My day-to-day life is currently dominated by three large projects. At the moment I'm restructuring the existing environment in my Azure project. This means that the old runbooks have to be replaced and converted into data factory pipelines. Another project has grown to over 10 people and the developed recommendation system has to be rolled out country by country. This raises questions such as: How do we best organise ourselves to keep both the rollouts and further development stable? How can we minimise frictional losses and hold effective meetings? The third project involves looking for potential improvements: Is log file monitoring effective? Why has a data backlog formed on the test system? Is this a potential risk for the productive environment? What information do we still need to identify risks at an early stage?
The versatility and variety. The teams are cheerful and constructive - advice is never far away. Most of the time I can work independently and have a real influence on my projects, even before I became a project manager.
Self-organisation. Because my job is determined by several projects, I always have to be aware of what is most important at any given time. At the same time, I have to avoid too many context switches and know when it's time for a break. It doesn't help anyone if I get carried away. Another big challenge is open communication with the customer. We are consultants by profession and as a project manager in particular, I am in direct contact with customers a lot. That doesn't just have its advantages: not avoiding difficult topics, but bringing them to the table myself is still a challenge for me.
Our team is made up of different specialist areas in order to meet customer needs: from very experienced developers and architects to IT specialists, recent university graduate programmers and career changers. Everyone brings a different way of thinking and their own ideas.
Exciting, can definitely be interpreted in several ways. My maintenance project, for example, has never bored me. Especially at the beginning, when we had just taken over the project. The applications were not in good shape and we regularly had major problems in the ETL routes, which led to data jams. By preparing the system, the success is now visible and we can now also analyse and improve other processes. The added value that we bring to customers is clearly noticeable here. Technologically, however, the AWS project is currently the most interesting, simply because of its many facets: programming with Python, the infrastructure on AWS as well as the great challenge of project organisation and working in an international team. The customer has various departments, which means that requirements management is high in order to adapt the recommendation system to the specific wishes and data situations.
HMS is my first job after completing a Master's degree in physics. I really appreciate the collegial way of life here and, to be honest, I just feel comfortable here.
Because I can be myself here. I get the opportunity to improve and learn. Mistakes have never been held against me in the long term. I also have the feeling that I can make a difference.
Great working conditions: flexible working hours, home office from anywhere in Germany and, not to forget, great events. Also the colorful bouquet of interesting projects.
Employees are given suggestions and individual objectives are discussed in annual meetings. However, a lot also depends on personal initiative. HMS does not put any obstacles in your way, but you have to want to take the path yourself. In terms of projects, you can't expect to always get the latest ones. There are many long-running projects that work with tried-and-tested technologies. Learning these technologies and languages is part of the process. In addition, not every project has a modern IDE or a suitable test environment - ingenuity and flexibility are therefore required. Most employees have several projects, which is why technologies and skills are rarely used in isolation. On the contrary, projects often require a broad spectrum of knowledge.
A job in which you do monotonous "work to rule" until you retire, without developing yourself over time.
The classic computer scientist who sits in the basement and doesn't want to talk to anyone is definitely not a good fit for HMS. We work in teams and communication is an absolute must. We have to make compromises and can't approach and solve everything strictly according to the textbook. HMS is growing rapidly and is therefore constantly changing. This requires a certain openness to change and an intrinsic willingness to learn.
HMS can give a lot to new employees, especially if they are motivated and ask questions. We are always happy to see this and the benefits are greatest on all sides.
More company-wide transparency in salary structures.
The climate initiative was born out of a harmless question between my colleague Ulrike Wandtke and me in 2019: Do we get time off if we want to go to the Fridays For Future demonstration? We then sent the question to our boss, who said that although we wouldn't get time off, we could use our flexible working hours for it. And if there was a general interest in the topic of climate protection, we could go out for lunch to discuss what HMS can do. No sooner said than done! This has resulted in the Climate Table, which is constantly growing and meets every other month for lunch to discuss the potential for action.
We were juggling a few ideas, but were still quite unstructured and had no leverage to implement our wishes. That's why we carried out a project with the city of Heidelberg in 2021, which helped us to establish an environmental officer, our own environmental guidelines and an ongoing environmental program. In general, the aim of the climate initiative is to make our company as environmentally friendly as possible and also to be able to advise our customers in this regard. Among other things, we first need to be able to calculate our carbon footprint, which is not possible without a lot of thought and new process structures. Other improvements were quick to implement, such as switching to natural electricity for our company consumption. One particular goal is to build up expertise in the area of "Green IT". The aim here is to develop best practices and standards in each of our competence centers, for example Microsoft, which we can then implement in customer projects.
Some employees are released from work for several days a year in order to continuously implement the many actions. The additional costs are also co-financed, further training is paid for and active input is provided by the workforce and the management.
I really like the fact that we have really brought a change in the company's structures with the initiative and can continue to do so. This is particularly noticeable in the fact that employees are starting to rethink this issue on their own.
Anyone who wants to can join our Teams Climate Care channel or sign up for our newsletter. You are also welcome to contact me or my colleague Dominique directly. We are always open to new suggestions and ideas. If you really want to get actively involved, you are welcome to prepare a topic and help implement it.
