Martin Burger Prof. Dr.-Ing.

Business Agility · Empowering Leadership · Effective Collaboration · Technical Excellence

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.

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.”

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
Wider selection of additional qualifications

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
Complete list of my honors and awards

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).

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.

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).

E-Mail

You can reach me by e-mail at m@rtin-burger.net.

Business Networks

You can find my business profile on LinkedIn and XING (in German).