--- title: "Engineering Manager · Project Manager / Product Owner · Technical Lead - José DA COSTA" description: "Technical Lead to Engineering Manager" locale: "en" canonical: "https://portfolio.josedacosta.info/en/journey/engineering-manager-project-manager-product-owner-technical-lead" source: "https://portfolio.josedacosta.info/en/journey/engineering-manager-project-manager-product-owner-technical-lead.md" html_source: "https://portfolio.josedacosta.info/en/journey/engineering-manager-project-manager-product-owner-technical-lead" author: "José DA COSTA" type: "journey" slug: "engineering-manager-project-manager-product-owner-technical-lead" generated_at: "2026-04-23T15:46:41.768Z" --- # Engineering Manager · Project Manager / Product Owner · Technical Lead **Organization:** Groupe Pichet **Period:** 2019-01-07 - 2024-03-13 **Type:** experience **Status:** Permanent contract **Responsibility:** Technical Lead to Engineering Manager ## Company vision Groupe Pichet is a family-owned real estate group headquartered in Pessac, with 1,400+ employees - a mid-size enterprise covering the entire real estate value chain: new-build development, rental investment, property management, hospitality (All Suites, Mondrian/Ennismore), student residences and vineyards. The 100-person IT department (50% outsourced), led by Jean-Luc O. , was structured into divisions: Marketing IS/IT Factory, Middleware/ESB, Cross-functional IS, Finance/HR IS. The mid-size complexity meant dealing with interoperability between 20+ heterogeneous systems (accounting ERP & software, CRM, PIM Akeneo, DAM Bynder, ESB TIBCO, treasury KYRIBA, hotel PMS, identities IGA), standardizing methods across divisions, and governing sensitive real estate data. My 5-year journey in this group was marked by continuous growth : Technical Lead (code, plugins, Kubernetes infrastructure) to Project Manager (SaaS migration, 160-200K EUR/year budget, vendor negotiations, steering committees) then Engineering Manager (managing 1-7 developers, strategic roadmap, IS governance). ## Overview Five-year journey at Groupe Pichet (1,400 employees, real estate), progressing from Technical Lead to Engineering Manager. Led PIM, DAM, and ESB transformation across the entire organization. - Grew from code to team management over 5 years - Managed 160-200K EUR annual SaaS budget - Worked across all departments: development, hospitality, finance, HR ## Competencies (17) - **System Architecture and Design** (confidence 5/5) _(technical)_: Design of the TIBCO BusinessWorks ESB architecture connecting 20+ group systems (accounting ERP, accounting software, hotel PMS, KYRIBA). Full 360 view of the IS for a 1,400-employee group. - **Fullstack Development** (confidence 5/5) _(technical)_: Custom Akeneo plugin development, import pipelines, mediation systems, and REST APIs. 30+ feature/hotfix branches on GitLab. - **DevOps and CI/CD** (confidence 4/5) _(technical)_: Managing the Kubernetes infrastructure (k8s preprod/prod) hosting PIM, liner exports, and websites. CI/CD with GitLab CI + Helm. - **Cloud Architecture** (confidence 4/5) _(technical)_: PIM Akeneo migration to SaaS Serenity (cloud), Kubernetes infrastructure, preprod/prod environment management. - **Software Architecture Patterns** (confidence 5/5) _(technical)_: Multi-bundle architecture, enterprise integration patterns (ESB, ETL), data flow design between heterogeneous systems. - **REST API Design** (confidence 5/5) _(technical)_: PSR platform integrating 9+ partner lead APIs (SeLoger, Myopla, Cooper, Akrivia). Inter-system integration API design. - **Web Application Security (OWASP)** (confidence 4/5) _(technical)_: ESB flow security, Azure AD SSO management for the PIM, data exchange compliance between group systems. - **Databases** (confidence 5/5) _(technical)_: PIM database management (real estate product catalogs), query and schema optimization for 2,000+ programs. - **Monitoring and Supervision** (confidence 4/5) _(technical)_: Monitoring 100+ ESB integration flows, alerting on sync errors, Jira dashboards for operational tracking. - **Leadership and Team Management** (confidence 5/5) _(soft)_: Managing 1 to 7 ESB developers with daily standups, Sprint Planning/Review/Retrospective. Progression from Tech Lead to Engineering Manager. - **Project Management** (confidence 5/5) _(soft)_: Running 6 simultaneous projects, 932+ Jira tickets, coordination with all group departments (~80 stakeholders). - **Stakeholder Management** (confidence 5/5) _(soft)_: Daily interaction with sales, rental, hospitality, finance, treasury, HR, marketing, and security departments. IS/business alignment. - **Communication and Collaboration** (confidence 5/5) _(soft)_: Cross-functional work with ~80 people daily. Facilitating Agile ceremonies, reporting to IT management and business units. - **Project Portfolio Management** (confidence 4/5) _(soft)_: Program-level vision across the PIM/DAM/ESB/PSR portfolio. Trade-offs between technical debt, new features, and budget. - **Agile and Scrum Methodologies** (confidence 5/5) _(soft)_: Daily Scrum practice (PSPO certified 2021). Sprint Planning, Daily, Review, Retrospective on Jira/Confluence. - **Budget and Financial Management** (confidence 4/5) _(soft)_: Managing an annual budget of 160-200K EUR (excl. tax) for SaaS licenses and services (Akeneo, Bynder, CI HUB, Square IT). - **Change Management** (confidence 4/5) _(soft)_: Supporting the group's digital transformation. PIM cloud migration, DAM rollout, agile methodology adoption. ## Missions - Managed cross-functional teams of up to 7 people across a portfolio of 6 concurrent projects with 100+ integration flows and 932+ Jira tickets - Growing budget responsibility aligned with scope: from 160-200K EUR/year (PIM/DAM/SaaS tools) to ~370K EUR/year (enterprise integration, TIBCO license ~100K, Square IT TMA, ESB contractors) - Worked transversally with all group departments: development, property management, hospitality, finance, treasury, HR, marketing, security - daily interaction with ~80 people - Led the digital transformation of PIM Akeneo, DAM Bynder and enterprise application integration (TIBCO ESB) systems across a 1,400+ employee group - Progressed from Technical Lead to Engineering Manager over 5 years, with continuous growth: code → product → project → team management ## Progression logic **Jan 2019 - Jan 2021:** Took ownership of the PIM/DAM scope, developed custom Akeneo plugins, managed 30+ feature/hotfix branches on GitLab with Master access, conducted code reviews for DnD and Kariba teams. Benchmarked and deployed DAM Bynder. Managed Kubernetes infrastructure (k8s). The trigger for transition: full technical mastery of the Marketing IS created a need for product ownership that no one else could fill. **Jan 2021 - Sep 2023:** Scope expanded beyond code: PIM cloud migration (Akeneo SaaS), managing a 160-200K EUR/year budget, negotiating vendor contracts (Akeneo 45K EUR, Bynder 36.9K EUR), leading steering committees with 5+ departments. PSPO (2021) and SAFe PO/PM (2022) certifications to formalize this evolution. **Oct 2023 - Mar 2024:** Direct management of 1-7 ESB developers, leading 6 concurrent projects (100+ flows, 932+ Jira tickets), strategic decisions (ESB roadmap 2023-2024, iPaaS evaluation), standardizing practices across IT divisions, structured knowledge transfer. Daily interaction with ~80 people across all group departments. ## Decision Scope ### Decision scope by role | Domain | Technical Lead | Project Manager | Engineering Manager | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Technical architecture | Decides | Validates | Challenges (HR/budget impact) | | Team composition | - | Proposes | Decides (with N+1 then CIO) | | Backlog priority | Contributes | Decides | Protects capacity | | Vendor budget | - | Signs purchase orders | Co-decides (with N+1) | | Roadmap | - | Executes | Proposes and drives | | Code quality | Decides (code reviews) | Tracks KPIs | Defines standards | | Recruitment | - | Expresses the need | Selects and onboards | | Incident management | Resolves | Coordinates | Incident Commander (P0) | | Agile ceremonies | Participates | Facilitates (COPIL/COPROJ) | Creates and facilitates (Sprint) | | Technical debt | Identifies | Arbitrates | Reserves 30% of sprint | ## Personal Vision **Title:** My take on this period **Content:** The Engineering Manager role taught me that **technical skills alone aren't enough** - what makes the difference is the ability to structure a team, defend a vision, and navigate instability. My biggest challenge was going through **5 restructurings and 4 CIO changes** while keeping service continuity on critical data flows. My push for the **iPaaS transformation** didn't go through before I left, but it laid the groundwork for the migration started later. If I could do it again, I'd build a quantified business case earlier - that's the language decision-makers understand. ## Role details ### Technical Lead · Flows and Products: content and enterprise integration **Period:** 2019-01-07 - 2021-01-31 **Responsibility:** Technical Lead - Product Owner PIM/DAM Joined Groupe Pichet in January 2019 as an external contractor via Kariba/Kent , then became permanent staff around September 2019. My manager was Franck C. (Web IS Lead). I took over the PIM/DAM scope from Andoni L. who explicitly transferred his responsibilities: "since José is gradually taking over my scope, make sure to copy him on emails about the PIM and content feeds." Immediate deep dive into code: custom Akeneo plugin development (DnDMediaSynchronizationBundle), 30+ feature/hotfix branches on GitLab with Master access, code reviews for DnD developers ( Julien G., Vianney C. ) and Kariba ( Thomas Ramel ). The PIM managed ~2,000 real estate programs and distributed data to 25+ partner portals (SeLoger, LeBonCoin, BienIci, LogicImmo, Criteo..). The infrastructure was extremely advanced for its time : Kubernetes clusters on AWS (GKE then EKS) hosted by Claranet/Oxalide, GitLab CI + Helm for CI/CD, Grafana/Kibana monitoring, Tyk API Gateway. I managed Docker/Kubernetes deployments, SSH bastions, and pod monitoring in staging and production. The technical scope covered 3 interconnected critical systems : PIM Akeneo (product data), Export Ligneurs (XML/CSV/JSON distribution to 25+ portals), and the G2P mediation system (automatic matching between manually created "fake" programs and real programs from the Thetrawin ERP). Any error in these flows propagated instantly across all of the group's sales channels. This is the period where I discovered the technical depth of an enterprise IS for a 1,400-employee group - and where my complete mastery of this scope naturally led toward product ownership. ### Overview Technical Lead and Product Owner for PIM/DAM at Groupe Pichet. Developed custom Akeneo plugins, led the v1.4 to v2.3 migration, and launched the DAM Bynder benchmark and deployment. - Built custom Akeneo plugins and managed 30+ GitLab branches - Led PIM migration from v1.4 to v2.3 for 1,400-employee group - Benchmarked and deployed DAM Bynder replacing OpenText OTMM ### Competencies (14) - **Full-Stack Web Development** (confidence 4/5) _(technical)_: PHP/Symfony backend development with custom Akeneo plugin architecture and frontend integration. - **System Architecture Design** (confidence 4/5) _(technical)_: Enterprise PIM/DAM architecture design for a 1,400-employee real estate group. - **DevOps & CI/CD** (confidence 3/5) _(technical)_: GitLab CI/CD with Helm charts on Kubernetes clusters (k8s.preprod/prod.kariba.fr). - **Cloud Architecture** (confidence 3/5) _(technical)_: Kubernetes infrastructure management hosting PIM, export services, and web applications. - **Software Architecture Patterns** (confidence 4/5) _(technical)_: Plugin-based architecture for Akeneo PIM with custom bundles and mediation systems. - **REST API Design** (confidence 4/5) _(technical)_: API design for partner data syndication flows across 25+ real estate portals. - **Testing Strategy & Quality** (confidence 3/5) _(technical)_: Code review practices with 30+ feature/hotfix branches and quality gates in GitLab CI. - **Database Fundamentals** (confidence 4/5) _(technical)_: Database design and optimization for PIM data models handling thousands of product entries. - **Problem Solving & Critical Thinking** (confidence 4/5) _(soft)_: Technical problem resolution for PIM migration (v1.4 to v2.3) and data synchronization issues. - **Adaptability & Learning Agility** (confidence 3/5) _(soft)_: Rapid onboarding into enterprise PIM/DAM ecosystem and transition from external contractor to CDI. - **Monitoring & Supervision** (confidence 4/5) _(technical)_: Monitoring of content syndication exports to 25+ real estate portals, sync error detection, and alerting. - **Deployment & Service Continuity** (confidence 4/5) _(technical)_: Continuous deployments on Kubernetes, preprod/prod environment management, PIM migration with zero downtime. - **Communication & Collaboration** (confidence 3/5) _(soft)_: Coordination with DnD developers, Kariba team, and business stakeholders on PIM/DAM scope. - **Web Application Security (OWASP)** (confidence 3/5) _(technical)_: Securing PIM/DAM integration flows, managing access controls and authentication across group platforms. ### Missions - PIM Akeneo Tech Lead: custom plugin development, PIM v1.4 to v2.3 migration, automated Thetrawin import pipeline, G2P mediation system - Code reviews and CI/CD: supervision of DnD developers (Julien G., Vianney C.) and Kariba (Thomas Ramel), 30+ feature/hotfix branches on GitLab (Master access) - Benchmarked and selected DAM Bynder to replace OpenText: solution qualification, contract legal review, deployment preparation - Migrated 25+ content syndication feeds to PIM v2 platform: SeLoger, LeBonCoin, LogicImmo, BienIci, Criteo and 20+ other partner real estate portals - Managed Kubernetes infrastructure (k8s.preprod/prod.kariba.fr) hosting PIM, Export Ligneurs and websites, with GitLab CI + Helm CI/CD ### Personal Vision **Title:** My take on this period **Content:** My time as Technical Lead was when I discovered **the depth of an enterprise IT system** for a 1,400-employee company. I came in as an external contractor and quickly took ownership of **3 interconnected critical systems** (PIM, Export Ligneurs, G2P mediation) that fed all of the group's sales channels. Full technical ownership of that scope - code, Kubernetes infrastructure, CI/CD, code reviews - naturally pulled me toward **product leadership**. The pivotal moment: when I realized that **knowing how to code isn't enough**, you also have to decide what to build and why. ### Project Manager / Product Owner · Flows and Products: PIM & DAM & ESB **Period:** 2021-01-01 - 2023-09-30 **Responsibility:** Project Manager - PIM/DAM then Marketing IS This period marked the shift from code to product ownership, budget management and vendor relations . Under Nicolas F. (Marketing IS Manager) then Claude D. (IT Project Director), I took ownership of the group's full Marketing IS. The landmark project of this period: DAM Bynder . When I inherited this project, it was a complete failure - 5 project managers in 5 years, 360,000 EUR spent on OpenText with zero assets in production . Business teams had lost trust in IT. With the new Communications Director, we restarted from scratch with an agile, MVP approach : independent benchmark (Codified DAM Consultant study via Activo Consulting), Bynder selection, legal contract review, 17 onboarding sessions. Result: delivered ahead of schedule, within budget (36,900 EUR/year vs 360K wasted), zero Covid delay , and positive feedback from executive leadership. In parallel, I managed the PIM migration from Akeneo On-Premise to SaaS Serenity (45-60K EUR/year contract), handling renewal negotiations with the vendor, Azure AD SSO, and coordination with 20+ dependent systems. I was a pioneer of SaaS adoption in a group where infrastructure had historically been self-hosted. My scope also covered high-stakes real estate lead flows : 75 lead providers, ~400K EUR/month in volume, 1 lead every 2 seconds on average, with major GDPR constraints on personal data in production. The PSPO (Scrum.org/ORSYS 2021) and SAFe PO/PM (Scaled Agile/ORSYS 2022) certifications formalized this evolution into a full Product Manager role. ### Overview Project Manager at Groupe Pichet handling PIM migration to SaaS, DAM Bynder deployment, and the PSR platform integrating 9+ partner lead APIs. Managed an annual budget of 160-200K EUR. - Led PIM Akeneo migration from On-Premise to SaaS cloud - Deployed DAM Bynder on time and budget, praised by leadership - Integrated 9+ partner APIs and 25+ content syndication feeds ### Competencies (11) - **System Architecture Design** (confidence 4/5) _(technical)_: Architecture decisions for PIM SaaS migration, DAM deployment, and PSR platform design. - **REST API Design** (confidence 4/5) _(technical)_: API specifications for PSR platform integrating 9+ partner lead APIs with CRM systems. - **Leadership & Team Management** (confidence 4/5) _(soft)_: Management of cross-functional teams across PIM, DAM, and partner integration projects. - **Stakeholder Management** (confidence 4/5) _(soft)_: Coordination with Akeneo, Bynder vendors and internal business units across the group. - **Communication & Collaboration** (confidence 4/5) _(soft)_: Bridge between technical teams and business stakeholders in a 1,400-employee organization. - **Project Management** (confidence 4/5) _(soft)_: Multi-project management with Jira/Confluence, Scrum ceremonies, and SAFe planning. - **Project Portfolio Management** (confidence 3/5) _(soft)_: Portfolio oversight across PIM, DAM, PSR, and content syndication work streams. - **Agile & Scrum Methodologies** (confidence 4/5) _(soft)_: PSPO certified (2021), daily Scrum practice with sprint planning and backlog refinement. - **Budget & Financial Management** (confidence 3/5) _(soft)_: Annual budget of 160-200K euros across Akeneo (45-60K), Bynder (36.9K), and other SaaS tools. - **Risk Management** (confidence 3/5) _(soft)_: Risk assessment for SaaS migration, vendor lock-in, and production deployment scenarios. - **Change Management** (confidence 3/5) _(soft)_: Led organization-wide adoption of DAM Bynder with 17 onboarding sessions across departments. ### Missions - Led PIM migration from Akeneo On-Premise to SaaS Serenity (cloud): coordination with Akeneo (45,000 euros/year contract), Azure AD SSO implementation, product backlog management - Deployed and supervised DAM Bynder replacing OpenText: delivered November 2020 on time and budget - project praised by executive leadership - Led the PSR platform (Pichet Services Repository): integration of 9+ partner lead APIs connected to Adobe Campaign and the CRM - Operational management of 25+ content syndication feeds: adding new partners, production flow maintenance, coordination with business teams and portals (SeLoger, LeBonCoin, LogicImmo, BienIci) - Implemented SAFe Agile methodology with Jira/Confluence and managed an annual budget of 160-200K euros - Bridge between business departments (real estate development, rental, hospitality, marketing, finance) and technical teams: translating functional requirements into actionable specifications, writing technical briefs, leading steering committees (COPIL), and prioritizing competing requests from 5+ departments **Context Alert:** For 6 months, I also joined the **IS urbanization team**, contributing to ECM, MDM and DMS project scoping with firms like CGI. ### Business Impact **Title:** Business impact #### Metrics **Value:** 6x **Unit:** cheaper **Label:** DAM Bynder (57K EUR) vs abandoned OpenText (360K EUR spent with zero results) **Category:** dam **Value:** 5x **Unit:** faster **Label:** 3 months Bynder onboarding vs years on OpenText without delivery **Category:** dam **Value:** 400K **Unit:** EUR/mo **Label:** Real estate lead volume managed via the PSR platform (1 lead / 2 sec) **Category:** psr **Value:** 25+ **Unit:** portals **Label:** Real estate portals continuously fed (SeLoger, LeBonCoin, BienIci..) **Category:** psr **Value:** 160-200K **Unit:** EUR/yr **Label:** Vendor budget managed (Akeneo, Bynder, CI HUB, UBIFLOW, contractors) #### Highlights - PIM to SaaS migration: eliminated On-Premise hosting costs (Claranet/Oxalide servers), improved time-to-market on product updates, automatic upgrades instead of costly manual migrations - DAM Bynder: delivered ahead of schedule and within budget, zero Covid delay, praised by Benoit Pichet (CEO), Remi Ehrhart and all teams - restored Communications Department trust in IT - SaaS pioneer: before my arrival, infrastructure was purely self-hosted. I initiated the shift to SaaS (PIM Akeneo Serenity, DAM Bynder), reducing maintenance and support costs ### Vendor Management **Title:** Vendor and contract management #### Vendors **Akeneo** _Type: PIM SaaS_ _Budget:_ 45-60K EUR/yr _Actions:_ Annual renewal, On-Premise to SaaS Serenity migration, Azure SSO, vendor support **Bynder** _Type: DAM SaaS_ _Budget:_ 36,900 EUR/yr _Actions:_ Benchmark vs OpenText, contract negotiation, deployment, 17 onboarding sessions #### Contractors **Square IT** _Scope:_ TIBCO ESB _Management:_ Monthly timesheets, deliverable validation, weekly quality checkpoint **RS2I** _Scope:_ TIBCO ESB _Management:_ iPaaS evaluation, contract management, code review before merge **DnD (Clever Age)** _Scope:_ PIM Akeneo _Management:_ Code reviews, GitLab branch validation, joint sprints ### Project Deliverables **Title:** Project deliverables produced **Description:** Documentation and concrete deliverables produced as part of managing PIM, DAM, PSR and content feed projects. #### Items **Functional and technical specifications** _Detail:_ Detailed specifications for DAM Bynder, PIM SaaS migration, PSR platform and content feed upgrades **Test plans** _Detail:_ Validation scenarios for each portal migration (25+ portals), each new partner API and each PIM version upgrade **Migration and rollback plans** _Detail:_ Minute-by-minute procedures for critical migrations (PIM On-Premise to SaaS, DAM OpenText to Bynder) with rollback plans **Steering and project committees** _Detail:_ Facilitation of steering and project committees with business departments, structured PowerPoint reporting to IT management and executive leadership **Progress reports** _Detail:_ Regular reporting on Jira/Confluence, project tracking dashboards for PIM/DAM/PSR stakeholders **Confluence documentation** _Detail:_ Structured knowledge base: DAM user guides (DAM TUTORIAL), PIM procedures, content feed flow architecture, PSR API specifications ### Decision Making **Title:** Trade-offs and decision-making **Description:** Concrete examples of trade-off decisions made as project manager, where the ability to choose between competing options had a direct impact on the outcome. #### Items **Decision:** Abandoned OpenText DAM and started from scratch with Bynder **Context:** 5 project managers in 5 years, 360,000 EUR spent with zero assets in production. Business departments had lost trust in IT. **Action:** Decided to cut the OpenText budget line and restart with an agile MVP approach using Bynder after an independent benchmark (Activo Consulting). **Result:** Project delivered ahead of schedule, 6x cheaper (57K EUR vs 360K EUR), Communications department trust restored **Decision:** Prioritized portal migration one by one **Context:** 25+ real estate portals to migrate to PIM v2. Migrating everything in parallel was impossible - risk of regression on sales feeds. **Action:** Prioritized by business impact: SeLoger and LeBonCoin first (highest lead volume), then secondary portals in batches. **Result:** Zero distribution interruption during migration. Each portal validated individually with the business team (Gaetan B., Leslie A.) **Decision:** Akeneo renewal negotiation: accepted +30% to secure SaaS **Context:** Akeneo contract went from 45K to 60K EUR/year. 30% increase flagged to management, but the SaaS migration eliminated On-Premise hosting costs. **Action:** Total cost analysis: 60K EUR SaaS vs 45K EUR license + 18K EUR/month Claranet hosting. SaaS was cheaper overall. **Result:** 3-year contract signed. Server costs eliminated, automatic updates, vendor support included ### Project Methodology **Title:** Project methodologies used **Description:** Methodology adapted to each project context - no dogmatism, but a pragmatic approach based on constraints. #### Items **Agile Scrum** _Context:_ PIM Akeneo, DAM Bynder, content feeds _Detail:_ 2-week sprints, Jira backlog, daily standups. Full ceremonies for projects with frequent changes and a need for fast business feedback. _Certification:_ PSPO (Scrum.org, 2021) **SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework)** _Context:_ Cross-team IT coordination _Detail:_ Backlog alignment between Marketing IS, Middleware and Cross-functional IS divisions. PI Planning to synchronize deliveries across teams. _Certification:_ SAFe PO/PM (Scaled Agile, 2022) **Waterfall** _Context:_ Critical migrations (PIM SaaS, DAM) _Detail:_ Minute-by-minute deployment plans for migrations with zero tolerance for interruption. Migration cockpits, rollback plans, step-by-step validations with go/no-go. **ITIL** _Context:_ Incident management and operational maintenance _Detail:_ ESB incident management processes, KESD tickets (IT Service Desk), change management via CAB, service continuity. ### Saas Pioneer **Title:** SaaS pioneer in the group **Description:** Before my arrival, Groupe Pichet's infrastructure was purely self-hosted between Paris and Bordeaux data centers. There were almost no SaaS solutions, and existing staff were reluctant to migrate to the cloud. #### Before #### Before - 100% self-hosted infrastructure (On-Premise) - PIM Akeneo on Kubernetes managed by Claranet/Oxalide - DAM OpenText on internal servers (360K EUR invested) - Organizational resistance to SaaS #### After #### After - PIM Akeneo migrated to SaaS Serenity (cloud) - DAM Bynder deployed as SaaS (Brand Portal) - Unified Azure AD SSO for SaaS platforms - On-premise hosting costs eliminated - Automatic updates (no more manual migrations) **Impact:** The SaaS migration allowed teams to refocus on business value instead of infrastructure maintenance. The total cost (SaaS + vendor support) turned out cheaper than On-Premise hosting alone. ### Urbanisation **Title:** IS urbanisation contribution **Description:** For 6 months, I joined the information systems urbanisation team at Groupe Pichet. This immersion gave me a holistic view of the IS and allowed me to contribute to strategic group-wide initiatives. #### Items **ECM (Enterprise Content Management)** _Detail:_ Project scoping with CGI: functional scope definition, content management needs analysis, architecture recommendations. **MDM (Master Data Management)** _Detail:_ Group data referential scoping: master data identification, source and flow analysis, governance rules definition. **GED (Electronic Document Management)** _Detail:_ Document dematerialization project scoping: existing document process analysis, filing and archiving requirements specification. **Urbanisation charters** _Detail:_ Contributing to IS urbanisation charters: naming conventions, architecture principles, integration standards between application blocks. ### Personal Vision **Title:** My view of this period **Content:** This Project Manager period was the most formative of my time at Pichet. The DAM Bynder project remains my greatest success: starting from scratch after a 360K EUR failure, and delivering in a few months a solution that satisfied the entire group, for 6 times less. This project exemplified what a user-centric agile approach can achieve, compared to a waterfall process that had failed for 5 years. I was also frustrated by a culture where budget sometimes prevailed over value. But this friction taught me to argue in terms of ROI and total cost of ownership (TCO) rather than in technical terms - a PM skill I now consider fundamental. ### Engineering Manager · Enterprise Application Integration **Period:** 2023-10-01 - 2024-03-13 **Responsibility:** Engineering Manager - Enterprise Application Integration Groupe Pichet's ESB (Enterprise Service Bus) platform is the backbone of the information system . Built on TIBCO BusinessWorks 6 , it orchestrates all data flows between the group's 20+ business applications: accounting ERP, accounting software, treasury (KYRIBA), hotel PMS, real estate management software, CRM, invoice dematerialization platform, digital identities (IGA), HRIS, fleet management software, and many others. In this role, I interfaced with every department of Groupe Pichet (~1,400 employees): real estate development, property management, hospitality (All Suites, Radisson), finance, treasury, HR, marketing, security, fleet management. Each flow represents a critical business process - an ESB outage blocks accounting entries, student billing, CRM leads, or price updates on websites. On a daily basis, I interacted with ~80 people on completely different topics. Within a 100-person IT department with 50% outsourcing, I created and led the middleware team's Agile ceremonies (Daily Enterprise Integration standup, Sprint Planning, Review, Retrospective) with a team of 1-7 ESB developers. ### Overview Engineering Manager at Groupe Pichet overseeing enterprise application integration. Led a team of 1-7 ESB developers, managed 20+ TIBCO BusinessWorks flows connecting all group systems. - Managed 6 concurrent projects with 932+ Jira tickets - Oversaw 100+ ESB flows across 20+ business applications (ERP, treasury, hospitality, CRM) - Drove ESB roadmap and iPaaS solution evaluation ### Competencies (12) - **System Architecture Design** (confidence 4/5) _(technical)_: ESB architecture oversight for 20+ TIBCO BusinessWorks integration flows. - **Leadership & Team Management** (confidence 4/5) _(soft)_: Direct management of 1-7 developers with daily standups, 1-on-1s, and career development. - **Stakeholder Management** (confidence 4/5) _(soft)_: Interface between ESB team and business units across finance, HR, marketing, and IT. - **Communication & Collaboration** (confidence 4/5) _(soft)_: Cross-team coordination for integration projects spanning multiple business domains. - **Project Management** (confidence 4/5) _(soft)_: Sprint planning and delivery tracking for ESB platform with 932+ Jira tickets. - **Project Portfolio Management** (confidence 4/5) _(soft)_: Concurrent management of ESB, PIM, and DAM project streams with resource allocation. - **Agile & Scrum Methodologies** (confidence 4/5) _(soft)_: Daily Scrum ceremonies, sprint reviews, and retrospectives for the ESB team. - **Budget & Financial Management** (confidence 4/5) _(soft)_: Budget management for SaaS licenses, contractor costs, and infrastructure expenses. - **Risk Management** (confidence 3/5) _(soft)_: Risk mitigation for production integration flows handling critical business data. - **Performance Evaluation & KPI** (confidence 4/5) _(soft)_: Team performance tracking with delivery metrics, quality indicators, and SLA monitoring. - **Change Management** (confidence 4/5) _(soft)_: Organizational change management during team restructuring and process improvements. - **Knowledge Capitalization** (confidence 3/5) _(soft)_: Documentation practices and knowledge sharing across ESB team via Confluence. ### Missions - Managed a team of 1-7 ESB developers (Kalala M., Issam J., Achraf L., Melissa B. and Square IT/RS2I contractors), with Daily standup, Sprint Planning/Review/Retrospective - Managed 100+ ESB TIBCO BusinessWorks flows interconnecting 20+ business applications: accounting ERP, accounting software, hotel PMS, KYRIBA (treasury - 3 lots), financial software, student residences system, IGA, hotel channel manager, document management software - Supervised PIM Akeneo, DAM Bynder, content syndication and lead acquisition tool (PSR) portfolios - Led 6 concurrent projects managing 100+ integration flows, with 932+ Jira tickets on the dedicated ESB space - Drove strategic decisions: ESB roadmap 2023-2024, iPaaS solution evaluation (Middleway SAS, RS2I/TIBCO Cloud), structured knowledge transfer before departure - Standardized integration practices across IT divisions (Marketing IS, Middleware, Cross-functional IS, Finance/HR IS): established flow documentation standards, connector quality controls and production deployment validation processes **Context Alert:** Over my 5 years in the group, I went through **5 restructurings and 4 CIO changes**. Change management, reorganization, and stakeholder management were permanent themes throughout this assignment. Despite this instability, I maintained service continuity across all critical group flows. ### Business Impact **Title:** Business impact #### Metrics **Value:** ~370K **Unit:** EUR/yr **Label:** Total scope budget (licenses + contractors + tools) **Value:** ~20 → 100+ **Unit:** flows **Label:** Production flows on arrival to 100+ on departure (~70 new flows/year) **Value:** ~30% **Unit:** sprint **Label:** Time allocated to tech debt and Run (sanctified Build/Run ratio) **Value:** 18K **Unit:** EUR/mo **Label:** Cloud Docker/Kubernetes infrastructure OPEX #### Highlights - Capacity Planning: real workload estimation accounting for leave, training, on-call and Run - 1 to 7 devs adjusted quarterly with internal/external mix - Systematic Blameless Post-Mortems after every major ESB incident (ERP, KYRIBA, hotel PMS flows) - root cause analysis, corrective actions without blame, Confluence documentation - Each ESB flow represents a critical business process: an EMMA_QUAL outage blocks student residence accounting, a KYRIBA halt impacts group treasury withdrawals ### Strategic Roadmap **Title:** Strategic Roadmap & Planning 2023 **Description:** Built and drove the annual enterprise integration roadmap, validated in steering committees with IT leadership and business departments. The roadmap covered all group interconnection needs over a 12 to 24-month horizon. #### Metrics **Value:** 52 **Label:** Planned flows / year **Detail:** 48 new flows + 4 evolutions of existing flows **Value:** 2.33 **Label:** FTEs required / year **Detail:** Full-time equivalents calculated on 400 workdays **Value:** 503 **Label:** Workdays / year **Detail:** Build (400d) + Monitoring (141d) + Recurring TMA (88d/yr) **Value:** 6+ **Label:** Departments involved **Detail:** Accounting-Finance, Real Estate, Hospitality, HR, Customer Journey, Middleware #### Breakdown **Title:** Breakdown by complexity #### Items **Type:** Simple #### Count 25 **Type:** Medium #### Count 19 **Type:** Complex #### Count 2 **Type:** Evolutions #### Count 6 #### Departments **Title:** Needs by business department #### Items **Accounting-Finance** _Projects:_ Accounting flows, treasury management and cross-system financial reconciliation **Real Estate / Construction** _Projects:_ Property program repositories, sync flows and document audits **Hospitality** _Projects:_ Banking commissions, booking flows, billing and student residence payments **Customer Journey** _Projects:_ Marketing campaigns, CRM lead management and product reference flows **HR IS** _Projects:_ HR process digitization and payroll tool migration **Middleware** _Projects:_ Integration architecture modernization, alternative platform evaluation and service continuity oversight ### Management Philosophy **Title:** How I manage **Description:** Management principles applied daily with the middleware team, in an ETI context of 1,400 employees with 50% outsourcing. #### Items **Weekly 1:1s (not status meetings)** Individual sessions focused on career development, personal blockers and bidirectional feedback. Project tracking happens in ceremonies, not in 1:1s. _Icon:_ users **Build/Run ratio protected at ~30%** Systematic protection of 30% sprint capacity for technical debt and Run. Direct negotiation with stakeholders to defend this ratio against feature requests. _Icon:_ shield **You build it, you run it** Every developer owns their flows in production. No separation between Build and Support teams - it drives accountability and improves code quality. _Icon:_ target **Systematic blameless post-mortems** After every major ESB incident (ERP, KYRIBA, hotel PMS), root cause analysis without blame. Confluence documentation, corrective actions and recurrence prevention. _Icon:_ rollback **Mathematical capacity planning** Real workload estimation: theoretical capacity - (leave + training + on-call + Run) = available Build capacity. Quarterly adjustment of internal/external mix (1-7 devs). _Icon:_ migration ### Time Distribution **Title:** Time distribution **Description:** Typical weekly time allocation as Engineering Manager in an ETI / 100-person IT department. #### Items **Coordination & product meetings** _Detail:_ Steering committees, Weekly Transverse, COPROJ, vendor meetings **Management & coaching** _Detail:_ Weekly 1:1s, annual reviews, feedback, recruitment **Agile ceremonies** _Detail:_ Daily, Sprint Planning, Sprint Review, Retrospective **Recruitment & contractors** _Detail:_ ESN selection, interviews, onboarding, CRA tracking **Strategy & roadmap** _Detail:_ ESB roadmap 2023-2024, iPaaS evaluation, architecture vision **Communication & reporting** _Detail:_ IT leadership reporting, Jira dashboards, presentation materials ### Governance Processes **Title:** Governance & processes created **Description:** Processes built from scratch to structure the middleware team and industrialize integration flow delivery. #### Items **Daily Enterprise Integration** _Detail:_ Daily standup created in May 2022 to coordinate ESB developers on active flows, blockers and incidents. First Agile ceremony for the middleware team. _Date:_ May 2022 **Flow estimation process** _Detail:_ Standardized method to estimate each new integration flow workload. First formal estimate: EMMA_QUAL_01 at 3,375 EUR (7.5d dev + 2.5d coordination). _Date:_ 2022 **Complete Sprint ceremonies** _Detail:_ Sprint Planning, Review and Retrospective progressively established. Sprint Review with multi-project backlog presentation, complexity qualification and planning. _Date:_ Nov 2022 - Feb 2023 **COPROJ Enterprise Integration** _Detail:_ Bi-monthly project committee for full integration portfolio tracking. Structured reporting to Claude D. (N+1) and IT leadership. _Date:_ May 2022 **ESB Definition of Done** _Detail:_ Strict criteria imposed on contractors: mandatory code review, flow documentation, staging tests, functional validation before merge. _Date:_ 2023 **Structured handover (anti Bus Factor)** _Detail:_ 3-month handover process before departure: 10+ dedicated sessions (PIM, DAM, PSR, Ligneurs, ESB), exhaustive Confluence documentation. _Date:_ Oct - Dec 2023 ### Servant Leadership **Situation:** Student residences to accounting ERP flow down on a Friday at 6pm - group accounting blocked **Action:** On-call activated, root cause identified in 20 min (expired TIBCO certificate), coordinated redeployment of the connector with the on-call developer before 7:30pm **Result:** Zero impact on the monthly accounting close **Situation:** Emergency rollback after ESB deployment: 3 KYRIBA (treasury) flows cascading into the accounting ERP and accounting software - connector version interdependencies **Action:** Activated the pre-built rollback plan (N-1 versions of each connector documented), coordinated the rollback sequence with the team to respect inter-flow dependency ordering **Result:** Stable state restored in 45 min instead of the estimated 4h without a plan - zero financial data loss **Situation:** PIM-SaaS migration with 20+ dependent systems: each connected application (portals, content feeds, PSR, CRM) had to switch in a precise order with no service interruption **Action:** Wrote a minute-by-minute migration plan, weekend on-call sessions with the team, rollback testing on each step in pre-prod, proactive communication to all impacted departments **Result:** Migration completed in one weekend with zero visible disruption for 1,400 users **Situation:** Priority conflict between hospitality (urgent hotel PMS migration) and finance (KYRIBA lots 2 sprints behind) **Action:** Presented factual business impact to the steering committee (hotel revenue vs treasury risk), proposed parallel staffing with an additional Square IT contractor **Result:** Both projects delivered on time without overloading the internal team **Situation:** RS2I contractor delivering ESB code without tests or documentation - growing technical debt, regression risk on critical flows **Action:** Strict Definition of Done enforced on the next sprint, systematic reviews before merge, weekly quality checkpoint with the contractor account **Result:** Deliverable quality aligned with internal standards within 3 sprints ### People Management **Title:** Team management and talent development #### Items **Coaching and skill development** Regular one-on-one sessions with each team member. Mentoring Melissa B. through her ramp-up on TIBCO BW6 (TIBCO application access requests, ESB first aid training sessions). Progressive autonomy building for Achraf L. on critical KYRIBA and hotel channel manager flows. _Icon:_ coaching **Hiring and contractor selection** Selection and onboarding of Square IT and RS2I contractors to strengthen the ESB team: defining technical profiles, conducting interviews, evaluating TIBCO BW skills, validation with Claude D. (IT Project Director). Managing the internal/external mix in a 50% outsourced IT department. _Icon:_ hiring **Team culture and continuous improvement** Set up complete Agile ceremonies for the middleware team: Daily Enterprise Integration standup (created May 2022), Sprint Planning, Review and Retrospective. 'ESB First Aid Training' sessions to share critical knowledge. Internal tech meetups and architecture workshops. _Icon:_ culture **Bus factor prevention and structured handover** Before departure: progressive handover over 3 months (October-December 2023) of all scopes to the customer experience team. Dedicated sessions per topic: PIM Handover (3 sessions), DAM Handover (2 sessions), PSR Handover (with Johann A.), ESB Handover. Exhaustive documentation of flows, processes and architectural decisions on Confluence. _Icon:_ handover ### Ipaas Vision **Title:** iPaaS transformation - a pioneering effort **Context:** The TIBCO BusinessWorks 6 ESB platform, while stable, was a structural bottleneck for IT agility. Each new flow required weeks of development, license costs were among the highest on the market (~100K EUR/year), and the monolithic architecture prevented any rapid scalability. #### Actions - Launched a formal evaluation of iPaaS alternatives with two vendors: **Middleway SAS** (David Grospelier, September 2022) and **RS2I/TIBCO Cloud** (Joseph Khouri, October 2022) - Commissioned an **external study by Enioka**: full audit of the integration ecosystem (51-page report), mapping of 47 existing flows, 186-day migration estimate, presented in June 2023 - Delivered **multiple presentations to the steering committee and CIO** advocating for a modern iPaaS platform (Azure Integration Services, TIBCO Cloud, MuleSoft) - backed by TCO analysis, time-to-market gains and accumulated technical debt - Drafted a **transition roadmap** including cost estimates, batch migration planning by flow group and target platform selection criteria **Outcome:** The project did not materialize before my departure in January 2024. A few months later, the teams initiated the implementation of a modern integration platform - this groundwork of conviction and preparation proved to be a precursor that accelerated the final decision. **Conviction:** I believed the TIBCO BW monolith had become a barrier to the group's growth. The development time per flow, license costs and the scarcity of TIBCO skills on the market made this platform incompatible with the pace of change demanded by business departments. ### Technical Documentation **Title:** Technical documentation produced **Description:** Complete documentation corpus produced for the TIBCO BusinessWorks ESB platform, following ITIL standards and Technical Direction requirements (APP-241 ESB). Each document type covers a specific aspect of the integration flow lifecycle. #### Documents **Application Architecture Document** Interactions and data flows between the ESB and satellite applications (ERP, real estate management, hospitality legacy system, treasury software, HR portal, ANAPLAN). Exchange choreography, access permissions, flow trigger schedules, deployment prerequisites. _Acronym:_ DAA **Technical Architecture Document** Complete inventory of physical system components: servers (hostnames, IPs, CPU, RAM, OS), network flows, ports and protocols, high availability constraints, security and performance requirements per environment (staging, pre-production, production). _Acronym:_ DAT **Automation Document** CI/CD pipeline management guide for ESB Eclipse projects: Azure DevOps configuration, YAML pipelines, Maven artifacts, Git branch management and environment variable handling. _Acronym:_ DAU **Operations Document** Operational guide for the ESB platform in production: package deployment, configuration file management (properties, templates), TIBCO component troubleshooting (TEA, BW6, EMS) across 5 environments. _Acronym:_ DEX **Flow Specification Document** Detailed integration flow specifications by business domain: SOFTMONITOR, budget (ADB), accounting, hospitality, marketing (channel manager), real estate development, HR, transcoding, treasury and property management. Includes SQL table creation scripts and transcoding files. _Acronym:_ DFX **Installation Document** Step-by-step installation procedures for TIBCO and Square IT Services suite on pre-production and production environments: hardware prerequisites (VM, vCPU, RAM), software (JDK, Visual C++), network configuration and rollback procedures. _Acronym:_ DIN **Migration Document** ESB version upgrade procedures (BW 6.4 to 6.5.1, EMS 8.3 to 8.5): incompatible component removal, new version installation, configuration migration and post-migration verification with rollback plans. _Acronym:_ DMI **Architecture diagrams** Visio diagrams of the ESB infrastructure per environment (production, pre-production, staging) and DevOps/CI-CD processes: Git workflows, Azure DevOps pipelines, TIBCO BW6 deployment. _Acronym:_ SCHEMAS ## Related achievements - [infrastructure-kubernetes-aws](https://portfolio.josedacosta.info/en/achievements/infrastructure-kubernetes-aws.md) - [pilotage-pim-akeneo-migration-saas](https://portfolio.josedacosta.info/en/achievements/pilotage-pim-akeneo-migration-saas.md) - [psr-plateforme-api-partenaires](https://portfolio.josedacosta.info/en/achievements/psr-plateforme-api-partenaires.md) - [diffusion-portails-immobiliers](https://portfolio.josedacosta.info/en/achievements/diffusion-portails-immobiliers.md) - [logement-connecte-iot-domotique](https://portfolio.josedacosta.info/en/achievements/logement-connecte-iot-domotique.md) Full interactive version with timeline navigation: https://portfolio.josedacosta.info/en/journey/engineering-manager-project-manager-product-owner-technical-lead