David Henkel
Verified Expert in Project Management
Project Manager
Berlin, Germany
Toptal member since June 29, 2021
In 2016, David founded Berlin Bytes, a creative design and development agency. Together with his business partners, he managed a team of developers, designers, and other professionals from all around Europe. David had the opportunity to work on wonderful projects with amazing clients and achieve great results, supporting more than 50 clients in over 100+ projects with their digital products and online presentation of their brands and businesses.
Project Highlights
Expertise
- Atlassian
- Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO)
- ClickUp
- Project Management
- Scrum Master
- Stakeholder Management
- Team Management
- eCommerce
Work Experience
Interim Head of Technology - ERP Administrator
Luxury Fashion Startup from Berlin
- Supported one of our long-term clients as interim head of technology to oversee the technical landscape of their product development, B2B and B2C sales process, fulfillment, and support pipelines.
- Collaborated closely with business owners, product developers, marketing, and sales to ensure the technology is running smoothly for all departments to reduce friction.
- Led further development efforts of an internal ERP tool NetSuite to reduce the complexity of the technical landscape and allow for leaner product development and fulfillment.
- Ran the external development team in their efforts to continuously expand the B2C eCommerce solution.
- Implemented the necessary analytics solutions to make decisions based on data.
- Helped implement a system to visualize monthly results for stakeholders to create visibility on technical advancements and achievements.
Managing Director
Berlin Bytes GmbH
- Ran an international design and development company with over 25 core team members from all around the world. The company is still growing.
- Led the active project pipeline that counts up to 15 projects, as team and time management were critical to keep the train running smoothly.
- Grown the company from a one-man show in 2016, doubling or tripling our team every year ever since.
- Built the company culture that's all about diversity. Our clients don't differ in that. From eCommerce to ERP tools and branding to full-stack development, we do it all. My days are never the same as challenges keep on coming, but flexibility is key.
Lead Project Manager
u-know
- Served as a lead project manager, working closely with the key stakeholder to build a fintech platform that visualizes financial business reports in real time with a yearly high six-figure development budget.
- Analyzed the current business report landscape in the DACH region to create a solution for business owners to get all their needed financial reports condensed into the essential, allowing for greater visibility of how their business is performing.
- Performed interviews with accountants, business owners, and tax consultants to understand the shared pain points that this platform will solve.
- Coordinated with various internal and external auditors to ensure internal security standards, GDPR compliance, and state-of-the-art data protection.
- Collaborated closely with UX/UI designers to come up with a modern, user-friendly, and development-friendly design according to simple design principles.
- Led the development team to build a complex platform that was importing bulk amounts of data, ran the needed calculations, and then visualized it for the viewer.
- Managed this project using the Scrum framework and other Agile methodologies.
- Took on the role of the Certified Scrum Product Owner within the scrum team.
Lead Project Manager
Siryus
- Joined a team as a project manager and became the lead project manager within half a year to overview the development of a new SaaS platform in the construction industry with a yearly seven-figure development budget.
- Led the team, consisting of more than ten developers, four UX/UI designers, business analysts, and SMEs.
- Collaborated closely with internal stakeholders to work along with a set budget and timeline for the first MVP product to then transition into a frequent release cycle-based project.
- Performed various interviews with internal and external stakeholders to create the necessary outcomes as part of the initial SDLC discovery phase that laid the grounds for the first MVP development phase.
- Ran the project according to the SDLC model, including analyzing, visualizing, and optimizing the team's performance together with analysts to finally create the most value within the shortest time possible, using as little budget as needed.
- Coordinated with various internal and external auditors to ensure internal security standards, GDPR compliance, and state-of-the-art data protection.
- Managed projects using the Scrum framework and other Agile methodologies.
- Served as a Certified Scrum Product Owner within the scrum team.
Project History
SaaS Platform Construction Industry
Developed and launched a SaaS platform that is digitalizing the construction industry.
Managed a development team with a yearly seven-figure budget. Our team consisted of developers, designers, analysts, and stakeholders.
Based on a given goal, we had to come up with a fully-fledged software that was not only allowing users to manage their tasks and communication between teams but the full end-to-end process, including planning, purchasing, and billing.
Within two years, we had gone from an MVP to a functioning platform on which the first users have started building their projects in 2021.
Development of a SaaS Product for Cloud Architecture Visualization
Designed, developed, and launched a platform for cloud architects to plan, visualize, and budget their cloud architecture landscape for their companies, projects, or customers.
Built and led a team of internal analysts, designers, and developers in creating the mentioned software. I also led the SDLC.
Features of the platform included account management, billing, secure authentication, visualization canvas, real-time expense calculator, collaboration abilities, and many more.
Oversaw the DevOps and deployment teams to ensure a smooth production pipeline. Ran the project using Agile methodologies.
Financial Reporting Solution
Launched and managed the MVP development of a platform that is revolutionizing the DACH market for financial business reports.
We started with a blank canvas and endless amounts of PDF business reports exported from DATEV, the most adopted accounting software in Germany. Together with accountants, tax consultants, and business owners, an idea was visualized.
Together with analysts and UI/UX designers, I visualized the prototypes to validate ideas and iterate on a possible MVP design.
The development team had to be supported in understanding where the data would be coming from, what kind of data warehouse needs to be built, and how we can prepare the data in such a way to ensure fast loading on the user frontends.
After the discovery and design phases, I ran the development efforts utilizing Agile methodologies to build the first MVP.
I oversaw the release to the public and the following L2 and L3 support for customers of our platform.
When I was leaving the project as the lead project manager, there were dozens of accountancy agencies onboarded, the development was working on a newly designed mobile application, and the market leader DATEV was interested in adding the platform to their marketplace.
Certifications
Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO)
Scrum Alliance
Skills
Tools
Jira, Confluence, Atlassian, Office 365, Figma, NetSuite, Asana, Slack, Miro
Paradigms
Kanban, Agile Software Development, Requirements Analysis, Agile, Agile Project Management, Scrum, Agile Product Management
Platforms
Shopify, WordPress, SharePoint
Other
ClickUp, Project Management, Stakeholder Management, Team Management, Scrum Master, Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO), Distributed Team Management, Agency, Content Management Systems (CMS), Germany, German-English Translation, Feature Backlog Prioritization, Requirements, User Stories, User Experience (UX), User Interface (UI), eCommerce, Software Development, eCommerce Platforms, Web, Agile Program Management, Web Applications, English, Issue Management, Communication, Status Updates, Project Planning, Minimum Viable Product (MVP), Project Scoping, Planning, Backlog Management, Backlog Grooming, Discovery Workshops, Requirements & Specifications, Discovery, Estimation & Planning, Functional Requirements, Project Estimation, Agile Product Delivery, Design Sprints, User Requirements, Fintech, System Integration, Development, Stakeholder Analysis, Budgeting, Project Timelines, Task Management, Timelines, IT Projects, Delivery, Web Technologies, Technical Support, Notion, Software Design, Lean UX, Stakeholder Interviews, Core Banking Systems, Investment Banking Technology, Investment Banking, Compliance, IT Audits, Visual Studio Code (VS Code)
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