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Groupe Pichet

Engineering Manager · Project Manager / Product Owner · Technical Lead

Groupe Pichet

January 2019 - March 20245 years 3 monthsTechnical Lead to Engineering Manager
Groupe Pichet logo
My View of the Company

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 (ERP Qualiac/SAGE, CRM Hermes, PIM Akeneo, DAM Bynder, ESB TIBCO, treasury KYRIBA, PMS MEWS, 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).

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Groupe Pichet 5 business divisions wheel

1 400+

Employees

100

IT Staff

20+

Interconnected systems

5

Business lines

Key Missions & Responsibilities
  • 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
1
Engineering ManagerOct 2023 - Mar 2024

Team management, strategic roadmap and IS governance

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.

2
Project Manager / Product OwnerJan 2021 - Sep 2023

Product ownership, budgeting and stakeholder management

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.

3
Technical LeadJan 2019 - Jan 2021

Individual contributor and technical authority

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.

Budget by role

Budget scope evolution throughout the career progression at Pichet.

ItemTechnical LeadProject ManagerEng. Manager
Akeneo PIM Enterprise-45-60K55K
Bynder DAM Brand Portal-36,9K37K
TIBCO BusinessWorks (via Square IT)--~100K
CI HUB / PlayPlay / BrightCove / LucidPress-~37K-
TMA Square IT (ESB / SOFT Monitor)--80K
ESB dev contractors (RS2I + others)--60K
Argo / Activo / PIM contractors-~17K-
iPaaS audits (Enioka, RS2I)--~38K
Total EUR HT / year-160-200K~370K

+ Cloud infrastructure (Docker/Kubernetes): 18K EUR/month (216K EUR/year) - OPEX shared across IT divisions.

Decision scope by role

Evolution of decision domains throughout career progression at Pichet, showing the widening scope of responsibility.

DomainTechnical LeadProject ManagerEngineering Manager
Technical architectureDecidesValidatesChallenges (HR/budget impact)
Team composition-ProposesDecides (with N+1 then CIO)
Backlog priorityContributesDecidesProtects capacity
Vendor budget-Signs purchase ordersCo-decides (with N+1)
Roadmap-ExecutesProposes and drives
Code qualityDecides (code reviews)Tracks KPIsDefines standards
Recruitment-Expresses the needSelects and onboards
Incident managementResolvesCoordinatesIncident Commander (P0)
Agile ceremoniesParticipatesFacilitates (COPIL/COPROJ)Creates and facilitates (Sprint)
Technical debtIdentifiesArbitratesReserves 30% of sprint
3

Engineering Manager · enterprise application integration

Engineering Manager - Enterprise Application Integration

October 2023 - March 20246 monthsPermanent contract (CDI)
My View of the Company

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 (Qualiac/Cegid XRP), finance (SAGE), treasury (KYRIBA), hotel PMS (MEWS), real estate management (PRIMPROMO), CRM (Hermes), invoice digitization (ESKER), digital identities (IGA), HRIS (FOEDERIS), fleet management (WINFLOTTE), 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.

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.

Key Missions & Responsibilities
  • Managed a team of 1-7 ESB developers (Mulamba K., 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: Qualiac (accounting ERP), SAGE, MEWS (hospitality), KYRIBA (treasury - 3 lots), TITAN, EMMA, IGA, D-Edge, NEEDOCS
  • 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
Business impact

~370K EUR/yr

Total scope budget (licenses + contractors + tools)

~20 → 100+ flows

Production flows on arrival to 100+ on departure (~70 new flows/year)

~30% sprint

Time allocated to tech debt and Run (sanctified Build/Run ratio)

18K EUR/mo

Cloud Docker/Kubernetes infrastructure OPEX

-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 (QUALIAC, KYRIBA, MEWS 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
How I manage

Management principles applied daily with the middleware team, in an ETI context of 1,400 employees with 50% outsourcing.

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.

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.

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.

Systematic blameless post-mortems

After every major ESB incident (QUALIAC, KYRIBA, MEWS), root cause analysis without blame. Confluence documentation, corrective actions and recurrence prevention.

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).

25%Coordination & product meetings
20%Management & coaching
20%Agile ceremonies
15%Recruitment & contractors
10%Strategy & roadmap
10%Communication & reporting
iPaaS transformation - a pioneering effort

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.

  • 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

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.

Governance & processes created

Processes built from scratch to structure the middleware team and industrialize integration flow delivery.

Daily Enterprise IntegrationMay 2022

Daily standup created in May 2022 to coordinate ESB developers on active flows, blockers and incidents. First Agile ceremony for the middleware team.

Flow estimation process2022

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).

Complete Sprint ceremoniesNov 2022 - Feb 2023

Sprint Planning, Review and Retrospective progressively established. Sprint Review with multi-project backlog presentation, complexity qualification and planning.

COPROJ Enterprise IntegrationMay 2022

Bi-monthly project committee for full integration portfolio tracking. Structured reporting to Claude D. (N+1) and IT leadership.

ESB Definition of Done2023

Strict criteria imposed on contractors: mandatory code review, flow documentation, staging tests, functional validation before merge.

Structured handover (anti Bus Factor)Oct - Dec 2023

3-month handover process before departure: 10+ dedicated sessions (PIM, DAM, PSR, Ligneurs, ESB), exhaustive Confluence documentation.

Strategic Roadmap & Planning 2023

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.

52

Planned flows / year

48 new flows + 4 evolutions of existing flows

2.33

FTEs required / year

Full-time equivalents calculated on 400 workdays

503

Workdays / year

Build (400d) + Monitoring (141d) + Recurring TMA (88d/yr)

6+

Departments involved

Accounting-Finance, Real Estate, Hospitality, HR, Customer Journey, Middleware

Needs by business department

Accounting-Finance

Accounting flows, treasury management and cross-system financial reconciliation

Real Estate / Construction

Property program repositories, sync flows and document audits

Hospitality

Banking commissions, booking flows, billing and student residence payments

Customer Journey

Marketing campaigns, CRM lead management and product reference flows

HR IS

HR process digitization and payroll tool migration

Middleware

Integration architecture modernization, alternative platform evaluation and service continuity oversight

Unblocking situations

The Engineering Manager role is often that of an unblocker - success is invisible when everything works.

EMMA-to-QUALIAC flow down on a Friday at 6pm - group accounting blocked

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

Zero impact on the monthly accounting close

Emergency rollback after ESB deployment: 3 KYRIBA (treasury) flows cascading into QUALIAC and SAGE - connector version interdependencies

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

Stable state restored in 45 min instead of the estimated 4h without a plan - zero financial data loss

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

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

Migration completed in one weekend with zero visible disruption for 1,400 users

Priority conflict between hospitality (urgent MEWS migration) and finance (KYRIBA lots 2 sprints behind)

Presented factual business impact to the steering committee (hotel revenue vs treasury risk), proposed parallel staffing with an additional Square IT contractor

Both projects delivered on time without overloading the internal team

RS2I contractor delivering ESB code without tests or documentation - growing technical debt, regression risk on critical flows

Strict Definition of Done enforced on the next sprint, systematic reviews before merge, weekly quality checkpoint with the contractor account

Deliverable quality aligned with internal standards within 3 sprints

Technical documentation produced

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.

DAAApplication Architecture Documentx5

Interactions and data flows between the ESB and satellite applications (QUALIAC, PRIMPROMO, HOMING, SAGE XRT, TEAMS RH, ANAPLAN). Exchange choreography, access permissions, flow trigger schedules, deployment prerequisites.

DATTechnical Architecture Documentx1

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).

DAUAutomation Documentx1

CI/CD pipeline management guide for ESB Eclipse projects: Azure DevOps configuration, YAML pipelines, Maven artifacts, Git branch management and environment variable handling.

DEXOperations Documentx4

Operational guide for the ESB platform in production: package deployment, configuration file management (properties, templates), TIBCO component troubleshooting (TEA, BW6, EMS) across 5 environments.

DFXFlow Specification Documentx13

Detailed integration flow specifications by business domain: SOFTMONITOR, budget (ADB), accounting, hospitality, marketing (D-Edge), real estate development (PRIMPROMO), HR, transcoding, treasury (SAGE) and property management. Includes SQL table creation scripts and transcoding files.

DINInstallation Documentx4

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.

DMIMigration Documentx4

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.

SCHEMASArchitecture diagramsx5

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.

Related Skills

1 Technical Skill · 13 Soft Skill

Soft Skill

Leadership & Management4/5Leadership & Team Management

Direct management of 1-7 developers with daily standups, 1-on-1s, and career development.

Communication & Collaboration4/5Stakeholder Management

Interface between ESB team and business units across finance, HR, marketing, and IT.

Communication & Collaboration4/5Communication & Collaboration

Cross-team coordination for integration projects spanning multiple business domains.

Project Management4/5Project Management

Sprint planning and delivery tracking for ESB platform with 932+ Jira tickets.

Project Management4/5Project Portfolio Management

Concurrent management of ESB, PIM, and DAM project streams with resource allocation.

Agile & Methodologies4/5Agile & Scrum Methodologies

Daily Scrum ceremonies, sprint reviews, and retrospectives for the ESB team.

Agile & Methodologies4/5SAFe Methodology

SAFe framework applied to coordinate enterprise integration across multiple teams.

Strategy & Finance4/5Budget & Financial Management

Budget management for SaaS licenses, contractor costs, and infrastructure expenses.

Project Management3/5Risk Management

Risk mitigation for production integration flows handling critical business data.

Strategy & Finance4/5Performance Evaluation & KPI

Team performance tracking with delivery metrics, quality indicators, and SLA monitoring.

Leadership & Management4/5Change Management

Organizational change management during team restructuring and process improvements.

Strategy & Finance3/5Knowledge Capitalization

Documentation practices and knowledge sharing across ESB team via Confluence.

Project Management4/5Jira Project Management

Advanced Jira administration with custom workflows, boards, and reporting dashboards.

2

Project Manager / Product Owner · product flows & PIM PXM PCM & DAM

Project Manager - PIM/DAM then Marketing IS

January 2021 - September 20232 years 9 monthsPermanent contract (CDI)
My View of the Company

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.

For 6 months, I also joined the IS urbanization team, contributing to ECM, MDM and DMS project scoping with firms like CGI.

Key Missions & Responsibilities
  • 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 (SeLoger, Myopla, Cooper, Akrivia, Clovis, Fine Media) connected to Adobe Campaign and Hermes 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
Business impact

6x cheaper

DAM Bynder (57K EUR) vs abandoned OpenText (360K EUR spent with zero results)

5x faster

3 months Bynder onboarding vs years on OpenText without delivery

400K EUR/mo

Real estate lead volume managed via the PSR platform (1 lead / 2 sec)

25+ portals

Real estate portals continuously fed (SeLoger, LeBonCoin, BienIci..)

160-200K EUR/yr

Vendor budget managed (Akeneo, Bynder, CI HUB, UBIFLOW, contractors)

-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
Trade-offs and decision-making

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.

Abandoned OpenText DAM and started from scratch with Bynder

5 project managers in 5 years, 360,000 EUR spent with zero assets in production. Business departments had lost trust in IT.

Project delivered ahead of schedule, 6x cheaper (57K EUR vs 360K EUR), Communications department trust restored

Prioritized portal migration one by one

25+ real estate portals to migrate to PIM v2. Migrating everything in parallel was impossible - risk of regression on sales feeds.

Zero distribution interruption during migration. Each portal validated individually with the business team (Gaetan B., Leslie A.)

Akeneo renewal negotiation: accepted +30% to secure SaaS

Akeneo contract went from 45K to 60K EUR/year. 30% increase flagged to management, but the SaaS migration eliminated On-Premise hosting costs.

3-year contract signed. Server costs eliminated, automatic updates, vendor support included

SaaS pioneer in the group

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

  • -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

  • 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)

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.

Project methodologies used

Methodology adapted to each project context - no dogmatism, but a pragmatic approach based on constraints.

Agile Scrum
PSPO (Scrum.org, 2021)

PIM Akeneo, DAM Bynder, content feeds

2-week sprints, Jira backlog, daily standups. Full ceremonies for projects with frequent changes and a need for fast business feedback.

SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework)
SAFe PO/PM (Scaled Agile, 2022)

Cross-team IT coordination

Backlog alignment between Marketing IS, Middleware and Cross-functional IS divisions. PI Planning to synchronize deliveries across teams.

Waterfall

Critical migrations (PIM SaaS, DAM)

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

Incident management and operational maintenance

ESB incident management processes, KESD tickets (IT Service Desk), change management via CAB, service continuity.

Project deliverables produced

Documentation and concrete deliverables produced as part of managing PIM, DAM, PSR and content feed projects.

Functional and technical specifications

Detailed specifications for DAM Bynder, PIM SaaS migration, PSR platform and content feed upgrades

Test plans

Validation scenarios for each portal migration (25+ portals), each new partner API and each PIM version upgrade

Migration and rollback plans

Minute-by-minute procedures for critical migrations (PIM On-Premise to SaaS, DAM OpenText to Bynder) with rollback plans

Steering and project committees

Facilitation of steering and project committees with business departments, structured PowerPoint reporting to IT management and executive leadership

Progress reports

Regular reporting on Jira/Confluence, project tracking dashboards for PIM/DAM/PSR stakeholders

Confluence documentation

Structured knowledge base: DAM user guides (DAM TUTORIAL), PIM procedures, content feed flow architecture, PSR API specifications

IS urbanisation contribution

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.

ECM (Enterprise Content Management)

Project scoping with CGI: functional scope definition, content management needs analysis, architecture recommendations.

MDM (Master Data Management)

Group data referential scoping: master data identification, source and flow analysis, governance rules definition.

GED (Electronic Document Management)

Document dematerialization project scoping: existing document process analysis, filing and archiving requirements specification.

Urbanisation charters

Contributing to IS urbanisation charters: naming conventions, architecture principles, integration standards between application blocks.

My view of this period

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.

Related Skills

2 Technical Skill · 10 Soft Skill

Soft Skill

1

Technical Lead · content, enterprise integration and flows

Technical Lead - Product Owner PIM/DAM

January 2019 - January 20212 years 1 month
My View of the Company

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 Jose 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.

Key Missions & Responsibilities
  • 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
Related Skills

11 Technical Skill · 3 Soft Skill

Groupe Pichet headquarters in Pessac
Groupe Pichet headquarters in Pessac (33)
Groupe Pichet head office building in Pessac
Groupe Pichet head office in Pessac
Groupe Pichet open space and cafeteria area
Headquarters cafeteria and coworking area
Groupe Pichet coworking space with neon sign
Coworking
Groupe Pichet meeting room
Meeting room
Groupe Pichet workspace
Workspace
Groupe Pichet break room in Pessac
Break room at Pessac headquarters
Groupe Pichet modern building project
Groupe Pichet real estate project
Groupe Pichet real estate portfolio
Groupe Pichet real estate portfolio