In a wholesale business departement (not IT!!) the task was to get grip in a fast pacing project with overall around 80 FTE's to bring both worlds (fixed net and mobile) together for a "convergent" view including all assignments, business rules, commissioning, provisioning, etc.

This is a highly political turnaround project where internal resistance has to be managed as well to lead the Supplier or align with the internal centralized Vodafone-IT.
In addition a new CRM system was to be implemented, so the pressure was high as other parallel projects were going on as well.
Core goal was to create business processes for both worlds and a valuable business plan.

(BTW: The reference says it was an important business critical and first ever "in time" project for this business division)

Key charackteristics of this project:

• Turn around project
• Participation of roughly 80 FTE
• Management attention, highly political
• Resistance (e.g. from internal IT)
• High time pressure
• Cross company project
• Strong, but successful supplier management (HP)
• Agile poject (not only SCRUM)
• Negotiations to recover trust

Driven by the investor the responsibility was to form in a small team (personally leading the core IT-strategy, Business/IT-Alignment and Governance) the future of the IT of a formerly governmental Telco with around 36,000 employees consisting of a profitable mobile and a non profitable fixed Telco and some additional subsidiaries.

The challenge was to create an understanding about the role of a centralized IT (Shared Service Center) as there are 30 fixed-line "kingdoms" united to one fixed incumbent during the project.

Esp. to define the bussines setup, governance, sourcing strategies (HR related, Mergers), possible processes-improvements and financial / business planning for establishing the Shared Service Center made this project interesting.

Overall this was a challenging strategy project with a lot of political aspects, aiming to create a leading converged telco (headword: FMC, OTT-Strategies, eTOM, SID, Common Data Architecture BSS and OSS, ITIL/Cobit-Processes, Financial Mgmt, etc.) whose maturity was - similar to other incumbents worldwide – in the beginning very low.

Key charackteristics of this project:

• Real Strategy project (which is not possible in Europe or US anymore)
• Building up good relations to top CxO's (on investor level and on both -fixed + mobile- company levels)
• Highly political, as a big unification was ongoing at TCI-Holding and profitable MCI was fighting against overall governance
• Political aspects like sanctions
• Cultural differences

This several-month project was one which was very challenging, as there were a lot of disputes within the project team.

The aim was to start a long term relation to underlay the customers leading Prepaid application (Mobile Charging & Billing Solution) with a new Linux based O/S and consequentely using HP's server hardware and the related maintanance infrastructure.

Key charackteristics of this project:

• Demanding customer
• Very difficult staffing process (within worldwide HP's workforce)
• Scattered project team (Finland, France, US, Germany, Italy, India)
• Internal differences how to proceed, even fighting against high level management
• Resistance among customer's staff as they feared to become redundant and maybe be layed off
• Different meetings with high-level management of the customer in Munich to solve customers internal issues
• Very good relation to local Key Account Manager (in many ways on the same page)
• Technical challenges requiring world top skill expertise

This is only an example for smaller projects, in this case a PM GMP PMI Level D training.

Key charackteristics of this project:

• Customized trainings
• On-site, lasting serveral days
• Rolls Royce project methodology spedifics
• Preperation for PMP certification

Management of RUN activities within SAP's Global IT division and its service providers working over different time zones (mostly Canada/US, Europe, India, China, Singapore), being counterpart for business side.

Coordination of B2R transitions, project management, process improvements (e.g. discussing improvements of hand-over processes or SR fullfilment), financial monitoring, definition of SLA / Reporting, Escalation-Management, Supplier-Management (e.g. sourcing and integration issues with the responsible outsourcers), handling business requirements with internal and external Architects, etc.

Key charackteristics of this project:

• Overall Service management tasks (having luckily very good relation to Business Owners)
• Working most remotely via Lync with architects and outsourcer (as this is the working style at SAP)
• ITIL improvements, Service Catalogue, escalation management, etc. (typical SM/ITIL tasks)
• Internal staff in Singapore with very strong demands towards quality of outsourcer staff, task was here to build a bridge between both sides (and remind about contractual limits)
• Strong negotiations with outsourcer
• Introduction of a new Operation Model

DTAG was founding member of a worldwide Telco driven initiative which wants to bring them back into the game of mobile Apps.
Wholesale Applications Community aimed to have a single platform on all devices (handset, tablet, TV) and monetize so called network enablers (standardized API's to get access to the Telco backends, e.g. for InApp Billing, Identity, etc.).

The task was to broadly support those activities within DT (cross department activities) and across the member Telco 's (like AT&T, Orange, NTT, KT, etc.) in all relevant areas like technology, legal, business, marketing, press, …).

In addition it was part of the project to build up a new working group and define (mainly together with AT&T representatives) the direction.

Key charackteristics of this project:

• Product management (WAC developer platform)
• Strategies around enabler (e.g. InApp billing, Multi device capabilities, ...) in accordance with DT overall strategy
• Strategies to start engagements with Owner of eco systems llike Android / IOS etc.
• Building working relations with technical and commercial staff from Telco's worldwide
• Strong relation with AT&T as we fostered one working group within the member initiative
• Project management, team lead

In the challenging process (under time pressure) of preparing a big outsourcing contract to transfer the whole internal development departement to some of the typically well known IT blue chips the task was to manage the alignment of the different internal/external stakeholders from the different VF-departements.
This meant to assist and consult during the defintion of the service catalogs and the different contractual parts, carry out allignment workshops, consolidate, etc.

Key charackteristics of this project:

• Prepare and carry out alignment workshops
• Conflict management
• Political issues
• Time pressure
• Communication to all sides
• ITIL and law aspects
• Cross department work

This was a very mixed assignment.
The primary objective of this project was to support and mentoring a Telco operation in the preparation for an ISO20000 / BS1500 recertification.
This meant e.g. to prepare different o2-Audits or create (beside incident management) gap analyses within Telco-Operation, discuss such issues, evaluate risks, negotiate internal with all levels and as well with external suppliers or customers, design effective solutions / processes-improvements, restructurations, create business plans and bring this to life or carry out pogram management task or relevant projects.

Key charackteristics of this project:

• Coaching operations managment
• Key contact in case of major escalations
• Initiation of process improvements
• Audit preperation and support
• Strategic decision preperation
• Business planning, investment comittee