From my work at Namics & Merkle, I have already gained experience with digital ecosystems and have also implemented projects in the field of custom software development, e.g. at Clyde, an auto-subscription business. So complex systems didn’t deter me \u2013 on the contrary: Gripped by fascination and zest for action, I wanted to get involved and develop new features, and thus make the app my own baby to a certain extent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The shift to in-house development<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Due to our zest for action, the feature backlog also grew steadily. Striving for more standardization in their products, Inside Labs could no longer keep up with the hunger of the Weisse Arena Group, and so it was decided to bring development back in-house. We quickly set about recruiting developers and building a powerful team that could take the further development of the app into our own hands. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Surprisingly, the first senior developer was quickly found \u2013 he already had a past with the app because he had previously developed for Inside Labs. This brought valuable know-how and significantly shortened the explicit handover. A stroke of luck that saved us a lot of time and gave us a flying start. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, one developer was far from enough to handle our ambitious project. So we kept looking and put together a powerful team of three senior developers and one junior developer within a remarkable 10 months. There was no explicit PO role at the beginning \u2013 we were three project managers who had their fingers in the pie everywhere and set the direction together. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The implicit aspects of know-how transfer and, above all, team-building took a little longer than expected. It took quite some time until everyone had found their roles and the ownership of the systems and platforms had completely changed to the Weisse Arena Group. The relationship with Inside Labs was also a bit tense at the beginning \u2013 the decision to bring the app back to the Weisse Arena had a direct impact on the young product developers. However, we have always kept in good contact and continued our cooperation, especially in the areas of marketing, automation and engagement. <\/p>\n\n\n\n With the increasing internalization of the structures, my role has also developed steadily. At the beginning, we had a lot of freedom, and we made an intensive effort to work as self-determined and transparent as possible. As a convinced advocate for self-organized teams, I have always tried to empower the team to develop and refine their own processes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n We have held regular retrospectives to strengthen cooperation and establish a continuous improvement process. Regular exchange with internal and external stakeholders, such as the Destination Management Organization (DMO), was just as much a part of our daily work as sharing our plans and roadmaps. I can’t even count the number of times we’ve adjusted our roadmap to respond to changing needs and priorities \u2013 agility in its purest form. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The team environment has also developed steadily. The developers have organized themselves, trained each other and slowly but surely grown together into a real team \u2013 with all the challenges that arise when different ideas and ways of working meet. A special milestone was the hiring of a UX designer, initially part-time and later full-time. This brought a whole new dynamic and, above all, quality to the team. All of a sudden, we were able to present and communicate our work in a visually appealing way, which created a completely new basis for discussion with stakeholders. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Now we only had the task of positioning ourselves operationally in such a way that we could deliver value in a structured way and at the same time ensure the stability of the system \u2013 in line with the DevOps philosophy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n My main tasks included the support of various systems such as Infosnow (live map and live data), Braze (campaign & engagement), Guidle (events & POIs) as well as the CMS and ticketing systems. We conducted prioritization workshops and held feature workshops with stakeholders to steer development in a targeted manner. I also worked operationally: maintaining content, testing and posting new tickets, defining and implementing discount logics and tokens. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Over time, I even ventured into technical areas \u2013 conducting code reviews, making minor code changes myself and deploying new versions of our Metabase instance on AWS Elastic Beanstalk and thus getting to know technologies like Docker better. Regular on-call duties on weekends and over the holidays were also part of my tasks \u2013 a challenge that sharpened my understanding of the importance of our systems. A big thank you goes to my supervisor, who always encouraged me to learn new things, and also to the entire team, who made the process easier for me with patience and support. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In the next article, I’ll take you behind the scenes of the operational operation of the systems and share my most valuable learnings from three years at Weisse Arena AG \u2013 real challenges, exciting insights and practical insights included!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My many hats at the White Arena!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":268896776,"featured_media":112802,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_eb_attr":"","_crdt_document":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1900,1554,1897,1897,1573,1562,1573],"tags":[],"thema":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-97888","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"hentry","7":"category-blogpost-en","8":"category-business-processes-levers-governance","9":"category-data-driven-customer-centricity-en","11":"category-project-leadership-en","12":"category-project-guidance-from-start-to-end"},"blocksy_meta":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/diselva.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/wag-team-teaser.jpg?fit=1200%2C630&quality=83&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/diselva.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97888","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/diselva.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/diselva.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diselva.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/268896776"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diselva.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97888"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/diselva.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97888\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":113156,"href":"https:\/\/diselva.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97888\/revisions\/113156"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diselva.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/112802"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/diselva.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diselva.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diselva.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97888"},{"taxonomy":"thema","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diselva.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/thema?post=97888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Team](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/diselva.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/team2021.png?resize=1024%2C682&quality=78&ssl=1\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nHats in Abundance: My Roles and How They Evolved<\/h2>\n\n\n\n