Our current Community Member of the Month wrote us an incredible story that I hope you will love just as much as me. Roads to our Community may differ, but this is what makes them exciting to learn about. Without further ado: the winner for April 2020 is @Domenico B. from Italy! Let’s hear his story.
I’m a Senior Project Manager with 20 years of experience in the Bank ICT sector and I’m a part of the Service Management team. I work for Unicredit Service - a part of Unicredit Group, a pan-European Bank with headquarters in Italy. UniCredit Service connects all bank services in the areas of Information and Communication Technology (ICT), Back Office and Middle Office Operations, Real Estate, Security and Procurement. The company includes about 9,000 people and oversees activities in 11 countries: Austria, Germany, Italy, Poland, Great Britain, Czech Republic, Romania, Slovakia, Hungary, New York, and Singapore.
I’m a dynamic person and I like change and challenge. My job allows to me to learn every year new things and manage different new project in different areas: from security to platform evaluation. But today I can say that Dynatrace project was one of the most challenging and interesting one I did. It was not only a matter of code but also the change of mindset.
My passion for Information Technologies started at the age of 12. My Father gave me a Commodore Plus 4 and told me: “Let me see what you can do”. I remember this day today just as clearly as 40 years ago. The first contact with the keyboard and the result: C:\> Syntax error!!!
Something switched in my brain and suddenly I’ve decided to learn how to use this strange device. There were no courses and no internet at that time, so I’ve started spending my time in my local library to read books. I’ve started to “copy” the code from books to learn how to program in GW Basic. I’ve learned through error after error until I was able to write down my first program... a green arrow moving from one side to the other of the monitor!
Some years later, I received an Amstrad PPM640 with Dos 2.0, 64K of Ram with a modem of 3.600 Baud J This opened a new era for me. I discovered a new environment: Arpanet. I’ve started connecting to BBS, learnt about bulletin boards and met new people with my same passion.
I saw the evolution of internet from its start and it is not finish yet. There are several new problems to be solved and challenges to win (like Blockchain, Artificial Intelligence, Chatbot and so on) J
For those that were not so lucky to live in that magic period, you can read: The Cathedral and the Bazaar By Eric S. Raymond
and I take away 2 basic lessons to learn:
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“Share and learn”. “Give back” to the community what you receive: The “culture of exchange”
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“Be curious, stay hungry”. Learn every day something new and never stop.
Today, this is my style. I like to share my experience and learn from others. This is one of the reasons why I’m part of the community. Dynatrace was for me a big challenge. I was nominated two years ago as the Project Manager with the mission to migrate from AppMon to OneAgent and extend the monitoring solution on other “critical applications” and today I’m the Dynatrace CoE inside the Unicredit Group. My Top Management ask me to define a holistic view in order to address investment and focus on what really matters. Base on this concept, I’ve started “stressing” Dynatrace capability by running several POC in order to use Dynatrace at the top, but with our business vision: define KPI, improve user Experience, resiliency and stability of our critical applications. In order to open Dynatrace to businesspeople, my project team defined a different way to configure Dynatrace. We’ve introduced the concept of “channel” in line with a bank business. We’ve aggregated different applications inside a Dynatrace application to fit our business (Internet Banking, Mobile Banking, Corporate Banking, Branches).
My big challenge is to change the mindset of our team and to do this, you must have a heavy impact on the organization. We’ve decided to learn about the Dynatrace way. On March 2019 I asked my Dynatrace “friends” to organize a trip to Linz. Yes – Linz, with the Dynatrace Lab. I’ve had 3 full days with Dynatrace Product Managers sharing experience: learning about NoOps, DevOps, and Dynatrace philosophy. Also sharing our challenges in Bank Sector, like: Security, PSD2, Open Banking, Business funnel. This was one of my best experience in the last years.
Let’s me say “Thank you” to Giuseppe, Alessandro, and Simone from Dynatrace to give me this opportunity and support me every time from Dynatrace side. Always ready to share their experience and support us during our journey. Here a photo of Giuseppe and Alessandro!
Now let’s stop speaking about work and let’s speak about me and what I do out of the office. I’m Italian and I like to spend my free time with my friends and family. I live in Milan and I’m 48 years old. I have a 5 years old son that in the last weeks just become my new little boss! Yes, I’m working remotely from home for the last 4 weeks due to Covis-19 emergency in Italy. First thing I want to do, as soon as I finish this story, will be to bring him to McDonald to order a Happy Meal. Here we are: Me, Federico and in the back, you can see my wife 😛
Enjoy. Learn and share, stay hungry like a Tyrannosaurus REX
Thank you so much for this inspiring story and for your participation in the forum, Domenico! "Share and learn” - this is all what this Community is about 🙂
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