanics to support investment decisions based on Lean-Agile budgeting processes
o Provided extensive training programs, coaching for agile teams across all roles and functions, from leadership to team members
o Acted as a Subject Matter Expert for customer workshops and thought leadership initiatives, supporting business development and fostering trusted relationships

Digital Business Transformation – Online Platform
• Program Lead & Release Train Engineer (RTE)
• Led the transformation to an agile scaling environment (Essential SAFe) and relaunched the online platform (o2online.com)

Online Platform Relaunch
o Sequentially decommissioned legacy systems and services to modernize the infrastructure
o Implemented customer-centric functionalities on the new platform, enhancing user experience and engagement
o Utilized state-of-the-art architecture, technologies, and trends (e.g., SaaS), ensuring the platform's scalability and adaptability
o Enhanced data security and compliance, upgrading security protocols to ensure data protection and meet industry standards
o Improved performance and reliability through analytics-driven optimization, enhancing load times and reducing downtime based on user insights and performance metrics

Agile Scaling Environment
o Closed the gap between strategy and execution by creating a channel roadmap using the OKR framework, measuring goal achievement with metrics, and executing within an Essential SAFe framework to enable strategic agility and value contribution
o Merged agile and classical stage gate processes, incorporating Lean-Agile budgeting
o Managed resources, capabilities, and budgets, optimizing project delivery and efficiency
o Served as a servant leader and coach for the Agile Release Train, fostering a culture of continuous improvement

Projektmanagement - Angebotsmanagement, Projektmanagement - Krisenmanagement, Account Management, Agile Methodologie, Analysen der Wertschöpfungsstruktur, Business to Business, Business-To-Consumer, Change Management, Design Thinking, Digitale Transformation, Führungstraining, Innovationsmanagement, IT-Strategieberatung, Portfolio-Optimierung, Lean Prozesse, Lean Startup, Management (allg.), Marketing-Organisationsanalyse, Organisation (allg.), Organisationsentwicklung, Personalführung, PMO, Programm-Management, Projektdurchführung, Projektleitung / Teamleitung, Projektleitung / Teamleitung (IT), Projektmanagement - Konzeption / Vorgehensmodell, Workflows, Prozessberatung, Prozesscoaching, Prozessoptimierung, Release-Management, Schulung / Coaching (allg.), Scrum, Transformation Management, Strategisches Management, Value Based Management (VBM), Workshop - Kundenorientierung

9/2017 – 6/2019

At ETAS, I drove corporate change across software, embedded systems, and hardware development, implementing a Full SAFe Configuration that impacted all levels of the organization. As an Agile Leader within the Lean-Agile Center of Excellence, I supported and coached a team of 16 department heads, focusing on high-criticality backlog topics, establishing baseline metrics, and implementing Lean Portfolio Management. These efforts fostered an agile culture, drove continuous improvement, and improved employee engagement and collaboration.

Lean-Agile Center of Excellence
• Agile Leader (Scrum Master), at the Lean-Agile Center of Excellence (LACE), leading a team of 16 department heads
• Managed the LACE with a Scrumban approach, facilitating the organization's transition to SAFe

o Acted as Agile Leader (Scrum Master), with the Head of Transformation serving as the Product Owner for LACE.
o Supported and coached the transformation team to embrace agility and deliver valuable outcomes, ensuring effective collaboration and results
o Focused on high-criticality backlog topics, such as establishing baseline metrics to measure performance and drive continuous improvement from a lean perspective, establishing the Large Solution Layer, and implementing Lean Portfolio Management
o Enabled and coached the team to work with corresponding SAFe roadmaps, resulting in a hypothesis-driven approach and a roadmap based on objective outcomes that guided the transformation
o Established and led a Portfolio Kanban system to manage Portfolio Epics, deriving them into Program Epics to test hypotheses and pull other valuable features for implementation, ensuring a continuous feedback loop
o Guided the team to translate Program Epics into User Stories to ensure adaptability and continuous value delivery
o Introduced, used, and coached the team on SAFe tools, such as Weighted Shortest Job First (WSJF) for prioritization
o Supported the harmonization of SAFe implementation across Bosch Group, sharing best practices and aligning strategies

Agile Change Leadership
• SAFe Program Consultant - Agile Transformation Coach & Trainer
• Acted as an enterprise change agent, guiding the continuous transformation process with a Full SAFe Configuration

o Communicated the business need, urgency, and vision for change, establishing and supporting the LACE
o Co-Created and executed the transformation backlog, ensuring alignment with strategic business goals
o Identified value streams and Agile Release Trains (ARTs) to optimize the flow of value
o Facilitated workshops and training sessions, including Leading SAFe, SAFe for Teams, SAFe Scrum Master, SAFe Advanced Scrum Master, SAFe Product Owner/Product Manager, and Introduction to SAFe
o Prepared for and launched ARTs, coaching leadership, and facilitating the creation of new Agile teams
o Coached ART execution, guiding teams, Product Owners, Product Managers, and Release Train Engineers (RTEs) to maintain vision, roadmap, and program backlogs
o Promoted customer-centricity and design thinking as part of Agile product delivery
o Extended Lean-Agile practices to the portfolio level, including Lean Budgets, Portfolio Vision, and Lean Portfolio Management.
o Supported the establishment and operation of communities of practice to enhance organizational understanding of agile roles

Agile Methodologie, Change Management, Design Thinking, Digitale Transformation, Embedded Systems, Kanban (Softwareentwicklung), Lean Prozesse, Lean Startup, Organisation (allg.), Organisationsentwicklung, PMO, Projektdurchführung, Projektmanagement, Projektmanagement - Konzeption / Vorgehensmodell, Projektorganisation, Projektplanung / -vorbereitung, Workflows, Prozessberatung, Prozesscoaching, Prozessmanagement, Prozessoptimierung, Schulung / Coaching (allg.), Scrum, Softwareentwicklung (allg.), Team Building, Transformation Management