Thomas Mantsch, proud site manager, and EBCONT CEO Johannes Litschauer were pleased about the many visitors at the new EBCONT hub at Marktplatz 1.

In 2008, the first &quot;real Pinkafelder&quot; came on board at the up-and-coming IT family business, then based in Neulengbach, Lower Austria, and many more were to follow. Currently, we count more than 20 colleagues who either come directly from the Burgenland hub or have successfully graduated from the HTL Pinkafeld and have thus left a sustainable and positive footprint at EBCONT for many years.

&nbsp;

So sustainable that we opened our first branch office in sunny Burgenland in September of this year, so that we can be even closer to our future applicants and bring our active colleagues their professional home to their doorstep.

Thus EBCONT stands with 9 locations!

<a href="https://web.ebcont.com/unternehmen/Pinkafeld">https://web.ebcont.com/unternehmen/Pinkafeld</a>

September 8th marks a new era in EBCONTs history. Our new location in Pinkafeld, Burgenland, was ceremoniously opened in bright sunshine in the city center of this traditional school town with politicians, representatives of the local HTL and FH, media, partners and lots of guests from the EBCONT family.


EBCONT IT opens in beautiful Pinkafeld!


In addition to the IT headquarters in the Millennium Tower, EBCONT currently has another 9 locations: one office each in Vienna South, Linz, Salzburg, Graz, Hard in Vorarlberg, Saarbr&uuml;cken in Germany, in the Big Apple, and also brand new in Pinkafeld and St. P&ouml;lten, where we have just moved into our first office. 
 
Our location strategy is also an organic one. Employees who relocate, clients who need our help locally or long-standing alliances with partners underpin the respective decision for a new location. And our teams are enthusiastic. 
 
In our series &quot;The EBCONT Location Tour&quot;, we would now like to invite our locations and the people on site to appear before the curtain. 
 
The first location is Graz, managed by Patrick Iszovits and Christoph Eder and home to 25 colleagues and 3 four-legged friends. 
&nbsp;

Spot on Graz

EBCONT Team

And the team is harmonising perfectly! In addition to the day-to-day job, lunch breaks are held together, bouldering, hiking or a tobogganing tour in winter are on the agenda.

But let the pictures and words speak for themselves!

Interested in becoming part of the team? 
Click&nbsp;<a href="https://web.ebcont.com/karriere/jobs">here</a>&nbsp;for the current vacancies.

EBCONT has grown organically and healthily over the last few years. New colleagues from over 40 nations are part of the team.
But new things are also being created regionally and internationally.

Spotlight on our EBCONT locations


June is Pride Month, and at EBCONT this year it will be accompanied by various activities, such as a Pride Breakfast with Luan Pertl on the topic of &quot;gender diversity&quot;, participation in the Pride Run as well as in the Pride Biz Networking Lounge and internal educational work on various topics related to diversity and Pride.

Pride month is immensely important for the queer community. When rainbow flags appear everywhere and more people dare to show themselves in public, it&#39;s like the drummers who stand on the sidelines during races and give the runners strength for the next kilometers with their beats, or the spectators who cheer you on with signs and shouts so that you don&#39;t give up.&nbsp;

&nbsp;

Carina Skladal, co-initiator of the EBCONT Diversity Initiative, is proud of what has been achieved so far: &quot;I am happy that today we are closing the month of June with this very special EBCONT Pride Boot Lounge and hopefully we can carry this vibe beyond June. We will set a sign for acceptance, respect and equal rights today on the Danube Canal. Also, the many bright colors should provide visibility.&quot;&nbsp;

Johannes Litschauer, Managing Director of EBCONT, strongly supports the clear statement: &quot;We are a family business and unite many cultures and diversities with our more than 600 employees. We want to offer our colleagues a diverse home without hate and discrimination.&quot;

&nbsp;

Visibility was also the keyword for one of the evening&#39;s highlights. One of Austria&#39;s most successful drag artists graced the EBCONT Pride Boot: Philisha Conditioner is not only a regular in Vienna&#39;s bars and clubs with her energetic dance performances, but also conquers the stages at Pride celebrations all over Europe. The interview with two EBCONT colleagues was unvarnished and to the point, showing what outing, legislation and threats to the community are all about and where we can work together for more respect and acceptance.

But nothing works without the help and open support of Straight Allies, as they also exist in EBCONT, who show understanding and solidarity for the rights and equality of LGBTIQ+ people (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) and actively fight against discrimination and work for the recognition and acceptance of LGBTIQ+ people in society.

EBCONT Pride team goes on board.

EBCONT Pride Boat 2023

Das EBCONT Pride Team ging an Bord und feiert Diversity und Respekt für alle.

EBCONT Prideboot 2023

Pride ship ahoy!" was the motto on the Vienna Danube Canal this Thursday. This week, the MS Vindobona became the exclusive venue for the monthly lounge event of the Austrian IT company EBCONT.

EBCONT Pride Team goes on board!

For the first time, the Institute for Management and Economic Research (IMWF Austria) has surveyed the public reputation of Austrian consultants.

A total of around 1,850 companies were surveyed. The popularity of Austrian consultants was measured using indicators available online, such as performance and comments on rating platforms or social media, and over 1.2 million data points were evaluated using AI. Attention was paid to the different perspectives of reputation, such as product quality, innovative strength or service orientation of the consulting firm. The &quot;Top Consultant&quot; award is only given to those companies that can demonstrate a top rating in their category.

EBCONT has made it to the top IT companies in our industry! We are proud of the award TOP IT Consultant 2023!

Johannes Litschauer, Managing Director of EBCONT is pleased about the award:&nbsp;

&ldquo;It makes us very proud that in the first year of the existence of the award &quot;Top Consultant&quot; we have already been awarded as one of the best IT companies by the IMWF in cooperation with the daily newspaper Kurier. We see this as confirmation of our path as an employee-oriented company that places great value on a good working atmosphere and fairness in the workplace, as well as on honest and transparent communication both internally and externally.&quot;

&nbsp;

There are many external consultants, but what about their reputation and who are the best?


EBCONT named Top IT Consultant 2023

A company is only as strong as the managers who steer it. For this reason, the recent appointments of CFO (Chief Financial Officer) and COO (Chief Operating Officer) at IT service provider EBCONT are crucial for the future of the family-owned company.

As the new CFO, Claudia Fischer brings an impressive track record and a wealth of experience that will support the Austrian IT company EBCONT in the years to come. With a background in finance, taxation and economics, she has been leading EBCONT&#39;s finance department for over 4 years and together with her team is responsible for both strategic and operational national and international finance and accounting, including bookkeeping, invoicing, time recording, payroll, controlling, taxation and SAP.

Markus Stangl in his role as the new COO is a true EBCONT veteran and has been on board since 2007, just a few years after the company was founded. The IT expert is responsible for the operational structure of the IT company and focuses on managing day-to-day operations and human resources, improving business processes and customer management, and ensuring that EBCONT teams work seamlessly together to maintain as well as further improve the customer experience for which the family-owned IT company has been valued for many years.

The appointments of Claudia and Markus signal another important step in the growth of the EBCONT group and are a clear sign of the appreciation and trust the company has in its colleagues from within its own ranks.

Johannes Litschauer, CEO of EBCONT: &quot;Only with satisfied employees who can also develop accordingly will we be able to consolidate our position as market leader in the long term and continue to exist as a healthy and family-oriented company. And by encouraging colleagues to share ideas and perspectives, the company will be able to respond quickly to changes in the market and increase its competitiveness.&quot;

EBCONT group - top 3 IT service provider in Austria - strengthens with immediate effect with Claudia Fischer as CFO and Markus Stangl as COO the management CEO trio around Johannes Litschauer, Alexander Deles and Leopold Machacek.



EBCONT group - a new era of corporate management

In 2023 we are celebrating International Women&#39;s Day again, there are events, talks and offers for and by women everywhere. 
And this day is very controversial in itself! Do women still need an International Women&#39;s Day? I&acute;d say yes!&quot;

Why?

<ul>
	<li style="list-style-type:disc">Because many women don&#39;t have the courage to step forward and assert themselves.</li>
	<li style="list-style-type:disc">Because at EBCONT we have many women from other cultures and countries where being a woman is not as &quot;simple&quot; and safe as it is in Austria.</li>
	<li style="list-style-type:disc">And because we can use this day for reflection and ask ourselves questions as:
	<ul>
		<li style="list-style-type:circle">What else do we need as a woman?</li>
		<li style="list-style-type:circle">What should we leave behind?</li>
		<li style="list-style-type:circle">Who can help us?</li>
	</ul>
	</li>
</ul>

However, all the women&#39;s events around March 8, 2023 do not hide the fact that equality between men and women is far from being achieved. There is still a lot to do!

Iit is no longer enough to become stronger in the community and to support others, we must also start looking for allies: this brings us to the topic: Male Allyship.

We have to get together as well as look for male sponsors at work who push us. Men need to be brought on board so that they can understand how we tick and act and help us take an important step forward on our path to equality.

One of THE feminists and women&#39;s rights pioneers, the incomparable Frida Kahlo said: 
&quot;Laughter has made us invincible, not as those who always win, but as those who never give up.&quot;

&nbsp;

Women@EBCONT Day 2023

Together with the business magazine Trend and the market research institute Statista, kununu has determined the best employers in Austria in 2023. This makes us one of the top IT service providers in Austria - and thus very proud!

Since 2015, companies that have received particularly good ratings have been awarded the &ldquo;Top Company&rdquo; seal at kununu.com. As of this year, however, only the most popular around five percent of all employers on the rating platform receive this award - based on ratings from their own employees and applicants.

Johannes Litschauer, Managing Director of EBCONT, is delighted with the award:

&quot;It makes us very proud that we have again received the award as &quot;Top Company 2023&quot; from kununu this year. We see this as confirmation of our path as an employee-oriented company that attaches great importance to a good working atmosphere and fairness in the workplace. Especially in the current challenging times and the reorganization of working life in the hybrid office, it is all the more important to have satisfied employees and to be able to rely on them!&quot;

We were awarded the kununu Top Company seal again- this means that we are among the top 5% of the most employee-friendly companies in Germany, Austria and Switzerland!


We did it again! EBCONT is again top employer of 2023.

What is important in these challenging times is cohesion, empathy and mutual helpfulness. We also try to align ourselves with this in our daily activities at EBCONT.

It&#39;s now a year since the war broke out in Ukraine and we are trying to help where we can. For us, as a company with colleagues from almost 40 nations, it is an affair of the heart.

In order to help those in need in Ukraine quickly and without any bureaucracy, we support CARITAS with five-digit donations, most recently with &euro;10,000 for the Kharkiv region.

We provide EBCONT real estate for accommodation - we are currently accommodating several families, and last year we tried to bring some everyday Austrian life closer to the personal destinies and people of our country with an in-house German course for refugees belonging to EBCONT members.

Employees from Ukraine receive time credits to help friends and relatives, and we support them with administrative, school or other complex issues.

The EBCONT intranet contains important links to aid organizations as well as FAQs on legal issues relating to benefit entitlements, health insurance and e-cards.

Our top jobs can be found on the following platforms:

<a href="https://ebcont.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6b194013911fbcc5fd83c003d&amp;id=0b3001351c&amp;e=d4c985f29d" style="text-decoration:none">https://austrianjobs-for-ukraine.at/</a>

<a href="https://ebcont.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6b194013911fbcc5fd83c003d&amp;id=0b3001351c&amp;e=d4c985f29d" style="text-decoration:none">https://www.jobs-for-ukraine.at/&nbsp;</a>

<a href="https://ebcont.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6b194013911fbcc5fd83c003d&amp;id=83c250cb04&amp;e=d4c985f29d" style="text-decoration:none">https://www.ukrainejobs.at/</a>

Because at EBCONT it&#39;s the people counts that count!

&nbsp;

Ukraine – It's the people that count


As a further highlight, the EBCONT UX/UI team hosted a meetup on November 10th 2022 in the Millennium Tower on the subject of &ldquo;Accessibility&rdquo;. More than 60 guests accepted the invitation and thus made the event, which was designed as an eco-event, a complete success.

The kickoff was designed by Fredrik Fischer, DisAbility Consultant at myAbility, and introduced the topic to the viewers, who were there both on site and online. In summary it can be said: people do not have a disability, but are prevented from interacting with, for example, an interactive system. Once you have internalized this as a developer or designer, it quickly becomes clear that it is not the responsibility of the user to change anything. On the contrary, it is up to UX/UI designers and developers to design applications in such a way that nobody is prevented from using them.

&nbsp;

Accessibility Event@EBCONT

In further impulses, Roland Kalusa (UX/UI Designer) and Anne-Victoria Meyer (Frontend Developer) from EBCONT showed tips &amp; tricks for the design and implementation of barrier-free apps and websites.

The first lecture dealt with the importance of accessibility in mobile use and how not only people with disabilities can benefit from it. Roland treated design criteria for perceptibility, usability and comprehensibility, tools and characteristics of the respective platforms were presented, as well as a short overview of the mobile WCAG criteria, standards and best practices. The new POST app served as an example, where our EBCONT design team had played a key role in its design.

Anne-Victoria again showed how developers can develop forms with low barriers, for example so that forms can be filled out with both the mouse and the keyboard. Or with which attributes in HTML changes such as error messages can be recorded by a screen reader. The UX/UI expert also strongly advocated using native HTML elements such as &lt;select&gt; instead of developing components for input fields yourself. The standard elements already provide many features out of the box and are also barrier-free.

All in all, exciting learning for the participants.

The fact that so many attended the event shows how important digital accessibility is. We at EBCONT hope that we have made a contribution to breaking down barriers in interactive systems in the future.

With new knowledge and more awareness of accessibility, it will be a top priority for us as the EBCONT team to ensure more inclusion in the upcoming projects.

<a href="https://www.myability.org/">https://www.myability.org/</a>

&nbsp;

What we can do better in the implementation

Accessibility means the freedom from barriers to media, e.g. the Internet. This means accessibility and usability for everyone, regardless of a possible disability.

Unfortunately, there is still a big difference between what is required in terms of accessibility in tenders in the IT environment and how it is then lived in everyday project work. There is often a lack of knowledge, but also of empathy on the part of the people involved, which means that accessibility is neglected during implementation.

In Austria, 18.4% of the population is affected by a permanent disability. Therefore, as an implementation partner in projects, it is our responsibility to ensure that everyone has sufficient access to websites, portals or apps. Therefore, in November 2022, the EBCONT UX / UI team focused on this with different measures.

The first day of a two-day expert training course by myAbility, a social enterprise that is committed to an equal opportunity and barrier-free society, was about creating awareness for people with disabilities. A lot was also said about the right wording, which is an important part of treating each other with respect.

An open exchange with people with disabilities and a &ldquo;Sensing Journey&rdquo; helped the participants to gain an insight into their daily activities. An expert who was born with a cataract showed which tools she uses to consume analogue and digital content and which information helps her to find her way around. Another expert, who suffered from a mental illness during his student days, described very vividly the effects this has on his life and how the sensitive use of colors in user interfaces has a positive effect here as well.

&nbsp;

Training for EBCONT UX/UI designers and developers

The second day of the training focused on the design and development of low-barrier user interfaces. In the course of this, our EBCONT website was checked for accessibility with Braille displays and screen readers. Based on the valuable input obtained, various solution approaches were discussed in the team with myAbility.

&nbsp;

Full EBCONT focus on digital accessibility with experts, training and lectures.


What accessibility has to do with IT

Sustainability means much more than just waste separation or e-mobility: the term should also include the employees. The goal is to bind motivated employees to the company for a long time &ndash; and this is only possible if they feel comfortable in their workplace.

&quot;Let&#39;s talk about Health@EBCONT&quot; is the apt title of the EBCONT Health Initiative 2022 with various focal points such as mental, physical and environmental health. Also diversity is inextricably linked to health. After 2 years of pandemic and in view of the ongoing global crisis situation, it was clear to us at EBCONT that we had to focus on health in 2022 in order to be able to better support our colleagues individually in complex situations.

And EBCONT, as a leading IT company, shows how all the exciting content relating to the 3 pillars of physical, mental and environmental health really does reach all colleagues, whether on site or remotely in the home office or in a customer project.

A wide range of offers such as webinars, EQS lectures, 1:1 coaching and the famous EBCONT Hausbankerl, which pick up employees directly where they need us most: at home or to support our customers.

The communication tools are also diverse. EBCONT&rsquo;s internal Google Chat glows with the latest news, the website and the intranet are important touchpoints, as well as internal newsletters and monthly lounge formats. External exchange is also an important part of communication, whether by means of the newly created external newsletter or via networks with experts with whom EBCONT works in the campaign.

Health can also be hybrid

The year 2022 was opened with &quot;Mental Health&rdquo;.

With tips, interesting facts and offers of help for mental self-protection in times of crisis in our internal communication channels, a lecture by Dr. Gerald Grundschober, specialist in psychiatry and free 1:1 coaching offers with internal coaches. For more than 2 years, the regular &quot;EBCONT Hausbankerl&quot; has also been a remote fixture for colleagues who have problems and are looking for solutions.

More than 600 people from almost 40 nations in a company mean a lot of diversity, so an &quot;Unconscious Bias Workshop&quot; for EBCONT&#39;s leaders was also the starting point for internal diversity task forces for each of the 6 diversity dimensions. For a more respectful interaction in the team. The year continued with &ldquo;physical health&rdquo;: An &quot;all-in&quot; health check-up organized internally by the company, webinars on vital home office and joint exercise during the business run or yoga. However, wellbeing also includes the environment. As an IT company, we can achieve a lot by turning the relevant screws. We have now embarked on this journey together with the sustainability expert Nunu Kaller.

3 pillars for more health

In September 2022, the company was once again voted one of the top 15 most family-friendly companies in Austria, and has just received the &quot;kununu Top Company 2023&quot; award again, making it one of the five percent most popular employers on kununu.

&ldquo;I am very pleased that we, as a relatively young family company, have been recognized as one of the most family-friendly companies in Austria. For EBCONT, our colleagues come first and are our most important asset, so it is all the more important to have satisfied employees and to be able to rely on them!&rdquo; says Johannes Litschauer, managing director and co-owner of EBCONT.

&ldquo;Sustainability means much more than just waste separation or e-mobility: the term should also include the employees. The goal is to bind motivated employees to the company for a long time - and this is only possible if they feel comfortable in the workplace.&quot;

&quot;Let&#39;s talk about Health&quot;: for even better and more relaxed teamwork within EBCONT!

The EBCONT health initiative is very well received

Sustainability with a focus on our people

Let’s talk about Health@EBCONT

Under the EBCONT flag, YOU ARE EPIC is a new advertising platform that is actually much more than that and also makes the world a little better!

Especially in these times, the topic of donations is increasingly in focus. And with it the question of how donations can be optimized in such a way that everyone involved benefits. YOU ARE EPIC have created a solution for this that is as simple as it is ingenious: a new advertising platform that brings together gaming fans, advertisers and charity companies &ndash; and makes the world a little better in the process. A very likeable approach, which is driven by a small core team in a start-up manner under the flag of the IT service provider EBCONT.

The idea generator Georg Hertner (IT Consultant at EBCONT in his main job) describes it like this: &ldquo;What has been on my mind since my childhood is the question of how &ndash; in the moment of the highest feeling of happiness &ndash; you can do good things for others (fellow people). These feelings of happiness are so-called &ldquo;epic moments&rdquo;, where you slowly realize &ldquo;this is going very well right now&rdquo; or when you realize a sudden turn of events, &ldquo;wow, I can still do it!&rdquo; Such a feeling can only be increased, if you let others participate, if you can help others &ndash; that is the fulfillment, you could almost say it is a basic need and fills us with happiness&hellip;&quot;

Why is that?

In numerous, intensive discussions with customers, gaming developers and charity organizations, processes were optimized, technical hurdles were identified and solved and the platform was transferred to the beta phase.

EBCONT&rsquo;s core team has developed a new, accurate advertising format using future digital technologies (AI, machine learning, etc.), which &ndash; in addition to the benefit for consumers and advertisers &ndash; by redirecting advertising money to meaningful projects &ndash; also has a benefit created in the real world.

YOU ARE EPIC recognizes the epic moments, the special game successes, in the course of the gamer&rsquo;s game. In this positive mood immediately after the epic moment, the appropriate advertising message is played out and at the same time the satisfaction of the social need &ldquo;to do good&rdquo; is made possible.

It&rsquo;s exciting for branded companies because it enables consumers to have an intensive and positive experience with a brand, which can be used to increase brand loyalty. Advertising that is not only tolerated but accepted by all sides; Advertising has seldom been so likeable.

YOU ARE EPIC goes AI

On Wednesday, August 24th, 2022 the next big step: YOU ARE EPIC presented its concept to a broad specialist audience for the first time at Gamescom in Cologne. And so much can already be revealed, the response was great!

We rock the Gamescom 22

The team around YOU ARE EPIC was able to convince over 30 potential gamers and publishers of the charity concept to generate donations with EPIC Moments (these are special game moments in which the gamer has achieved something really great). Some gaming studios were so enthusiastic about the concept that they would have liked to have integrated the service immediately.

Back in Austria, it&rsquo;s now time to work through the valuable contacts and take the next step towards our vision of &ldquo;making the world a little bit better with EPIC Moments&rdquo;.

<a href="https://www.youareepic.net/">https://www.youareepic.net/</a>

Inquiries please directly to&nbsp;<a href="mailto:georg.hertner@ebcont.com">georg.hertner@ebcont.com</a>

Under the EBCONT flag, YOU ARE EPIC is a new advertising platform that is actually much more than that and also makes the world a little better!

YOU ARE EPIC at the Gamescom 22

Information technology is still predominantly male today, according to the Association of Austrian Software Industry, V&Ouml;SI, the proportion of women in the entire IT sector is only around 18%. Just under a quarter of companies are taking action to attract more women to IT jobs.

Being a woman and IT have been closely linked for more than a century: It was female programming pioneers and not their male colleagues who were mainly found among the first programmers. Grace Hopper, for example, was one of the pioneers of computer science, working with the first computer, the Mark I, at Harvard. She developed the first programming language that worked with colloquial words.

A year ago, EBCONT women founded the Women@EBCONT initiative: with events, keynote speeches and partnerships for colleagues from all departments and locations.

Since 2021 we have also been partner and sponsor of https://thenewitgirls.com, a team of industry experts led by the two founders Astrid Wieland and Doris Schlaffer, which connects women in the IT industry across job titles. The #ThenewITgirls give women of different origins, companies and professional fields the opportunity not only to network in regular meetups, but also a stage to present themselves. That&rsquo;s what we support, too!

We regularly invite inspiring speakers to our Women@EBCONT Breakfasts to tell us how they would like to make a difference or what they have already achieved. Such as Verena Eugster, inventor and founder of https://female-future.com, the largest community for women in Austria, dealing with job opportunities, the future, innovation and careers. At the last Female Future Festival 2021 Vienna, 12 EBCONT women prominently represented our company.

Or Katharina Krombholz &ndash; tenure-track faculty member at CISPA in Saarbr&uuml;cken and head of the Usable Security Group &ndash; who excelled with her &ldquo;Why I love informatics&rdquo; and Maren W&ouml;lfl, http://www.msolution.at, who gave motivating and helpful tips on the topics of women in business, integrity, courage &amp; big thinking.

Another internal Women@EBCONT initiative is also in the starting blocks: EBCONT Lunch &amp; Learn for all women in EBCONT. We plan to have impulses, Q&amp;As or just an inspiring lunch together.

Johannes Litschauer, Managing Director of EBCONT, takes a clear position and is confident: &ldquo;I am pleased that we are sending such a strong female signal both internally and externally. We currently have a 12% share of women here at EBCONT, but in IT sales in particular we are intensively looking for women who want to come on board with us.&rdquo;

Women in the IT industry must be encouraged, so we as a company want to send a clear signal and help women to become more empowered.

We support strong Women@EBCONT


kununu hat auch heuer zusammen mit dem Wirtschaftsmagazin trend und dem Marktforschungsinstitut Statista die besten Arbeitgeber &Ouml;sterreichs 2022 ermittelt. Damit z&auml;hlen wir zu den Top IT-Dienstleistern &Ouml;sterreichs &ndash; wir sind sehr stolz!!

EBCONT was voted one of the top IT service providers in Austria and is therefore one of the best employers in Austria.

kununu, together with the business magazine trend and the market research institute Statista, once again determined the best employers in Austria in 2022. This makes us one of the top IT service providers in Austria &ndash; and very proud!

Johannes Litschauer, Managing Director of EBCONT, is delighted with the award:

&ldquo;I am very pleased that we, as a relatively young family company, have been recognized as one of the 300 top employers in Austria for the third time in a row. Especially in the current challenging situation and the reorganization of working life in the hybrid office, it is all the more important to have satisfied employees and to be able to rely on them!&rdquo;

EBCONT was voted one of the top IT service providers in Austria and is therefore one of the best employers in Austria.

EBCONT was ranked TOP employer 2022 for the third time in a row and one of the top IT service providers in Austria!

According to the Scrum Guide Scrum Masters are true leaders serving the Scrum Team and the organization. However the role of Scrum Masters is not always well defined. My experience shows that a lot of organizations have different definitions of what a Scrum Master should and could do. Quite often he/she is just seen as a secretary for the team (Scrum Secretary, Scrum Mom).

Over the past years I have been talking to colleagues, reading articles and discussing it in the agile community and I realized that it is not that easy to become a good Scrum Master and develop all the necessary skills. Therefore I am going to share a few insights that helped me develop my skills.

Over the past years I have been talking to colleagues, reading articles and discussing it in the agile community and I realized that it is not that easy to become a good Scrum Master and develop all the necessary skills. Therefore I am going to share a few insights that helped me develop my skills.

&ldquo;You can&rsquo;t stop the waves but you can learn to surf.&nbsp;[Jon Kabat-Zinn]

In our daily business working with people, teams and organizations in complex environments we use a lot of coaching techniques and interventions. However, sometimes it is not clear what intervention really helped the team. It&rsquo;s also not always clear what of our actions was helpful and what was misleading.

An agile team uses retrospectives to reflect and improve the way they work together. But what could a Scrum Master do to reflect his/her work and progress?

During my course to become a solutions focused coach with sinnvollF&Uuml;HREN (<a href="https://sinnvoll-fuehren.com/">https://sinnvoll-fuehren.com</a>) I created a journal for Scrum Masters to assist them with self-reflection and mindfulness.

The&nbsp;logbook for Scrum Master&nbsp;is a journal for Scrum Masters to reflect their way of working with agile Scrum teams and assists in developing their skills step by step respectively Sprint by Sprint.

You want your own Logbook for Scrum Masters? Download here:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.ebcont.com/logbuch-scrum-master">https://www.ebcont.com/logbuch-scrum-master</a>

5. Self-reflection

&ldquo;The more you know yourself, the more patience you have for what you see in others.&rdquo;&nbsp;[Erik Eriksonl] 
&nbsp;

Patience and confidence are solution focused attitudes. As Scrum Masters are servant leaders and change agents using coaching techniques and interventions to support teams and organizations, Patience and Confidence is a strength that shouldn&rsquo;t be disregarded. Especially in situations when working with a new team.&nbsp;

Let&rsquo;s consider starting on a new project. The old project team already got to a certain degree of agility. However when working with a new team you have to bring a lot of patience. You can not just copy the way the old team used to work because the needed changes can not be applied overnight. Even though agile teams can not be compared to schoolchildren I still like the metaphor of a teacher who is helping and guiding the pupils for a while before starting with beginners again. Even in this situation a teacher needs a lot of patience and confidence to start with school children over and over again.

The comparison might not be the best. So let&rsquo;s have a look at tip 2. Most of the time agile teams already have some sort of knowledge about agility and especially about the way they are working together. Therefore a Scrum Master needs to balance own needs and the team needs to develop the team but also improve the own skills.

&nbsp;

&nbsp;

1. Patience and Confidence

&ldquo;Problem talk creates problems. Solution talk creates solutions.&rdquo;&nbsp;[Steve de Shazer] 
&nbsp;

Following tip 1 I would like to talk about balance between the needs of the team and the Scrum Master&rsquo;s needs. I would like to show you a failure from my very own experience. 
&nbsp;

A while ago I was moving from one project to another. At this point of time I was just getting used to the role of Scrum Master and I was at the beginning of my Scrum Master career. I wanted to turn everything around and everything had to be the agile way I knew. I tried out a lot of different formats for retrospectives. By doing this I wanted to create my own little world. A world I have seen before in other projects. Additionally I was reading a lot of blog posts, following Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches on Twitter and I was just confused by all the different views and approaches. I just wanted to try out as much as I could. But in the end it did not work out. I forgot to focus on the team and therefore just put myself into the spotlight.

As Scrum Master and leader it is important to have a good balance and to be at peace with yourself. I believe only then you can help and support a team and an organization where they really have the need.

To get this balance you need to have the right attitude. In the agile world this is also called servant leadership.

One good tip I got a while ago is simply asking the team where you can help them as Scrum Master. This question is also an offer to the team and can be quite revealing because if the team is open for changes and they see their problems it shows you where you can support them.

Besides focusing on the team it&rsquo;s also important to focus on your own development as Scrum Master.

2. Your needs vs. Team needs

&ldquo;Um klar zu sehen, gen&uuml;gt oft ein Wechsel der Blickrichtung.&rdquo;&nbsp;[Antoine De Saint-Exupery]

Als Scrum Master ist es meiner Meinung nach wichtig, am Ball zu bleiben. Und die gute Nachricht ist &ndash; es gibt eine sehr gro&szlig;e Community zu diesem Thema, sei es auf Twitter, Blogs von anerkannten Scrum Master und Trainern sowie Konferenzen und Meetups.

Die Community bietet eine tolle Plattform f&uuml;r die verschiedensten Anliegen eines Scrum Masters. So kann man sich neue Ideen holen, Probleme bzw. Herausforderungen reflektieren und besprechen und einfach dazulernen. Denn ein Meister ist noch nicht vom Himmel gefallen und auch als Scrum Master ist ein lebenslanges Lernen essentiell.

Das Sch&ouml;ne an einer Community ist auch, dass man hier immer ein offenes Ohr f&uuml;r seine Anliegen findet und auch wenn es im Projekt mal nicht so rund l&auml;uft, sich verstanden und aufgehoben f&uuml;hlt. Das haben Communities mit vielen Agile Coaches und Scrum Master anscheinend irgendwie so an sich.

Mir pers&ouml;nlich haben die Meetups und Konferenzen sowie viele Blog Posts dabei geholfen, meine Perspektiven zu ver&auml;ndern und andere Blickwinkel einzunehmen. Denn in der agilen Welt gibt es nicht nur Scrum, sondern Scrum ist eines von vielen agilen Frameworks.&nbsp;

F&uuml;r mich war es auf meinem Weg zum Scrum Master und Agile Coach immer wichtig, das Thema Agilit&auml;t aus verschiedenen Perspektiven zu betrachten, um zu verstehen, wie alles zusammenh&auml;ngt. Denn neben Scrum gibt es da auch noch XP (Extreme Programming), Kanban etc..

4. Community

&ldquo;You can only see things clearly with your heart. What is essential is invisible to the eye.&rdquo;&nbsp;[Antoine De Saint-Exupery]

As Scrum Master it is important to stay on the ball. And the good news is that there is a big community for this topic, whether on Twitter, blog posts from well known Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches as well as conferences and meetups.

The community will offer you a perfect platform. You can get new insights and ideas, talk about your problems and challenges and reflect your own way of working with teams as Scrum Master. Simply said, it&rsquo;s about learning and developing your skills. No-one is born as a Master. Lifelong learning is essential.

The advantage of a community is that they are always eager to help and support each other.

Personally I have learned a lot by attending meetups and conferences, and reading all the various blog posts.

I also got in touch with people from the Lean and Kanban community. Agile is not all about Scrum. There is a lot more to it.

During my career it was always important to me to extend my knowledge in different ways with various approaches to understand how it all works together and where it&rsquo;s originally coming from.

So besides Scrum or even as alternatives to Scrum there are Frameworks like XP (Extreme Programming) and Kanban etc.

3. Community

&ldquo;Efficiency, which is doing the things right, is irrelevant until you do the right things.&rdquo;&nbsp;[Peter F. Drucker]

 
Even though you are a Scrum Master you shouldn&rsquo;t limit yourself to the Scrum framework. It&rsquo;s quite helpful to think outside the box and learn about other frameworks and methodologies. Scrum is just one of many approaches to tackle certain problems in certain situations. Be prepared to use the right tools for the right situation. 
&nbsp;

In this case I have learned a lot from XP (Extreme Programming). But also Kanban has changed my way of thinking.

Additionally to all agile methodologies and frameworks I got the most insights from coaching. When we see a Scrum Master as a servant leader in modern leadership then coaching is indispensable.

As Scrum Master we are working with people, teams and organizations in complex environments where cause and effect is not always clear. And we do not want to be a traditional leader micro-managing everything. It&rsquo;s more about empowering people and supporting them to find their own ways.

It&rsquo;s definitely not ideal believing to know everything the best. Therefore just go and ask the team what they need. Leading by questions!

4. Scrum, XP, Kanban, Coaching  etc.

“The Scrum Master is accountable for establishing Scrum as defined in the Scrum Guide. They do this by helping everyone understand Scrum theory and practice, both within the Scrum Team and the organization.”
[Scrum Guide, 2020]

5 Tips for Scrum Masters


Every day, the judicial authorities receive countless legal documents that are not assigned to a clear topic or case category, there is a lack of important information about those involved, and content or scans are sometimes summarized in documents randomly. However, judges and clerks need documents in a certain structure and designation so that they can work efficiently. In order to enable processing at all and to enable an exchange between courts, but also to control the work of the courts, files still had to be reworked, i.e. anonymized in order to protect personal rights.

All of this costs time and money and is intensive manual work!

Up to now, models for recognizing categories, entities, parties in lawsuits and patterns in legal documents required a fixed, form-like structure. In fact, those models did not cover the entire range of possible files that occur in legal relations. Data that appears in legal texts not only in tabular form, but also as continuous text or with images included, has not been adequately recorded yet.

For the Austrian Federal Ministry of Justice (BMJ for short), the IT specialist EBCONT has therefore created and implemented an overall concept for the automated processing of legal documents in a number of use cases, which, after several partial implementations, will now be fully activated in autumn.

The groundbreaking automated anonymization of legal documents and especially of judgments developed by EBCONT is particularly worth mentioning, which will replace the current solution for Austrian courts in autumn 2021 in full expansion.

What was previously done manually and required a lot of time and resources, can now be done in a few moments after the successful implementation. Hence, it was also possible to digitize and anonymize over 1 million old or previously unprocessed judgments from all judicial authorities.

What made the project so challenging for EBCONT was that there were neither quality metrics nor 100% usable training data, namely for none of the intermediate information, but only data for &ldquo;blackened&rdquo; and &ldquo;not blackened&rdquo;, so the team had to create them through complex heuristics.

Both the BMJ and EBCONT expect notable improvements in data processing not only for judges, but for all those involved in legal proceedings, taking data protection standards into account.

Martin Hackl, Chief Digital Officer of the Federal Ministry of Justice: &ldquo;It is now important that we establish the processes. People and machines make mistakes, so we still have to create appropriate workflows for automated processes to be accepted.&nbsp;&ldquo;

Frederick Bednar, Data Analytics and Data Science Consultant at EBCONT can look back on many years of experience in the field of Natural Language Processing and semantic use cases: &ldquo;The BMJ values ​​our competence and has therefore fully relied on our extensive knowledge of both data science and machine learning. In the specific example of anonymization, we have gained valuable experience that a combination of several methods pledges to be the most effective solution, especially for highly complex domains. We are very pleased to have contributed to the full development of the anonymization of the BMJ&rsquo;s legal documents.&nbsp;&ldquo;

In autumn 2021, the Federal Ministry of Justice (BMJ) will finally implement the overall concept developed together with the Austrian IT specialist EBCONT for the automated processing of legal documents and, in particular, their automated anonymization. This is a milestone towards the efficient processing as well as an improvement of the data protection standards of legal documents. The Austrian IT company EBCONT was able to professionally accompany the process as a long-term competent partner with extensive knowledge of both data science and machine learning.

EBCONT succeeds in LegalTech: how the combination of heuristic and AI methods can enrich legal documents

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