Nadia Bludau-Fuchs - Project Manager

Right now, my day-to-day work is dominated by three major projects. In my Azure project, I’m currently restructuring the existing environment. This means that the old runbooks need to be replaced and converted into Data Factory pipelines. Another project in which over 10 people are envolved, the recommendation system we’ve developed needs to be rolled out country by country. This raises questions such as: How can we best organize ourselves to keep both the rollouts and further development running smoothly? How can we minimize friction and ensure effective meetings? In the third project, the focus is on identifying opportunities for improvement: Is log file monitoring effective? Why has a data backlog formed on the test system? Is this a potential risk for the production environment? What additional information do we need to identify risks early on?

Our team is made up of members from various fields to meet our customers’ needs: from highly experienced developers and architects to computer scientists, recent college graduates, and career changers. Everyone brings a different way of thinking and their own ideas to the table.
 

Versatility and variety. The teams are cheerful and constructive and advice is always available. I’m able to work mostly independently and have a real say in my projects, even before I became a project manager.

Self-organization. Since my job involves working on multiple projects, I have to constantly remind myself of what’s most important right now. At the same time, though, I need to avoid switching contexts too often and know when it’s time to take a break. It doesn’t help anyone if I burn myself out. Another major challenge is open communication with clients. We’re consultants and as a project manager in particular, I’m in frequent direct contact with clients. This isn’t all advantages: not only avoiding difficult topics but actually bringing them up myself remains a challenge for me.

Exciting - it can definitely be interpreted in several ways. For example, my maintenance project has never bored me. Especially in the beginning, when we had just taken over the project. The applications were in poor shape, and we regularly encountered major problems in the ETL pipelines that led to data bottlenecks. Thanks to the system overhaul, the success is now evident, and we can now analyze and improve other processes as well. The added value we bring to the customer is clearly evident here. Technologically, however, the most interesting project right now is the AWS project, simply because of its multifaceted nature: programming in Python, the infrastructure on AWS, as well as the major challenge of project organization and working in an international team. The client has various departments, which means there is a high level of requirement management involved in adapting the recommendation system to specific needs and data environments.

The Climate Initiative began with a harmless question between my colleague Ulrike Wandtke and me in 2019: Would we get time off if we wanted to go to the “Fridays For Future” protests? We then sent the question to our CEO, who said that while we wouldn’t get time off, we could use our flexible working hours for that purpose. And if there’s general interest in the topic of climate protection, we’d be happy to get together for lunch to discuss what we at HMS can do to help. No sooner said than done! This led to the “Climate Roundtable,” which met every two months during the lunch break to discuss potential courses of action.

We had been tossing around a few ideas, but we were still quite disorganized and lacked the leverage to actually implement our goals. That’s why, in 2021, we carried out a project with the City of Heidelberg that helped us establish an environmental officer, our own environmental guidelines, and an ongoing environmental program. In general, the goal of the climate initiative is to make our company as environmentally friendly as possible and to be able to advise our customers accordingly. To do this, we first need to be able to calculate our carbon footprint, which isn’t possible without careful consideration and new process structures. Other improvements were quick to implement, such as switching to green electricity for our company’s energy consumption. A key goal is to build expertise in the area of “Green IT.” This involves developing best practices and standards in each of our areas of expertise which we can then implement in client projects.

To carry out this work, some employees are granted time off for several days each year to ensure the ongoing implementation of the many initiatives. In addition, the company helps cover the additional costs, funds training programs, and actively solicits input from both the workforce and senior management.

I really like that, through this initiative, we’ve actually brought about a change in the company’s structures and can continue to do so. You can really tell this is happening because employees are starting to rethink their approach to this issue on their own.

Anyone who’s interested can join our “Klimavorsorge” Teams channel. You’re also welcome to reach out directly to me or to Jasmin, the head of our Climate Initiative. We’re always open to new suggestions and ideas. If you’d like to get actively involved, feel free to prepare a topic and help bring it to life.

Because I can be myself here. I have the opportunity to improve and learn. No one has ever held my mistakes against me for long. Plus, I feel like I can make a difference.

HMS is my first job after completing my master's degree in physics. I really appreciate the friendly, collaborative atmosphere here, and, to be honest, I just feel right at home here.

Great working conditions: flexible hours, the option to work from home anywhere in Germany, and not to mention awesome events. In addition, a wide variety of interesting projects.

Employees are presented with suggestions, and individual goals are discussed during annual reviews. However, much also depends on personal initiative. HMS won’t stand in your way, but you have to be willing to forge your own path. When it comes to projects, you can’t expect to always be assigned the newest ones. There are many long-running projects that use tried-and-true technologies. Learning these technologies and programming languages is part of the job. Furthermore, not every project has a modern IDE or a suitable testing environment so resourcefulness and flexibility are essential. Most employees work on multiple projects, which is why technologies and skills are rarely used in isolation. On the contrary, projects often require a broad range of knowledge.

A job in which you perform monotonous, “by-the-book” tasks until retirement, without developing yourself as times change.

Greater company-wide transparency regarding salary structures.

The stereotypical computer scientist who sits in the basement and doesn’t want to talk to anyone definitely doesn’t fit in at HMS. We work in teams, and communication is an absolute must. We have to make compromises and can’t approach and solve everything strictly by the book. HMS is growing rapidly, and as a result, it’s constantly evolving. A certain openness to such change and an intrinsic willingness to learn are essential for this.

HMS has a lot to offer new employees, especially if they are motivated and ask questions. We always welcome that.