Junior Consultant

Let’s start with the Junior Consultant. If you decide to become a consultant directly after your education, you’ll usually find the role designation ‘Junior Consultant’ on your first stack of business cards. Even candidates from different fields often start as Juniors, although they may have already gained a few years of practical experience.
In the role of Junior, you directly support client projects and thereby get to know the prevailing contexts from the ground up. At digatus, Junior Consultants already take on a lot of responsibility and key roles in the project. In addition to exciting tasks in the Project Management Office, such as project planning, control and reporting, as well as capturing and analyzing customer requirements, Juniors are often directly deployed in project positions with a lot of responsibility.

“As a project manager of a project in the public sector, I coordinate and lead the project team, ensure the achievement and quality of upcoming tasks, and report directly to the steering group.”

Rhea Funke – Junior Consultant at digatus

In addition to a variety of technical skills, corresponding soft skills are also honed during your deployment in the respective project. An important one of these is flexibility, because a typical week of a Junior Consultant is characterized by a series of fixed coordination meetings as well as ad hoc tasks and variable customer requirements. In addition, skills in presentation, customer orientation, and targeted team cooperation are strongly promoted through responsible tasks.

Consultant

After several years of experience and further development, the promotion to Consultant follows. Especially in the areas of technical understanding, professional know-how, industry knowledge, demeanor towards customers, and an efficient, structured, and flexible way of working, competencies are sharpened during your time at digatus through project experience and training.
Similar to the Junior Consultant, the Consultant also takes on tasks in the areas of reporting, tracking, budget planning, conception, and control. However, due to the experience gained, a deeper understanding of business economics, and professional expertise, more responsibility is transferred compared to the Junior, and accordingly, more independence is expected. Of course, with increasing responsibility, the range of tasks expands compared to the Junior. For example, risk management often plays a key role in the Consultant’s daily routine. The risks not only need to be estimated and evaluated. Rather, they must be recognized and targeted countermeasures must be taken.

In addition to taking on professional tasks in the project, the Consultant is assigned another digatus-internal area of responsibility. As part of the digatus mentoring program, Consultants take on the role of mentors for Juniors, dual students, and Bachelor’s/Master’s students, and are available here as experienced colleagues to provide advice and support in career development. Through the role as a mentor, the Consultant already takes on initial leadership roles, which strengthens social and interpersonal skills.

The typical project week of a consultant can be described with one keyword: diverse. Between some fixed status meetings, the week is characterized by ad hoc emerging topics, which must always be processed in a structured manner using appropriate professional skills. A strong customer orientation should be the basis for this.

Senior Consultant / Project Manager

Successful project references and (sub-)project management roles qualify for the next career level – the Senior Consultant or Project Manager. At digatus, from the very first second, you are the face to our customers in all phases of the project lifecycle and contribute significantly to the success of demanding projects in the IT context. As a Senior Project Manager or Consultant, you represent the interface between the clients and internal colleagues, and coordinate customer wishes, project requirements, and the project team in a targeted manner. You capture the customer’s requirements, maintain close contact, and develop the optimal solution for the customer. At the senior level, you are responsible for, among other things, defining the overall workstream strategy and alignment in the project. This includes setting project goals, project planning, and optimally assembling the project team for operational project implementation.

In addition to the classic project management tasks that arise in controlling and monitoring the project, such as synchronizing the often parallel running sub-projects, project controlling and reporting to those responsible in management and steering committees are also central components.
When implementing projects, depending on the project requirements and professional skills, other tasks include selecting suitable technologies for realignment or reorganizing business processes in cooperation with the specialist departments – always with a view to successfully fulfilling the project objectives.

A typical week as a Senior is characterized predominantly by professional and planning coordination, as well as team meetings for deriving status reports and synchronization.
In general, it can be said that compared to the previous experience levels, the areas of responsibility and tasks are significantly more extensive and characterized by a more strategic nature.

Manager

As a Manager at digatus, you take over the holistic planning, implementation, and budget control of projects. You represent the interests and requirements of the client, act as the primary contact in a dedicated field, and ensure continuous contact maintenance with clients and partners. As a Manager, you independently acquire projects and negotiate contracts on your own responsibility. Due to the closer customer contact and the increase in leadership responsibility compared to the previous levels, pronounced empathetic and rhetorical skills are a ‘must’ for the Manager. These social competencies are complemented on the professional side by deep industry knowledge, expertise in a special field, and in-depth experience in project management.

In summary, it can be said that the Manager’s area of responsibility and tasks, due to the very intensive and proactive customer contact, is characterized by a strong sales orientation in addition to classic project management tasks.

Principal

The top of the professional career ladder at digatus is represented by the Principal. The area of responsibility at the Principal level is predominantly strategic in nature, alongside occasional operational activities. It’s about identifying weaknesses on behalf of the client, developing appropriate strategies, and presenting them confidently at the CxO level. This involves less of an in-depth engagement with the topics and more of a broad IT understanding in the area of applications and infrastructure, up to issues in compliance, governance, and organizational development.
In addition to this long-term and predominantly strategic approach, our employee Thomas Kollmansperger describes the role of the Principal as follows:

“As a Principal, good people skills are essential. This role is less about technology and more about people business.”

Thomas Kollmansperger – Principal at digatus

The Principal is thus a charismatic and professional leader who receives the highest recognition from colleagues. The leadership responsibility is characterized, among other things, by the training of project management personnel and the assignment of employees to projects according to their wishes and competencies.

Conclusion

In summary, it can be said that over the course of the professional career, due to accumulated project experiences and a better business understanding, areas of responsibility and tasks expand significantly. With increasing responsibility, another effect can be observed. The nature of tasks changes from highly operational – at the junior level – to an increasingly strategic character with professional and human leadership responsibility.