Nolden IT
Turning Digital Solutions into a Valuable Investment for Industry
A successful project does not only comply with time, budget and scope. A project is really successful, if it makes the customer stronger.
Philipp Nolden
freelance PLM-manager
Completing PLM-Projects successfully
Introducing or replacing a PLM-system is like building a house. Only afterwards you know how to do it in the right way. Hopefully, you have an experienced architect who already build many different houses for many different customers.
A real asset you have not before you can move in and, respectively, have your data under control.
Concept
Managing product data, but how?
Together with your key users and your IT I figure out what you really need. I manage an adequate system decision and organise a conception which ensures the additional business value you expect.
Design
The system decision and the end-to-end process definition have been done. Now we make detailed plans.
I take care that we figure out the critical details right now to prevent them from turning into a problem during the implementation.
Implementation
Now the C-level expects results. And the key users expect to see that their work will become easier. But we still have several sprints ahead. And each brings new questions and conflicts.
With an intelligent concept and a comprehensive design we can keep most of them under control. But even if I come on board when escalations already happend, I lead the activities to the best possible solution.
Rollout
The system by itself is just the bare brickwork. Organising approval tests early enough, ensuring a reliable cut-over and providing adequate hypercare are as essential as the system itself.
I take care that everything is well-organised when the critical phase begins.
Ensuring a Valuable Total Result by Taking Care for the Details
The challenge is being a good hands-off-manager with a pragmatic hands-on-mentality. I lead big and heterogenous teams towards a valuable overall result by discussing also the annoying details on eye-height and with functional knowledge with business analysts, solution architects and key users.
Beyond the rim of the tea cup
Digital Economy TV
Implementing state-of-the-art systems is one thing. But what will be the next step? Which new technology will have an impact on PLM, ERP, PIM or Enterprise IT in general.
On my YouTube-channel I analyse trends and topics which might change the future.
Have a look?
www.digital-economy.tv
Leadership as a Service
My Brand Promise
Leadership
The best feedback I frequently receive is that my colleagues enjoy working together with me because they always know where we go and what is expected. Clarity and individual coaching are essential elements of my formula for success.
Hands-Off-Management with a Pragmatic Hands-On-Mentality
A good manager, in my eyes, relies on the skills of his team members and focusses on leading them in the right direction. But a really good manager is, anyway, always a good sparring-partner on eye-height, if needed on the technical or functional level.
Focus on Results
"Impossible" exists ... also for me, off cause. But if project business taught me anything, then that "impossible" is just a question of perspective in many cases.
Like an example?
Well, whenever my customers say "fixed price" everyone says that "such a project" is impossible to calculate. My plans and fixed-price offers, however, usually lead to projects which are easier to manage for the customer and provide a better margin for me.
Project Phases
I take over responsibility for your project within a particularly critical moment, for a distinct project phase or end-to end.
Project Topics
A PLM-project demands experts with manifold qualifications and mindsets. I make them a team.
Project Rescue
The project is in danger of failing or already out of control? Keep your hair on! I have already managed a bunch of severe crisises.
My Scope
PLM-Projects on Enterprise-Level
The most important of my projects had a three-digit number of participants and several subsidiary companies with complex networks as stakeholder. It is part of my brand promise that I do not only act safely in those environments but also implement clear and efficient communication and turn mutual objectives into an inspiring vision to follow.
Strategic Management
Projects with high impact on my customer's long-term business success are my standard. I consider a project to be successful, if it makes my customer's position better in two ways: Better than without the project and better than with another project manager.
Complex Supplier-Networks
Competing IT-suppliers and globally distributed teams with nearly incompatible corporate cultures are my every-day business. Either turning them into a consistantly acting team or taking the stake for one of these teams are tasks which I particularly enjoy.
Project Phases
Where shall we start?
I lead projects through critical phases, take responsibility for one of the standard phases based on my customer's development standards and build new systems end-to-end. Whatever is needed.
Concept
I am 100% independent from systems and vendors. I evaluate solution concepts consequently to my customer's individual needs.
Design
Only if the vendor's solution architects act as a team with the customer's IT and key users, the system will be part of a consistent data-, process- and system-architecture. I make this happen.
Implementation
"No plan survives the first enemy contact." (Moltke, freely adapted.)
Each team needs someone who, althoug all conflicts and difficulties, shows the way to final success. I find it in situations most project managers can't even imagine.
Make a COncept
Your key users know what your company needs. Your vendor's business analysts transform their requirements into excellently documented user stories. But are you sure that they have everything relevant in mind?
In many cases the forgotton functions and processes turn up during the implementation. What your key users label with "comes without saying" is, in many cases, for the vendor just "out of scope". Trying to hastily integrate a third-party solution eventually unveils that the system design or even the system decision simply was wrong.
A vendor-independent project manager, if he knows his business, turns the customer's key users and IT-stakeholders together with the vendor's solution architects into a team. It is my mission having all what is relevant in focus and ensuring that your new system interacts with the rest of your processes and systems without leaving gaps. My questions make the experts sweat. And this is exactly what prevents you from breaking a sweat when it comes to presenting the results to the C-level.
I accompny you right from the beginning, if you want. Together we identify system candidates which fit to you and your processes and organise a robust and traceable process for all your critical decisions.
Develop a Design
The concept phase has provided good answers to all important questions. Now the team develops a detailed draft of the system. At least now the SAP-team, the senior stakeholders for the enterprise architecture and many others must be involved - actively and intensively. Otherwise, your system will not perform.
Off cause, all these groups are massively under pressure within their own domain. For a rather small domain like PLM, let's be honest about that, they will never have time.
I take care for adequate regular meetings and communication platforms but also for the required management attention. And I build up a cross-domain team which considers itself responsible for the complete system landscape as a whole. Discussions will get hot sometimes. But this is essential for successfully passing a system approval which is worth it's name. And I will care also for that, if needed. This may hurt at this stage. But better now than during the implementation while the development team causes running costs.
Make Plans become Reality ...
Based on your actual needs I will take care about e. g. the following things:
- process model for the team including a pricing model for the implementation partner
- Productive collaboration between functional departments, IT, SAP etc.
- Teambuilding, organisation of workshops, SCRUM-rituals and other regular ceremonies
- Identification, escalation and solution of conflicts and technical challenges
- Effective implementation of user stories and scope management for the MVP
... and put the power on the pavement
For fulfilling the project's promise also in operational use I take care, if desired, for planning, organisation and execution of the following late phases:
- quality assurance and test
- roll-out
- hypercare
And trainings? Well, I will, with pleasure, organise them, if it is part of the bundle. But for training-management as a full-time task there are better qualified experts.
Project Topics
"Breaking out of the silo!"
This is what PLM-vendors like to promise ... just to put the complete product development in a silo. I lead my PLM-projects in the right direction to be part of a whole.
The Big Picture
A PLM-system will never be better than the enterprise IT and the E2E-process in which it is integrated. During all phases I care for your team and your vendor to treat your business as a whole and to always take your downstream-processes and your supporting processes adequately into account.
Each of these processes is a "science in itself". And when I come on board I oftenly find out that one or even more of them have been neglected. Subsequently integrating it is always a challenge. Better we make a comprehensive concept in the first place. But also if it is already "red alert" when I join, I provide chilled emotions and a well-structured procedure.
The Core Business
eBOM, mBOM, CAx-integration, traceability, ECM -- these are the things I grew up with. I saw many architectures and solution concepts based on many platforms.
I accompany my customers on their way towards an optimised PLM solution based on their individual needs., from the first steps towards a system decision until a successful end of the hypercare phase.
Functional Department and IT
Two sides of a medal which, for good reason, compete by definition in the most projects. Squeezing them together into one role has disadvantages but, anyway, is the best solution for many smaller SMEs.
I already claimed key positions on both sides. And in enough projects I have been both at the same time. However your setting is in particular, I consider it to be my role to make both sides act as a team.
I identify and solve unnecessary conflicts before they escalate. At the same time I do not shy away from the necessary, the unavoidable and the already deadlocked ones.
Mergers & Acquisitions
Industry is changing. Enterprises decompose and re-organise in new combinations. For the PLM-world this means that new subsidiary companies must be integrated.
The enterprise must harmonise processes, standardise data structures as well as migrate and cleanse data. The transculturation leads companies, functional departments and each single expert to his limits.
I lead my teams through this transformation in a straight line. Inspired by a clear vision of the future.
Project Rescue
Total collaps?
Stakeholders are angry? Objectives out of reach? No one believes in success anymore?
I already saved a couple of projects from such a situations. If possible, I will do this also for you. At least, I will bring it to a defined end. But in rather many cases a project can, actually, be saved.
Allow your key players to take profit from this support!
We need to do the following:
- New and credible business cases
- Retrieve the sponsor's trust
- An explicit go/nogo-decision
- Define and communicate clear priorities
- Reconsider objectives and work-packages
- A credible mission for the team
- Healing of toxic relationships
- Reconsider and, maybe, phasing out vendors and partners
- And much more ...
We need to manage this in a situation wherein no one anymore believes in the original objectives and everyone focusses on fingerpointing. I managed to solve such a situation a couple of times. Cold blood and a systematic approach is here even more essential than in regular project business.
And both is a question of experience.
Notes for Agents
I appreciate agents which initiate contacts with customers. However, I occasionally experience deceptive business acts. Therefore, some straight talking.
Client Compliments
My customers are notoriously busy experts and managers. I handle their time with care. If needed, I will, anyway, arrange an appointment with a former client, colleague or stakeholder provided that one of the following preconditions applies.
- Either the customer has finally decided for me, wants as a final confirmation a conversation with someone from a reference project and can assure that he already has all required budget approvals.
- Or the customer wants the agent to check the references beforehand and this must be done only once for all hiring processes at the specific agency.
The second option, to be honest, I do not like very much. But I cooperate, if I consider it to be a good investment in a promising long-term cooperation. This implies that it is only an option with a well-known agency with strong references for regular hiring in a field which is actually relevant for me.
No Exclusivity!
I would never cheat anyone of his or her commission. Anyhow, if different agents request for the same project, they are in a competition.
- If I allow you to present my profile to your customer, this does not imply that I will not allow that to others too.
- I accept the earliest interview with the end customer I receive disregarding who organized it.
- If we agree upon specific hourly rates, these are only fixed in my eyes, if agreed based on an open book policy or presumed that no one else makes a better offer.
- Agreements which bar me from collaborating with an end customer via another agency I will sign only after the end customer submitted his binding order.
To those agents with whom I already have made good experiences I may offer different conditions. And, also with others, many details can be negotiated as long as the sales process runs well. But, please, do not expect loyalty just because you have been the first one to call me. For me the (intermediate) results count.
Open Book Policy
Generally, I put value in an open book with agencies.
If you have restirictions from your customer or from internal policies which limit you to a closed book, this does not necessarily imply that I am not interested in a contact. But it makes discussiong hourly rates difficult.
Basically, I do not begrudge you an attractive provision. Please, be assured. But I would like to know, if the benefits I receive in return fit to the price. (This does not only refer to valuable customer contacts. It includes also e. g. the support during the ongoing project.) And this is rather difficult, if I not even know your price.
As a rule of thumb you can assume that I am the more willing to accept a closed book the better the hourly rate as well as the benefits you provide are.
Even though it is in german, please, feel invited to read on LinkedIN more about my actual expectations.
Service Proposal vs. Curriculum Vitae
If you read this, chances are that you already have my document "Service Proposal". If not, you can download it by clicking one of the following buttons.
It is a sales document. It summerises my competences and experiences insofar I consider them to be relevant for sales purposes. Most agents and potential customers are very happy with it and ask their individual questions during an individual conversation.
Nevertheless, it does not fit to what I would attach to an application for a permanent position. This is not the intention. I am not looking for a job.
If you or your customer would like to have details about the phases or topics which are not covered, don't hesitate to ask. If needed, I will also prepare additional documents (provided that the lead is actually promising). But I will need more details on what you actually expect as well as some time.
Please, accept that I can not drop everything and that I wont send something to a potential customer which I noted down in passing.