Head of Processes, Methods & Tools

Leading the process organization in continously improving the processes, methods & tools used at Elektrobit

Processes, Methods and Tools (PMT) is one of the two pillars of Quality at Elektrobit, with the second pillar being Quality Management and Assessments. I'm building the bridge from process defintion to sustainable process deployment and usage. Working with all stakeholders to continuously improve EB’s process landscape from a usability point of view. This includes:

• Leading the Process Definition & Continuous improvement team
• Driving the improvement of process efficiency & process effectiveness, incl. the identification of adequate KPIs
• Striving to decrease administration effort and increase value-add within my department
• Supervising a virtual team for definition, deployment, and management of tools at Elektrobit
• Contribute to assure ASPICE compliance and reaching the next levels
• Assuring the development of a well-skilled, accessible, and effective Quality Engineering Community
• Providing a state of the art infrastructure for process documentation

Head of Customer Projects, Ford

Responsible for winning and successfully executing projects with Ford Motor Company

Within EB the Customer Center Ford is responsible for winning and successfully executing projects with Ford Motor Company. I'm leading a team of Project Managers and Software Architects. As Head of the Customer Center I'm responsible to establish transparent and reliable planning of revenues and profit as well as competitive responses to customer RFQs. The focus is on an excellent project execution resulting in a predictable, long term and growing project business with Ford Motor Company. My duties included the following activities:

• Financial planning and tracking
• Assure profitable project execution
• Assure duely delivery of contracted work packages
• Assure high customer satisfaction and definition of measures in case of customer complaints
• Forster synergies between projects in the same region and / or for the same customer
• Strategic customer development planning together with Sales
• Competence, skill and capacity planning together with the Centers of Competence

Project Lead

Building and leading an international, joint project team to launch a major update for an Infotainment system.

The goal of the project was taking over the responsibility for an Infotainment system for a US automotive manufacturer. The scope included implementing new features, upgrade to new hardware and launching a new version of the software for the lead vehicle programs.

An additional goal was to support the customer in their efforts to increase in-house software development capabilities. I was working as one of the project leads in a joint team with the customer and my duties included:

• Building and leading a team of up to about 135 EB team members (>200 in the joint team)
• Setting up and growing development teams in India
• Close cooperation with sites in the US, Germany, Finland, India and China
• Coordinating work of feature teams as well as validation and support teams
• Resource planning and coordination of hiring activities with line management
• Responsible for planning and monitoring project budget
• Releasing software for frequent milestones deliveries to enable early customer feedback
• Shiproom meetings to prioritize incoming issues and plan for releases
• Reporting to the customer as well the internal management
• Defining processes, conducting a Spice Assessment and implementing process improvements

The team used Scrum during feature development and changed to Kanban for bug fixing and stabilization.

Project Lead

Leading efforts for porting a library to multiple customer platforms.

The goal was to develop a Geofencing functionality with a low resource foot print. The functionality was implemented as part of a major Infotainment system update. Library and map material were ported to support multiple other Infotainment systems of the US based customer. My duties included the following activities:

• Specification of a Geofencing functionality to run with minimal resources on embedded systems
• Definition of a low storage consumption map data format
• Reference implementation in Java
• Leading initial implementation efforts on Windows CE5
• Leading development teams (3-5 persons) in porting efforts to Linux, MQX and Windows CE6
• Coordinating with the suppliers of the other systems to support integration into their platforms
• Release and issue management
• Planning and tracking project budget

Process Improvement

Expert in of several process improvements groups e.g. for Lean Development and Automotive Spice.

In my role as senior project manager for international projects and with my experience in Scrum and Kanban I was part of several company-wide process improvement initiatives.

Lean Development Modell - Core Team

The LDM Initiative drove the implementation of lean and agile aspects within EB. It was focused on an ideal mix of processes and instruments, which can be used for working lean and agile within the automotive industry.

ASW goes Spice - Project Management Workgroup

The ASWgS initiative drove an update of the Quality Management System and Process Framework with focus on Automotive Spice compliance.

Project Lead

Leading an international project team to launch and maintain a global Infotainment system for a US based customer.

The goal of the project was to extend the Infotainment platform of a US automotive manufacturer to be used globally and support all relevant markets. I was working as project lead for an international project team in this software integration project. The work included the initial launch of the global platform as well as multiple maintenance releases, which addressed issues but also added further major functionality. My activities included:

• Managing suppliers and managing the integration of inbound deliveries
• Coordinating work of feature owners (Product Owners) and development teams
• Resource planning with the development and validation teams based in Germany and the US (up to 50-60 people)
• Planning and monitoring project budget
• Releasing software for frequent milestones to allow early customer feedback
• Shiproom meetings to prioritize incoming issues and plan for releases
• Reporting to the customer as well the internal management.

During feature development, we were using a multi-team Scrum methodology. For bug fixing and stabilization we switched to a Kanban work mode. The team made multiple successful releases for mass production to support vehicle programs around the globe (new vehicle programs as well as in cycle updates).

Project Lead

Acting as Product Owner and leading a project team to implement an emergency assistance call system.

After the successful completion of a prototype for an emergency call assistance system, I was nominated project lead for the implementation for mass production as part of a major version update of the customer's infotainment system. In on-site workshops with the customer, we reviewed and refined the initial version of the functional and HMI specification. It was my responsibility to break down the specification into testable requirements and reflect them in Atlassian Jira.

As Product Owner, I defined User Stories (linked to the requirements) and maintained a prioritized backlog. In sprints my teams of about 20 developers and testers implemented the functionality and frequently delivered software.

The emergency call assistance system was delivered to the customer integrated into their Infotainment system in two major variants - and EU/APA as well as a globally used variant. I was monitoring the progress and was responsible for the project budget as well as resource planning. On a weekly basis, I was reporting to the customer as well the internal program management.

Project Lead

Leading efforts for various prototype and proof-of-concept projects for a US based customer.

I was leading project teams in implementing prototypes and proof-of-concepts for a customer in the US. The area of expertise was mainly around of emergency call assistance systems and eCall functionality.

In my role as Product Owner this included discussing requirements with the customer and deriving work packages for the teams. I was monitoring the progress and reporting the customer and internal management.

Together with the customer I maintained a prioritized, shared backlog of issues and change requests. With my teams of around 3-5 people, we implemented the work packages in an iterative way and delivered working software frequently to the customer. This allowed the customer to early on get a feeling for the functionality and adapt their requirements based on what was learned from the software deliveries. Some of these prototypes were used as the basis for an implementation that made it into mass production in one of the next major software updates.

Scrum Master

Scrum/Kanban Master for a development team of an Infotainment System.

The goal of the project was the development of a variant for an Infotainment system for Europe and the Asia/Pacific region. I was working in the role of Scrum Master for development teams. My duties included the following activities:

• Supporting the team in grooming the backlog and estimating User Stories
• Moderating Scrum meetings: Sprint planning, Sprint review, Retrospective, Daily Stand-Up
• Tracking progress of the team
• Monitoring process compliance inside the team and at the interfaces to the outside world
• Removing impediments and supporting the team's continuous improvements

After the main feature development was done the team did a workshop on how to use Kanban. On the next day, we changed the work mode from Scrum towards Kanban methodology. I supported the team in the transition as well as to continuously improve our processes and way of working. Together with the team I identified bottlenecks and helped to remove them. We achieved a fast and steady flow of tickets for frequent milestone deliveries of quality software to the customer.

Requirements Manager

Managing requirements for adding mobile applications to an infotainment system.

The goal of the project was to develop the next version for an Infotainment system and enhancing functionality by adding mobile applications to the platform. I worked as Requirements Manager in a project team of approx. 15 people for a US-based customer. My duties included the following activities:

• Requirements elicitation to extract requirements from customer specifications
• Definition and implementation of a process to manage requirements integrated into the project's agile processes with focus on achieving a lightweight traceability
• Reflecting the derived requirements in Atlassian Jira
• Clarification of open points in requirements with the customer and team
• Tracking the requirement implementation and coverage

Scrum Master

Introducing and running Scrum in a Non-Development Team.

The central Quality and Knowledge Management department was responsible for defining central processes, implementing them in company-wide tooling and rolling them out to the operative departments. We changed the work mode of our non-development team and adapted the methods and practices of development teams to organize our work.

I worked as Scrum Master and coached the team in the transition to an agile work mode. Together we were continuously improving the way of working of the team and the interaction with other departments in the company. My duties included the following activities:

• Supporting the product owner in writing quality User Stories and maintaining the backlog
• Moderating Scrum meetings: Sprint planning, Sprint review, Retrospective, Daily Stand-Up
• Tracking progress of the team
• Removing impediments

The department was also driving the usage of agile methods in the company. I was a member of the internal "Scrum Community of Practice". In addition to the work as QM Scrum Master, I was supporting project teams as Scrum Master to introduce Scrum or as stand-in during vacations.

Knowledge Management

Supporting and improving the company Wiki platform and facilitating retrospectives.

I was responsible for the maintenance of the company Wiki platform (based on Mediawiki software) and providing support to the users. This included the adaptation of existing and development of new extensions to provide additional functionality and integrate the Wiki in the company infrastructure.

In addition to the technical maintenance of the platform, I was supporting projects to define structures for efficient usage as knowledge sharing and documentation platform. This included for example structures to allow easy re-use of software/components between projects.

I was organizing the "Wiki Community of Interest" to support a coordinated continuous improvement of the knowledge sharing platform.

Working in the Quality and Knowledge Management department I supported other teams and projects by moderating retrospectives and workshops as part of their continuous improvement efforts.

Processes & Tools

Introducing, maintaining and improving company-wide tools and processes.

The central Quality and Knowledge Management department was responsible for defining central processes, implementing them in company-wide tooling and rolling them out to the operative departments. My duties included tools & process work the following areas:

• Defining automotive spice compliant processes for change request and issue management as well as the implementation of the workflows in Atlassian Jira.
• Working with development projects to gather business needs for code reviews. Defining a company-wide process and introduce Atlassian Crucible as standard tool.
• Supporting the team in defining a process for Continuous Integration and introduction of Hudson/Jenkins.
• Process Definition for an Integrated Project Management Tool Chain. Introduction and roll-out of microTool in-Step and supporting projects during the transition. Developing and conduction of user trainings for the IPM Tool Chain.

I supported the preparation as well as the execution of the yearly ISO9001 audits as part of the annual recertification effort. In addition, I held the monthly training for new employees: "QM Einführung neuer Mitarbeiter".