Itilians about Itility

My Itility journey started in 2018. A few years before, I started studying Software Engineering part time at Fontys Eindhoven with the plan to transition into a software engineering role. At that time, I regularly attended meetups to meet fellow engineers. It allowed me to get a peek inside companies and to experience their culture. At such a meetup in Utrecht, I met two Itilians, and we had a pleasant conversation. Afterwards, I was invited to attend their meetup, which was due in a few weeks. Of course I went, again had a pleasant experience, and since the feeling seemed mutual, the rest became history.

Well, almost… In 2019, I needed a project to be able to graduate from Fontys. Itility helped me out with an internal project. During this internal graduation project, I learned a lot from colleagues, who explained to me, for example, how to implement firewall rules, how to deploy VMware images, and how to structure terraform code so it becomes manageable and maintainable. In turn, I could share the accumulated knowledge with the software engineering community within Itility.

I started as a software engineer, and I probably stay a software engineer. However, the domain is changing! Previously, my domain was hardware related, transitioning into CI/CD with a focus on creating software packages and deploying test clusters, transitioning into platform engineering, with a focus on platform installation tooling. My ambition is to combine Kubernetes with platform engineering as a next step. Looking forward to learning from my colleagues, and support our customers with stable and resilient platforms.

In 2018, I started my Itility journey in the Project Delivery Office (PDO). Within this team, I took my first steps in contract management. It was a challenging year, as moving from lecture halls and the student life into the working life was quite the adjustment. But the longer I worked with smart, dedicated and driven fellow Itilians in the project teams and PDO teams, I found my footing in the PDO role.

After roughly 1 year, I took my next step, where I became responsible for an entire enterprise customer. This meant being the main contact person for all PDO team members working at that customer, the customer(s), our internal colleagues and being the right hand of the Managing Consultant. This gave me the opportunity to pick up larger customer topics like negotiations with procurement, sales support on an account level (instead of project/customer level), and so on.

Eventually, I was given the opportunity to take another step and became the team lead of the PDO team, where I became responsible for all contract managers across Itility. What a steep learning curve this was! Switching my focus from one customer to all customers, steering a team, and setting a course for the upcoming years and being involved in Itility-wide (front) topics. What a ride! It was an incredible learning opportunity for me, and I wouldn’t miss it for the world.

After 6 years within the PDO team, I took my latest step and joined the group of Managing Consultants where I am end-to-end responsible for one of our customers. Again, a true learning curve which taps into the essence of Itility: personal development (in whichever direction) is always encouraged and supported. For now, I am still in my learning curve - but who knows where I’ll end up in the next years.