Areas Of Expertise:

• Set up and restructure of PMO’s and introducing or improving project governance
• Senior stakeholder engagement and process re-engineering

Education:

• Master of Science in International Management
• Bachelor of Business Administration
• Prince2 Foundation & Practitioner

About Nadja Schulze

Nadja Schulze is an experienced PMO Manager who joined Seven Consulting’s Sydney Practice in September 2017. She brings fourteen years’ experience in international PMO Management for the private and public sector.

She has successfully managed large scale delivery PMO’s in Australia, Great Britain, Europe and South Africa and contributed substantially to achieving time, quality, and budget program objectives across multiple industry sectors.

What Nadja brings

• Effective communication skills; concise and succinct whilst ensuring a common understanding of status and issues.
• Significant experience in strategy, design, development and support of program and project management solutions to ensure successful business outcomes.
• Exceptional time management and scheduling skills.
• Demonstrated experience in establishing and executing reporting cycles over all management levels.
• Strong leadership skills with significant experience in setting up and running successful PMO teams.

Key Clients:

• Department of Communities and Justice, Australia 
• Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, UK
• Capita / BBC, UK
• AMP, Australia
• Commonwealth Bank of Australia
• TUEV SUED, Germany
• Sasol, South Africa
• European Union, Belgium
• German Government, Germany
• DP DHL, Germany
• Deutsche Telekom, Germany

Key Achievements:

As PMO Lead at Department of Communities and Justice, Nadja set up the PMO function for a large program of work aiming to digitalise the end-to-end case file across NSW Courts and Tribunals. Key areas of responsibilities were the establishment of effective governance and ways of working across a multi-disciplinary team; development of critical supporting documentation, e.g. Program Brief and embedding of key project control processes, e.g. Risk Management to ensure the successful creation of a path to success.  

As Global Solution Manager at the international law firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Nadja responsibilities included the analysis and improvement of processes and best practices, embedding of governance including KPIs and a feedback process for their Client Delivery Group (CDG). The CDG is a team of 400 Transaction Lawyers, Legal Tech Experts and Legal Project Managers across Germany, United Kingdom, Hongkong and UAE ensuring repetitive tasks across each mandate are served with the best set of skills and adequate technologies.  

As PMO Lead at Capita, Nadja managed the Recovery Period on a Program delivered for the BBC that had entered Delivery Phase without completing Mobilisation Phase and was reporting red at the time. Besides general PMO support activities Nadja led the setup of Resource Management, Configuration Management and Quality Assurance including the Stage Gate Review process along BBC’s Project Management Framework. The responsibilities included the definition, documentation and embedding of processes as well as training the core PMO Team to take over, maintain and execute the tasks going forward at the end of the successful Recovery Period.  

As Implementation Manager at AMP, Nadja supported the Command Centre through two Dress Rehearsals and Production Cutover of AMP Life Insurance Separation Program for Day 1 (legal separation of funds with shared operations). Her main responsibilities were the development of the integrated Master Runsheet covering 22 streams including refining and reforecasting of activities between dress rehearsals and cutover; the tracking of progress against the Master Runsheet and communication to key stakeholders via 6 hourly checkpoints with 2 other implementation managers over a 3 shift 24/7 period for the dress rehearsals and cutover; and providing status reports stating the highlights, milestone reports and defect status.  

As PMO Manager at CBA, Nadja set up and managed the IT PMO for Finance and HR applications for a demerger project with a budget of $12m within a demerger program at CBA (Sale of CommInsure). During the project execution a second demerger project (budget $5.5m) was initiated and executed by the same team to create synergies and enable faster ramp up (Sale of Global Asset Management). While the sale of Wealth was in flight the same team was engaged again to manage the set up and initiation of this third demerger program until it was cancelled (budget would have been $31m).  The PMO managed by Nadja and supported by one PMO Consultant supported the 3 demerger projects with all PMO Services including Status Reporting, Risk and Issue Management, Scheduling, Preparation of SteerCo Papers & Financials by implementing standardised governance, processes and templates.  During a quieter phase Nadja also supported the program for the Sale of Count Financial by building and managing the program schedule. 

As PMO Manager at T-Systems International GmbH, Nadja had end to end responsibility for PMOs for programs within the international private sector and public institutions in Berlin, Germany and Brussels, Belgium.

At the German Government, Nadja led a specialized team of up to 40 people for a three-year program with over 350 FTEs and $690M revenue. She also developed and implemented improvements to program communication and reporting towards customers and C-Level management resulting in regaining trust and authority from internal and external stakeholders.

At European Union Department of Migration and Home Affairs, Nadja was engaged to turn around the PMO within a large, troubled program ($67M). This was successfully achieved by restructuring the entire PMO, establishing high-performance teams, and increasing governance visibility. PMO resources were spread over Germany, Slovakia, and Hungary with additional streams in Belgium, Great Britain, and France. Nadja was able to enhance the visibility of the virtual PMO by improving the governance of the complex multi-region program through simplifying PMO processes and establishing a highly capable and credible team focusing on forecast quality, improving processes, and ensuring that strict governance structures were implemented and adhered.

At a key German Government client, Nadja restructured and enlarged a PMO from 6 to 23 team members for a $225M program. Nadja successfully expanded project governance and PMO processes to allow teams to focus on specific areas to deliver the product and achieve corporate KPI goals.

At TUEV SUED, Nadja successfully delivered the Change Management component and a highly critical Documentation Process to support a complex re-negotiation for a $37M program. The contractual negotiations were at Board level between T-Systems International GmbH and the multi-national Customer and were strategically significant in enabling the continuation of the project. As a PMO Specialist for Deutsche Telekom, Nadja managed all critical PMO Reporting and Communications for a complex $120M program. In addition to the above, Nadja performed contractor management for the program with significant budgetary responsibilities.

At Deutsche Post DHL, Nadja had ownership over all aspects of Document Management and Project Planning for the high profile 15M€ program.

At Sasol, Nadja had principal responsibility for reporting and communication for the complex program. This was the largest program in South Africa at the time. Nadja established a comprehensive program reporting for the initiative which significantly enhanced transparency across the executive stakeholder group and supported on time, quality, and budget delivery.