Markus Nadolski

Markus, how did you come across knowis and how long have you been here?

I have been with knowis for five years now. Previously, I worked in various banks in the lending business for many years. I therefore know from my own experience what is important to our clients, banks and financial institutions. Because I've always been very interested in IT, at some point in my life I wanted to switch to this field as a profession. So, the question was: where do I find a job at the intersection of banking and IT? That’s how I came to knowis.

You only recently became a product manager – what did you do previously with knowis?

At the beginning of my knowis career, I worked as a business analyst. During that time, I looked after many projects while working at the customer's site. The requirements for a product manager are in some respects similar to the tasks that I worked on as a business analyst for many years. In my new position, this helps a lot to understand the big picture, for example, by knowing how the knowis banking platform is actually used and what our customers' experience has been with it. That's why switching to product management was the right step for me to continue to use my strengths and at the same time expand my knowledge.

What are your responsibilities as a product manager?

As an agile software company, we think and plan in release cycles. We want to renew and improve our software on a regular basis, so as a product manager, I deal a lot with feature requests and the enhancement of our software, as well as the prioritization of the different requirements.

New requirements come either directly from the customer or are suggested internally, for example, by our business analysts or the solution engineers. My job is to translate the often rather unspecific needs. This means I must think carefully about what is needed in particular and whether it might already be feasible in other ways. At the same time, it is always important to assess the development effort of a feature; for this part, I collaborate with an IT architect or developer.

Ultimately, I have to weigh how sensible the implementation of such a feature would be, that is to measure the business value against the development effort. Before each release, for example, we try to estimate the sensibility in a ‘business poker' process, where we discuss everything in detail and view the features from different angles. If a feature is to be considered for the next release, I define criteria that must be met during development. These are compared after the implementation and verified by the testing team – so you can already see: product management at knowis is closely integrated with other departments.

What skills or special abilities should you bring as a product manager?

It is very important to develop an understanding of how our software is used. When assessing the 'value' of a feature, a product manager should be able to capture the customer's view and, based on that, prioritize the requirements, while at the same time considering the implementation effort. In addition, the constant development of the knowis software platform is an important topic that needs to be structured and clearly defined.

A basic understanding of the technologies used, and the ability to work closely and effectively with different stakeholders, are among the requirements that a Product Manager should bring to knowis.

What do you like to do in your free time?

Most of all, I spend time with my family, or I am outside in nature, for example, when mountain biking. Also, I really enjoy water, which is of course very convenient here, as Regensburg is beautifully situated on the banks of the Danube. I love swimming there in the summer or just strolling along the river.