Dr. Wolfgang Reinhardt
Product & Innovation Officer
Intro
What I am all about.
I’m an open-minded, highly engaged, innovative, motivating, communicative, and creative person that likes to envision new products, services and ways of interacting with people. I like to think outside the box, challenge the old ways and discuss optimizations for each single person, no matter if she’s an internal colleague or customer. I like to spin a net between the people I work with, in order to make them as productive as possible and reach awesome results.
I'm looking for positions in product companies that have a clear product vision and strategy. I love being the evangelist of the product vision both internally and externally. I love building products that have a scalable business model and are appealing to a clearly defined market.
Expertise
Batman would be jealous.
01
Leadership
I love making good people better by providing them room for experiments and failure. I lead by example and consider myself a colleague not a boss. I wrote down the principles of my leadership style further down on this page.
02
Product Management
I helped creating several new products, some as greenfield, others as brownfield approach. Some of the products I helped creating served small focussed communities of practice whereas others are general purpose platforms with thousands of daily users.
03
Agile Methodologies
Since my very first projects, I educated my teams about the benefits of being agile. I successfully changed the development and project organization of companies for the better and do seriously embrace agile. I am also Certified Scrum Product Owner and Scrum Master.
04
Portfolio Management
I acted as portfolio manager for several teams for which a common portfolio strategy and alignment was needed. Taking care that the puzzle pieces of various development teams come together in one awesome result is what motivates me.
05
User Experience
I always try to keep my users in mind when brainstorming about UI changes with my UX leads. Awesome UX is key to the adoption of products, so I involve myself in UX labs, POCs and listen to the feedback of users of my products.
06
Project Management
I've successfully led various projects. From small to large, from local to international, from non-profit to international groups of companies. I've led rollout projects and had the chance to define golden master blueprints for my customers.
Skills
Progress bars, anyone?
98%
Jira
98%
Confluence
95%
Office Suite
99%
Slack
90%
Productboard & AHA
95%
Releasenotes.io
95%
Social Media
95%
Scrum & Kanban
Leadership Style
I love working with highly ambitious people.
✓
I generally let my employees decide how they want to complete tasks. I rather ask for their opinion than explaining them how I want problems to be solved. I rather provide guidance instead of orders.
✓
I rather have a strong social bond with the people on my teams, because I think a friendly relationship is creating an open, trustingly and confident working environment.
✓
I am open and transparent about the reasons for my decisions as it makes them to be more comprehensible for my teams.
✓
I aim to be predictable for my teams, so they can build trust and work in an anxiety-free atmosphere.
✓
I encourage my employees to cooperate and collaborate instead of competing each other.
✓
I educate my teams to develop high ambitions for the way of working, results and presentation of their outcome.
✓
I prefer not to constrain my teams by a fixed set of rules. As situations and problems change, they must be able to make their own decisions and help to improve and adapt rules. Rather, I prefer developing a common set of values by which we as a team operate and base our decisions on.
✓
I keep external pressure (project timelines etc.) away from the developers. More pressure will not help them to perform better, so forwarding pressure to them will counteract on the intended result.
✓
I protect the chemistry of the team even if that means extra time and energy must be invested.
✓
I listen to the feedback of my teams in order to improve my leadership style, decisions I’ve taken and guidance I’ve given.
Experience
Yes. I've been around.
08/2015 – Present
WPS Management GmbH
Head of Research and Development
Berlin & Paderborn, Germany
Chief Product Owner and visionary for our Open Business Integration Platform wescale.com, Leader for all product owners, product marketing, IT Service Mangement and Service Desk. Conception, planning, and supervision of software development projects, partner management, project and rollout management, roadmap management. Responsible for the optimization and standardization of software development methodologies.
10/2011 – 12/2019
Dr. Wolfgang Reinhardt IT Consulting
Business and IT Consulting
Paderborn, Germany
Business and IT consulting as well as development in the areas Web Content Management, Customer Relationship Management, and Social Media.
11/2011 – 12/2016
European Association of Technology Enhanced Learning
Secretary
Hannover, Germany
Milton Keynes, UK
Organization of virtual and physical membership meetings, organization of general assemblies, membership management, website management, and social media activities.
03/2014 – 07/2015
wallmedien AG
Head of New Products
Paderborn, Germany
Conception, planning, and supervision of software development projects, partner management, project management. Responsible for the organization, optimization and standardization of software development methodologies. Introduction of Scrum as agile methodology in all software development teams.
11/2013 – 03/2015
wallmedien AG
Solution Expert Reporting
Paderborn, Germany
Internal solution expert for the Microsoft SSRS and SSAS-based reporting solution for procurement-related data.
01/2013 – 07/2015
wallmedien AG
Project & Rollout Manager
Paderborn, Germany
Project manager for the design and Implementation of wallmedien's e- Procurement solutions, implementation of partner solutions, international rollout management, account management and account development.
03/2007 – 12/2012
University of Paderborn
Coach (Train the Tutors)
Paderborn, Germany
Didactical planning and implementation of training and creativity workshops with future student tutors. Accompaniment and supervision of tutors.
03/2005 – 12/2012
University of Paderborn
Research Associate
Paderborn, Germany
Research associate in the research group "Didactics of Computer Science". Conception, planning, management, and controlling of software development projects. Supervision of approx. 80 Bachelor, Diploma, and Master Theses. Application for research grants on National and European level, Execution of research projects on National and European level.
11/2006 – 12/2011
Umits Ltd.
CEO
Paderborn, Germany
Development of Business-Object-Centered Content Management Systems. Design and implementation of individual software applications. Consulting for database and CRM systems.
10/2008 – 12/2010
Die Sprachwerkstatt GmbH
Mentor
Paderborn, Germany
Mentor for students in the field of Information and Communication Technologies.
10/2006 – 03/2007
Peter Gläsel Stiftung
Consultant
Detmold, Germany
Freelance consultant for Typo3 and content production.
08/2003 – 03/2007
Die Sprachwerkstatt GmbH
Lecturer
Paderborn, Germany
Lecturer for Microsoft Office Suite.
09/2005 – 03/2006
Magh & Boppert GmbH
Software Architect
Paderborn, Germany
Freelance Software Architect and Developer (Java, JavaScript).
08/2002 – 10/2002
Hotel Golf Village
IT Administrator
Guadeloupe, France
IT-Administrator and Developer (Excel, VBA, HTML).
Education
Lazy isn't in my vocabulary.
2010 – 2012
Open Universiteit
Ph.D.
Heerlen, The Netherlands
My focus was on Computer-Supported Collaborative Work; especially on how distributed teams can align their work using Social Media tools.Thesis title: Awareness Support for Knowledge Workers in Research Networks.
2005 – 2006
University of Paderborn
Diploma (Computer Science)
Paderborn, Germany
My focus was on Computer-Supported Collaborative Work and Software Development Methodologies. Thesis title: Impact of Agile Software Development Methodologies on competence development in Computer Science Education -- Analysis and Evaluation of empirical studies on Pair Programming.
2001 – 2005
University of Paderborn
Bachelor of Computer Science
Paderborn, Germany
My focus was on Computer Science, Software Development, Media Production, E-Learning and Mobile Learning. Thesis title: Integration of external application features in CSCW systems using Web Services.
Awards
Happy times!
BME Innovation Award 2016
In 2016, we won the prestigious BME Innovation Award with our customer Robert Bosch GmbH (using wescale.com as integration platform for B2B Procuremnt). Read more.
BME Award "Excellence in e-Solutions" 2016
In 2016, we won the prestigious BME Award "Excellence in e-Solutions" with our customer ProSiebenSat.1 Media SE. Read more.
BME Award "Excellence in e-Solutions" 2014
In 2014, we won the prestigious BME Award "Excellence in e-Solutions" with our customer Alfred Kärcher GmbH & Co. KG. Read more.
Teaching Award 2013
In 2013, I won the Teaching award for the rising generation of educators of the University of Paderborn (German: Lehrpreis für den wissenschaftlichen Nachwuchs) for a series of seminars fostering the collaboration between students of different universities and disciplies.
Teaching innovation award 2011
In 2011, we won the Award for innovation and quality in teaching of the University of Paderborn (German: Förderpreis für Innovation und Qualität in der Lehre) for our work on PINGO.
Best paper award at DeLFI 2010
In 2010, we won the Best Paper Award at the DeLFI Conference 2010.
Best paper award at ICIQ 2009
In 2010, we won the Best Paper Award at the the 14. Conference on Information Quality.
1st Place in Viktor Klemperer competition 2001
In 2001, I won the 1st place in the Viktor Klemperer competition for tolerance and democracy.