CUSTOMER TESTIMONIALS

SPM – The Foundation Training

“I found the ISPMA Foundation course to be stimulating and extremely thorough in scope. It covers the core topics that you need to know about Product Management and is excellent preparation for the ISPMA exam.

The training provides time for hands-on exercises, which reinforces learning experience.

Furthermore, the trainer (Vibhuti Singh) provided many real-life examples, drawn from his long career in Software Product Management.  These provided useful context for many of the topics that we discussed.

Whether you are looking to break into Software Product Management or you are an established practitioner seeking formal certification in this highly competitive field, this course will help you achieve your goal.”

Bill Harpley, Career Move into Product Management, UK

SPM for Startups Training

“Being in a startup environment working under conditions of extreme uncertainty is challenging for us as founders. The SPM for Startups course provided a great insight into how to structure our work and provided both validation of current ways of working and clarified how to refine others. Hans-Bernd Kittlaus provided us with thoughtful exercises and discussions related to our reality. I would recommend this to all software startups, and my advice is to do it early in your journey, that will save you a lot of time.”

Jonas Törnblad Sandell, Product Manager, Entiros Integrations & Starlify, Sweden

Thodoris Psilopoulos, Director of Product Management, Qualco, Greece

SPM – The Foundation 2.0 Update Training

“The new contents fits nicely into the framework and addresses important SPM tasks. Topics like Financial Management and Product Planning Approaches point to techniques that can be used for successful implementation. Most interesting was the discussion of software having a significant impact on our environment which is why the company’s sustainability criteria need to be considered in addition to legal or regulatory compliance requirements. This interactive Update Training also served as a refresher and helped me broaden my perspective and directed me to topics that I need to work on.”

Martin Dünser, Product Manager Software Application, Zünd System Technologies AG, Switzerland

“Being new to the Software Product Manager role, the training was enlightening in many ways: Hans-Bernd Kittlaus managed to not only give a comprehensive overview of the various activities and responsibilities of an SPM, he also provided detailed insights into Product Strategy and Product Planning – always enriched with helpful advice and entertaining stories. Our product will for sure strongly benefit from my learnings during this training. Thank you for the great experience – highly recommendable.”

Matthias Schlegel, Product Manager Automated Driving, Robert Bosch GmbH, Germany

“With SAP Retail Product Management, I am responsible for SAP`s planning solutions. I had the opportunity to participate in the ISPMA Excellence Level trainings on Product Planning and Orchestration. Even with more than 10 years of SPM experience, the combination of nicely structured contents, fun exercises, Hans-Bernd Kittlaus’ many practical examples, and in-depth discussions between participants and trainer provided significant value to me, and gave me food for thought for my team. Excellent experience!”

Dr. Guido Menkhaus, Director Supply Chain Planning, SAP, Switzerland

“As the head of product management for SAP Exchange Media and former director of product management for the SAP Business Suite on HANA, I have a number of years of experience in software product management. Nevertheless, I found a lot of value in the Excellence Level trainings on Product Planning and Orchestration. ISPMA’s well-structured approach in combination with Hans-Bernd Kittlaus’ broad industry experience laid a state-of-the-art foundation and provided relevant in-depth information. Moreover, it gave me great impulses and opportunities to reflect and improve my own frameworks and practices in my product management team. There was enough room for lively discussions. The inspiring exercises were sufficiently complex, but still easily understandable and even entertaining. I can fully recommend these trainings.“

Stefan Wenzel, Head of Product Management, SAP Exchange Media, Walldorf, Germany

“I participated in the SPM training in Bangalore together with two of my colleagues from Pune, India. We are working on establishing and fine-tuning Cognizant’s product business in the Life Sciences area. This ISPMA-based training has helped us immensely in understanding the product business and is helping me navigate through the internal system while we transition from a service business to a product business. The contents of the training was highly comprehensive and structured and contained lots of practical advice from the trainer, Hans-Bernd Kittlaus, based on his extensive experience in the industry. We now have better understanding and ideas that we can implement to improve our current operating model for our product- based business.“

Avinash Gaba, Platform Owner, Analytics and Information Management – Life Sciences, Cognizant Technology Solutions, Pune, India

“After some of Intershop‘s product managers had participated in Hans-Bernd Kittlaus‘ public SPM trainings, we invited him to Jena for an in-house training with our complete team. It did not only help us to improve our common SPM understanding and SPM language, but the interactive character of the training frequently led to highly useful discussions. Hans-Bernd Kittlaus adapted the training to our situation so that we had very company-specific benefits from it. All participants including the „repeaters“ evaluated the three days very positively.“

Matthias Hirschfeld, Director Global Product Management, Intershop Communications AG, Germany

“The innovative family-owned Liebherr corporation is a.o. the world market leader for cranes. We offer software solutions for a multitude of application areas which are managed by my team. The in-house training with Hans-Bernd Kittlaus proved to be the perfect match for the ongoing education for our product managers in the domain „IT for Machines“ who have fairly divergent backgrounds of experience. The SPM Framework set the right frame, and Hans-Bernd‘s interactive approach and numerous industry examples demonstrated the applicability of the training contents in our environment. All participants gave very positive feedback!“

Marcel Flir, Head of ITM Product Management, Liebherr Factory Nenzing GmbH, Austria

“Hans-Bernd is one of those rare individuals who is able to create and deliver content that people enjoy while they may not immediately realize how much they are learning. The FL training was engaging and enjoyable, the content was compact, but exhaustive at the same time. Happy that I was part of it and became a certified member of ISPMA 🙂 “

Victoria Vasileva, Junior Product Manager, OLX, Sofia, Bulgaria

“Primavera is the leading ERP software vendor in Portugal, Angola, Mozambique and Cape Verde with an SPM Team of experienced and new product managers. All our participants rated the SPM training very positively. Unlike other frameworks and trainings that we had tried before, ISPMA’s SPM framework fits nicely with our approach, and the training contents gave us valuable input for improvements. Hans-Bernd Kittlaus summarized perfectly our main concerns. The numerous examples from his extensive practical experience and his highly interactive way of training provided significant additional value. This will surely allow us to make some organizational improvements. 3 days well invested!“

Nuno Queiros, Director Product Management Department, Primavera, Braga, Portugal

“I am product line manager at Lufthansa Systems for two successful product lines for airlines. We had been looking for product management training for some time. In 2014 I could participate in one of Hans-Bernd Kittlaus‘ public trainings that helped me a lot. That triggered us to do an in-house SPM training with Hans-Bernd Kittlaus for colleagues from different product areas. They were also delighted about the convincing structure of the framework, numerous ideas for company-specific improvements, the training’s interactivity and the good mix of state-of-the art contents and foundation in the trainer’s broad practical experience.“

Caroline Ossmann, Product Line Manager, Lufthansa Systems GmbH & Ko. KG, Germany

Dr. Gerd Weishaar, VP Product Management, update software AG, Vienna, Austria

“Qualco is a leading software solutions and professional services provider specialised in the Debt Management industry. Qualco services, providing leading-edge business solutions, over 50 financial institutions in 16 countries with corporate presence in Greece, UK, Belgium and France. Aiming to increase efficiency in software delivery worldwide, Qualco has recently established a product driven organisation stream introducing among others the Product Management Function. To strengthen this, Hans-Bernd Kittlaus conducted a 3-day training with the product management team and the 1-day workshop with Qualco’s executive management team. We have been very satisfied with both due to the highly comprehensive and structured contents, Hans-Bernd’s broad expertise and ability to guide us through the material in a very interactive way thereby addressing all our company-specific issues. We are looking forward to continuing the cooperation.”

Angelos Karastergios, Director of Products, Qualco, Athens, Greece

“I participated in the SPM training together with two of my colleagues from Blancco. We had already attended a different training the previous year, but the ISPMA-based training was much better. The contents of the training was more comprehensive and structured and contained practical advice from the trainer, Hans-Bernd Kittlaus, based on his extensive experience in the industry. We now have many ideas that we can implement to improve our current work environment.”

Joel Catala, Product Manager, Blancco Oy Ltd., Finland

“We have for some time been considering how to organize our product management function in the future. The SPM training provided a perfect framework, which we can apply right away. I am taking a list of to-do’s with me home and will start executing tomorrow.  Hans-Bernd Kittlaus is a very experienced SPM expert and delivers the comprehensive content in a structured and convincing format. 3 days well invested.”

Lars Hedal, CEO, Hedal Kruse Brohus A/S, Denmark

“From the SPM Training I took home numerous excellent ideas, new perspectives on different areas, and a lot of energy. The broad and comprehensive contents covered all the different areas and levels of the SPM domain. The open atmosphere and the intensive exchange and discussions between trainer and participants contributed significantly to the usefulness of the training. The opportunity to discuss practical experiences with (every-day) problems and possible solutions suggested by ISPMA and the participating software product managers created a good bridge between the presented concepts and their application as new alternatives.”

Gregor Marboe, Head of Development and Professional Services, INFINICA (Qualysoft Group), Vienna, Austria

“This was an excellent training that combined well-structured contents with good discussions, valuable practical advice and some fun exercises. It gave me an enhanced understanding of my SPM role and a lot of input that continues to help me in my daily work. The trainer Hans-Bernd Kittlaus managed to create a pleasant atmosphere and cover a lot of ground without overwhelming the participants.”

Mikko Parkkola, Product Manager, f-secure, Finland

“The training gives a great overview of all aspects of the Software Product Managers responsibilities. I am definitely inspired to rework some of the current processes we have in product management to make our product even more competitive going forward.”

Jonas Als, Product Director, Komfo, Denmark

“I am new to software product management. One of my colleagues participated in the ISPMA Software Product Management training last year and recommended the training to me. The training and the syllabus give an excellent introduction and overview of the role and responsibilities of the software product manager. It discusses the interfaces with the other functional units and even provides suggestions for managing the inherent stress of being someone balancing market requirements and demand with organizational capability. My boss has asked me to take the role of “mini CEO” optimizing the lifetime value of our software assets. The ISPMA Software Product Management training gives me a jump-start on that journey. I can recommend this course to others who need to get their software product management function structured and organized.”

Lene Damgaard Madsen, Product Manager, Hedal Kruse Brohus A/S, Denmark

“As a company whose work processes are strongly supported by our software in which we have invested a lot, we intend to offer our software to our sister companies in other countries. Therefore it must be turned into products. This SPM training has helped me significantly to develop a concept how we will set up our organisation and execute this transformation. In particular, the brilliant structuring of the contents and the profound practical experience of the trainer, Mr. Kittlaus, who went into the specific challenges ahead of us whenever appropriate, contributed to my satisfaction. For me, these were three days well invested.”

Ralf Goller, Head of IT, Swissperform, Switzerland

“As a junior product manager with half a year of job experience, I was a bit sceptical in the beginning whether this training would meet my needs. However, the excellent structure based on the SPM Framework and the support from Hans-Bernd Kittlaus provided a framework for me that helped my understanding significantly. I got a comprehensive overview of product management in all its functions for the software area. In the end, I succeeded in the certification exam on first try.”

Franziska Dötsch, Junior Product Manager Printing Software, Ricoh Deutschland GmbH, Germany

“As a company that is investing heavily in software product development we are constantly and systematically optimizing our product approach. The SPM Training has given me valuable input how we can further improve our product concept and our product management approach.”

Thomas Bonnet, Head of Product Engineering, Loyalty Partner Solutions GmbH, Germany

“As part of my business informatics studies at the University of Mannheim I had already got in touch with the ISPMA Framework and had been pointed to Hans-Bernd Kittlaus‘ SPM training. So I was very happy when I could participate in his in-house training for Lufthansa Systems. For me in my first job as product manager, the training gave a perfect structured view on all facettes of SPM. The more experienced colleagues were also enthusiastic about the contents. The interactivity of the training enabled us to discuss the implementation in our environment and to get Mr. Kittlaus‘ direct feedback based on his practical experience.“

Christian Bischoping, Product Manager, Lufthansa Systems GmbH & Ko. KG, Germany

“The ISPMA Software Product Management training provides an excellent framework for defining the role and responsibilities of software product management and the interfaces to R&D, marketing, sales and the overall strategy of the company. I can recommend the training to others who need an overview of the responsibilities of software product management. The training is also an excellent opportunity to meet, discuss with and draw inspiration from product managers from other software companies from around the world.”

Michael Esbenson, Vice President Product Management, ALOC, Denmark

“Participating in this training was an excellent way to learn more about SPM. The very comprehensive contents in combination with the Hans-Bernd Kittlaus’ wealth of practical experience provided highly useful information, in particular on the pitfalls of introducing SPM in an organization.”

Alessandro Cogliati, Technology Consultant, Tieto Oyj, Finland

“The SPM course was a perfect fit for my needs. The content was relevant, well structured and superbly delivered by Hans-Bernd Kittlaus who truly is an experienced expert in the SPM field. I especially enjoyed the practical case used for trying out the theory. The practical case was easy to grasp yet sufficiently sophisticated to challenge the application of the SPM principles. 3 days well spend.”

Dorte Jacobsen, Product Manager, Netop Business Solutions A/S, Denmark

“I participated in the SPM training together with a colleague. The training gave us a very good overview on the state-of-the-art of the whole spectrum of SPM topics and prepared us nicely for the certification exam. The trainer, Hans-Bernd Kittlaus, proved to be an excellent expert who spiced up the training content with numerous practical examples. His interactive approach led to good discussions in which the participants’ practical problems were mirrored against the training content. The training provided impulses for further standardization of our internal product management processes. Additional colleagues will participate in the SPM training. We are happy to recommend it to IT product managers.”

Dr. Clemens Engelke, Member of the Executive Board, PPI AG, Germany

“The SPM training gave an excellent framework as an analytical background to daily operations. I took away new input on product related organization structure, on roles and responsibilities and how we can improve the processes in my own business unit. I can recommend this training to anyone who is working with Software Product Management.”

Sarah Broux, Product Manager, Norriq, Belgium

“I attended the SPM course in January 2012. The course was very well organized and Hans-Bernd Kittlaus is a very experienced authority in this area. I got many ideas and new inspiration for how we can optimize our software product management processes at TeleBilling. I can only recommend the SPM course to others responsible for product management in the software industry.”

Claus Rasmussen, Development Manager, TeleBilling A/S, Denmark

“Contents and material of the seminar provide an essential foundation for product management and can be used by any SPM as a blue print for his daily work.”

Heiko Woywodt, Product Manager, Intershop AG, Germany

“We have had people on both previous SPM courses with success. The course gave a good overview of the Software Product Manager’s tasks and roles in an organization. Although we do not have a dedicated SPM in our organization, the product management tasks still need to be solved and the course has provided great inspiration for new ways to do it. Specifically, on the basis of input from the course we are reviewing our planning process for all the main versions of our software.”

Jens Find, Director, Unik System Design A/S, Denmark

“We are two Global Product Managers from Netop who participated in the SPM training in January 2012. The instructor Hans-Bernd Kittlaus is very experienced and knowledgeable in the software product management field and provides useful practical examples. We took a lot of inspiration from the course and it proved to be a good foundation for the elements of software product management. We can recommend this training to anybody involved with software product management.”

Chris Twyman, Global Product Manager, Netop Solutions A/S, UK

Marius Neagu, Global Product Manager, Netop Solutions A/S, Romania

“Samsung SDS’ Cello product suite provides a comprehensive solution for supply chain and logistics (SCL) management to companies in all industries. I participated with three Cello colleagues in this 10-day SPM training. Though I had some experience in SPM, this training broadened my view and pointed me to areas where we can improve our SPM approach. In addition, the exchange with the trainers and their very practical hints and tips was a big plus. Excellent experience.”

Insoo Jang, Group Leader, Samsung SDS, Korea

“From Prolog Development we had three employees on the first Software Product Management Course in Copenhagen. They were all senior people with years of experience in software development and project management. The feedback from my employees was that the course was instructive and inspiring in relation to how we can optimize our workflow and improve the organization of our development. They found it one of the most relevant courses they had ever participated in. In addition they also got their new insight certified. They can now write “ISPMA Certified Software Product Manager” on their resumé.”

Thomas Aagaard, Manager, Prolog Development Center A/S, Denmark