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| Faces |
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| Technology… and More Besides |
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Don Hannema graduated with a master’s degree in Computer Science from the University of Amsterdam, Holland, and after a stint with a software development company, joined Accenture in 2003. Accenture Technology Solutions was a logical landing place for him and he spent two years working in a highly technological environment, immersed in programming and development.
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He then decided to make a move into consulting and joined Accenture’s Technology Architecture group in 2005, which now forms part of the Systems Integration & Technology service line. For much of the last three years he has worked on a variety of the many projects Accenture handles for a European airline company. The experience has been good to Don from a number of viewpoints, not the least of them being that he was promoted to consultant after his first year there.
Over the course of his time working on these airline projects, Don has moved from a role as technical team lead into a broader project management role. “This was a gradual progression,” Don explains. “I started to assume more responsibility and the teams I led got larger as my leads built up confidence in what I could do. The client environment is a great one because it’s very mature and thus well organized—and because there are so many projects, there are lots of opportunities for those who want them. Now I’m not really doing much developing, rather I’m writing contracts, leading functional and technical teams and coaching my own technical leads.”
Don initially worked on a project to deliver Internet-based check-in for the carrier. This project has been hugely successful, and has grown from a few hundred users to tens of thousands per day. It is one example of the way in which leading companies use technology innovatively to power their drives toward high performance. Other projects include mobile check-in and now Web-based kiosks within the airport itself. These kiosks will replace the fat-client kiosks that are currently used in airports all round the world, and offer the combination of technology and business challenges that Don enjoys.
These projects involve working closely with the Java development team based in the Accenture Delivery Center in Mauritius. “The process runs very smoothly now,” says Don, “but the distance can sometimes make it hard for each team to get a real sense of what their counterparts are thinking. We frequently exchange team members for four weeks, and that’s a big help—spending some time in Mauritius sounds like a good idea to me!”
In the end, for Don, Accenture is all about the people. “Working for Accenture is all about the quality of the people on both a professional and social level,” Don says. “Of course, it’s also great to have the opportunity to be involved with the application of new technologies like service-oriented architecture, Spring and Hibernate—learning how to use the new functionalities to help clients become high-performance businesses is really worthwhile.”
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| April 2008 |
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