Martin Burger Prof. Dr.-Ing.
Business Agility · Empowering Leadership · Effective Collaboration · Technical Excellence
About me
How do we achieve great successes in complex, dynamic conditions?
More than 20 years of experience in leading development teams, complex IT projects, and innovative software products to success. I have been working in companies ranging in size from start-ups to group corporations, in different industries like information technology, insurance, electrical engineering, and electric mobility.
What I have learned
Key success factors
On my journey, I have learned which factors are critical for business success in this highly dynamic world:
- Business Agility
- Companies respond quickly to market changes and emerging opportunities with innovative business solutions and products.
- Empowering Leadership
- Management sees the whole and builds the capability of the organization to create great products. It ensures a people-focused culture.
- Effective Collaboration
- People contribute their individual knowledge and experience in close collaboration across organizational boundaries.
- Technical Excellence
- Developers master their trade as engineers and keep their work in a high quality and in a flexible state.
What sets me apart
Characteristics
- Giving Zest for Life
- to other people: as dance instructor, I once taught a blind man how to dance Salsa; as consultant and trainer, I show companies that happiness at work is a win-win situation – to change the world for the better.
- Enthusiasm
- as a basic building block: to achieve great things, you have to show complete commitment. But that would not be sufficient. To make a difference, you need other people – it is said I enthuse those people.
- Working Independently
- is perfectly normal for me: from my first large online project as high-school graduate via my first company as freshmen at the university through to an internationally award-winning spin-off – otherwise unthinkable.
- Physical and Mental Health
- is my priority: Running, Salsa dancing and teaching, meditation, and mindfulness help keep a sound body for a sound mind – and vice versa.
Interested in my expert knowledge and hands-on experience? Take the shortcut and save yourself tedious spadework and time-consuming trial and error.
Recommendations
How others rate my work
Transitioning to agile and agile at scale
“I had the pleasure of working with Martin Burger at an insurance company. He has an extremely quick apprehension and finds ways to pursue his goals even in complex situations. He accompanied the transition of a project- and efficiency-optimized, to a lean and agile company and thereby further improved the responsiveness of this insurance company in the market. In particular, he accompanied the first cross-functional, agile teams as Scrum Master and led them in a scaled environment into self-responsibility and autonomy.”
Project management and workshop facilitation
“I had the pleasure to work with Martin on a significant proof of concept and implementation project. Martin was the overall project manager from the client side. I am happy to confirm (and still impressed) that the workshops hosted by Martin probably were the best in my career so far. He managed to orchestrate a variety of differently focused stakeholders whilst getting the maximum output of this kind of melting pot workshop. He is very goal focused and stands strong in front of others. I hope to work with Martin in future again. He is my first choice whenever I need external project management.”
Scrum implementation and agile mindset
“Martin has adopted Scrum in the fastest and most natural way I have ever seen the last ten years being in the business. He asks the right questions, he has the right mindset, and indeed, he lives Scrum. Not only because of his profound knowledge in agile and information technology, it's a pleasure to discuss and practice Scrum with him.”
Accomplishments
Learned and achieved
What the best in their field taught me
Certifications and Training (most significant ones)
- Certified Training from the BACK of the Room (TBR) Trainer
- Jean-Paul Bayley, Julian Kea
- Leading and Coaching Agile Teams
- Veronika Jungwirth, Dr. Ralph Miarka
- Agile Advanced Masterclass
- Dr. Alistair Cockburn
- Certified ScrumMaster
- Dr. Jeff Sutherland
- Certified Scrum Product Owner
- Roman Pichler
- Lean Product Development Flow
- Don Reinertsen
- Agile Requirements Engineering
- Dr. Peter Hruschka
What went really well
Honors and Awards (most significant ones)
- EIT ICT Labs Idea Challenge – 1st price
- of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology, Brussels, Belgium
- EXIST Transfer of Research
- of the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi), Germany
- Best Paper Award
- at the Software Quality Days, Vienna, Austria
- Website Award
- of the Saarland, Germany
Experience
Expert knowledge and hands-on experience
Agility and Leadership
since 2015
I enable people and organizations to learn how to deliver the right business value earlier with less bureaucracy and thereby achieve great results in a world that is constantly changing and becoming more unpredictable day by day.
Professor for Software Engineering and Software Quality Assurance
since 2023 at htw saar
University of Applied Sciences in Saarbrücken, Germany
Business agility and technical excellence are essential preconditions for creating successful software products. Therefore, I focus on agile software engineering and automated software quality assurance in both research and teaching. More at htw saar (in German).
Zusammen Großartig
since 2016 with passion
freelance consulting and training services
You get my passionate support in the areas of business agility, successful collaboration and effective leadership in knowledge work as well as in product and project management. More at Zusammen Großartig (in German).
Senior Expert Transformation & Change IT
2022 at Deutsche Glasfaser
Germany‘s leading fiber-to-the-home platform
Establishing and continuously improving sustainable IT processes that optimally support customer processes. Designing and implementing lean development processes to achieve faster cycle times. Supporting teams on their journey to more self-organization. Improving cross-functional collaboration to efficiently achieve joint, effective solutions. Knowledge transfer of agile collaboration practices throughout the organization, e.g., by training courses and workshops. Facilitating the agile mindset. Lateral leadership of Scrum Masters.
Senior IT Project Manager and Agile Coach
2021 – 2022 at Deutsche Glasfaser
Germany‘s leading fiber-to-the-home platform
Coordination of IT projects with responsibility for requirements analysis, design, implementation, and rollout. Facilitation of collaboration between development teams, business departments and external partners. Coaching of the transformation of IT project management from the waterfall model to agile project management. Concept and conduction of workshops and trainings to strengthen the agile mindset and collaboration. Design and implementation of agile software development processes. Lateral leadership of Scrum Masters.
Vice President of Software Products
2019 – 2020 at Wirelane
Provider for electromobility charging solutions
Director of the company's software development site. Implementation of Scrum to increase collaboration and to improve product-market fit. Coaching technical excellence to improve the product's quality and to make software development more effective and efficient. Organizational development to improve cross-team collaboration and vision workshops to align the company's departments.
Senior Project Manager and Agile Coach in Strategic Projects
2019 at CosmosDirekt / Generali Germany
Germany's leading online insurer and the direct insurer of Generali
Management of projects with strategic and cross-company character in the business line Digital / Direct (driving digitalization forward, complex product launches). Development of methodological approaches for (agile) project and project portfolio management.
Senior Project Manager and Agile Coach in the IT department
2015 – 2019 at CosmosDirekt / Generali Germany
Germany's leading online insurer and the direct insurer of Generali
Transition to an agile organization; for instance, agile methods and frameworks like Scrum and Kanban, project portfolio management, transition teams, and agile coaching. Project management in the area of agile software development. Introduction of new custom software and insurance products.
Research Transfer
2011 – 2014
I successfully transferred award-winning research results to the market.
Founder and member of the management board (Vorstand)
2013 – 2014 at Testfabrik AG
Provides services and products for automated testing of web and mobile apps
Entrepreneurship and strategic company development. Product management and customer acquisition. Lead of software development. Introduction of Kanban and continuous delivery. Implementation of webmate’s Web 2.0 front-end. Capital acquisition (200,000 €).
Project head and post-doctoral researcher
2011 – 2014 at Saarland University
Software Engineering Chair
R&D: Automated debugging of Web 2.0 applications. Initiator and project manager of the webmate project (cf., Testfabrik AG). Responsibility towards the project sponsors (BMWi / EXIST Transfer of Research). International presentations and acquisition of pilot customers. Implementation of the prototype and the IT infrastructure. Raising of external funding (500,000 €).
Information Technology
2000 – 2013
For more than a decade, I led complex, innovative IT projects to success.
Founder of and partner in a civil-law company
2000 – 2013 at netbeyond
IT service provider
Management, business development and software engineering. Implementation of numerous customer projects in the fields of websites, content management systems, web-based training and custom software. Coordination between different service contractors.
Automated Debugging
2001 – 2011
I helped eliminate the need for tedious and expensive manual bug fixing. Other researchers referred to my innovative approaches as “the end of manual debugging”.
Scientific assistant and PhD student
2006 – 2011 at Saarland University
Software Engineering Chair
Research: software engineering, automated debugging, dynamic program analysis, capture and replay of program runs. Teaching: automated debugging, software programming, and software engineering.
Intern / graduand (Diplomand)
2005 at Web.de / 1&1 Internet
Germany's leading wide-coverage web portal
Design and implementation of DDchange: a framework that allows to determine failure-inducing program changes fully automatically. Integration in the development process (continuous integration).
Student assistant
2001 – 2004 at Saarland University
Software Engineering Chair
Worked on different projects (primarily automated debugging). Mentoring of exercise groups (courses related to software engineering).
Education
Computer science and software engineering
PhD in Computer Science
Doktor-Ingenieur (Dr.-Ing.)
| Saarland University | 2006 – 2011 |
|---|---|
| Dissertation | Replaying and Isolating Failure-Inducing Program Interactions (magna cum laude, Software Engineering Chair, Prof. Dr. Andreas Zeller) |
| Fields of study | software engineering, automated debugging, dynamic program analysis, capture and replay of program executions |
| Nominated for Best Paper Award | At the International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis (ISSTA) 2011 in Toronto, Canada, my paper “Minimizing Reproduction of Software Failures” was nominated for the Best Paper Award. Other researchers referred to this new approach as “the end of manual debugging”. |
Diploma in Computer Science
Diplom-Informatiker (Dipl.-Inform.)
| Saarland University | 1999 – 2005 |
|---|---|
| Diploma thesis | Locating Failure-Inducing Code Changes in an Industrial Environment (very good / outstanding performance, Software Engineering Chair, Prof. Dr. Andreas Zeller) |
| Fields of study | computer science, software engineering, business informatics, information systems, information science |
| Eclipse Innovation Grant | My diploma thesis was in the context of the “IBM Eclipse Innovation Grant on automated debugging”, which was awarded to Prof. Dr. Andreas Zeller. |
| Internship | My diploma project was a close collaboration of the Software Engineering Chair (Prof. Dr. Andreas Zeller) with 1&1 Internet AG where I worked as an intern. |
Contact
How to get in touch with me
Consulting and Training
I help organizations achieve great results in our ever faster changing world. A world in which individual knowledge and cross-team collaboration lead to success. To learn more about my consulting and training services, go to Zusammen Großartig (in German).
You can reach me by e-mail at m@rtin-burger.net.