Over the years, I conceived products, worked as Product Manager on some, and led teams that built many more.
The examples below are selected from 100+ digital products and solutions created by my teams and me across Deutsche Telekom.
Some started from my own ideas. Some came from business requests that we reframed. Some were products I personally managed. Others were created by teams I had built and led.
The first question is not:
What should we build?
It is:
For whom? And what value?
The product comes after that.
People often came to us with a solution already in mind.
“Let’s buy Trello.”
“We need a better Excel.”
“Let’s add AI.”
“We need to build our own tool.”
The useful work often started one step earlier:
What are we actually trying to change?
01
Kanban Board
“Let’s buy Trello.”
Teams wanted an agile way to see their work.
We built a lightweight internal Kanban application where teams could create boards, organise work into cards and columns, and adapt the workflow to how they actually operated.
It was simple enough to work for very different teams without becoming another heavyweight project-management system.
Around 100,000 Deutsche Telekom colleagues eventually chose to use it.
A Kanban board was not the goal.
Better overview of progress was.
02
OKR Board
OKR Board: goals and progress
“We need a better Excel for the QBR.”
Teams were maintaining their objectives in spreadsheets and synchronising progress before quarterly reviews.
We built a shared OKR workspace where objectives, ownership and progress could remain visible between QBRs instead of being reconstructed before every meeting.
The product turned a periodic reporting exercise into something teams and leaders could actually work with throughout the quarter.
An OKR Board was not the goal.
Keeping objectives on track was.
03
Excel AI Analyzer
Excel AI Analyzer: working with spreadsheet data
“Let’s buy software with AI features.”
Or:
“Let’s build our own AI inside Deutsche Telekom.”
AI was already capable of useful work.
The problem was that much of the business data where it could create real value lived in confidential Excel files — or in systems that could export their data into Excel.
And public AI services were not allowed to touch it.
We built an AI-powered application where employees could upload spreadsheets, ask questions about the data and find patterns in structured and free-text information.
One controlled employee-feedback scenario became Deutsche Telekom’s first approved use of AI on confidential data.
An Excel AI Analyzer was not the goal.
Getting insight from confidential business data was.
04
Meeting Manager
“We need to build our own meeting-management tool from scratch.”
The assumption was that we did not have a suitable solution.
Most of the technical foundation already existed.
We used SharePoint and designed a tailored workspace around recurring senior-management meetings, including an interface that worked properly on tablets and mobile devices.
The product supported the information, preparation and work around the meeting rather than creating another standalone platform.
A Meeting Manager was not the goal.
Making better decisions was.
05
Learning Journey
Learning Journey: learning in the flow of work
“Let’s make the PDFs nicer and put them on a website.”
The problem was not the visual quality of the PDFs.
People were supposed to move through a learning process, but what they received was essentially a collection of documents.
We turned the material into a digital journey where the sequence, progress and relationship between the different pieces of content became part of the experience.
A Learning Journey was not the goal.
Helping people progress through learning was.
06
Magenta Quiz
Magenta Quiz: a working product concept
“Let’s buy Kahoot subscriptions.”
Kahoot already solved the functional problem.
But the subscriptions were too expensive for the way the teams wanted to use it, and the budget simply was not there.
So we built a reusable internal quiz application that could support different topics, audiences and events without recurring commercial licence costs.
It also gave teams a repeatable way to see how people responded to the content.
A quiz was not the goal.
Measuring engagement was.
More products
These six are selected examples from a portfolio of 100+ products and solutions.
Agile Performance Evaluation
A digital product for running employee performance-evaluation processes in a more structured and usable way.
MagicBook
An internal knowledge product used by more than 3,000 colleagues, designed to make expertise easier to capture and access.
Procurement & approval solutions
Digital workflows that replaced parts of manual procurement and approval processes, including electronic-signature scenarios.
Local AI chatbot
A locally running LLM interface for scenarios where company information could not leave the controlled environment.
HR AI prototypes
Focused AI products for tasks such as analysis and improving feedback, designed around a specific job rather than generic chat.
SharePoint & Power Platform applications
A broad portfolio of workflows, dashboards, collaboration spaces and business applications built around specific operational problems.
Senso2me
An early-stage product where I designed the interface and built the brand, website and product demonstrations to make a new concept understandable to customers.
MagentaGaming
A B2C gaming product where I was Product Manager and, with design and engineering, changed a development flow in which product changes had taken months into one where user feedback could reach production within days.
The pattern
The products were different.
The pattern was not.
“Let’s buy Trello.”
→ What do teams actually need to see?
“We need a better Excel.”
→ What needs to stay on track between reviews?
“Let’s buy AI.”
→ Where is the business data that makes AI valuable?
“We need to build a new system.”
→ What do we already have?
“Make the PDFs prettier.”
→ What experience are people actually supposed to have?
“Let’s buy Kahoot.”
→ What value do we need, and what is it worth paying for?
