Michael Kaufmann

Michael Kaufmann is a technology strategist and international keynote speaker with more than 25 years of experience in how enterprises build and deliver software. He started as a software engineer, moved through architecture and DevOps leadership, and into senior management. That path gives him both the technical depth to see how systems actually behave and the leadership experience to change them.

He works with organizations in finance, retail, industry and the public sector on the gap between what leadership believes is happening and what the delivery system is actually doing: agile done by renaming roles, DevOps done by relabeling operations, and AI strategies that live in slide decks instead of systems.

Michael is the creator of the Three-Layer Transformation Model, which aligns Flow, Enablement and Leadership, and the author of five books, including The Horizon Problem: Why Transformations Fail — and What Actually Works, a business novel in the tradition of The Phoenix Project. He speaks at international conferences and leadership events in English, German and Spanish.