An Interview with Amir Seyfi

Amir, how would you introduce yourself?

My name is Amir; I’m from Iran and have been living in Germany for over ten years. I completed my master’s degree here and have stayed ever since—I now feel truly at home in Frankfurt am Main, where I live with my wife.

What made you decide to join ReQonsult?

When the opportunity arose to join ReQonsult, a lot of things clicked right away—the role, the focus on ALM topics, and the way the company interacts with clients and employees. What really won me over was that the impression I got from our initial conversations was actually confirmed in my day-to-day work.

Amir Seyfi in Berlin – our main office

What was your first impression of us?

What struck me was the extremely flat hierarchy. There are no lengthy bureaucratic channels—colleagues in all roles, whether they’re senior consultants or members of management, are approachable and offer help without any red tape. This creates a sense of genuine closeness. What I find particularly important is that when you bring up an issue here, it’s not only heard but also actually leads to changes in our day-to-day work. As an individual, you truly have an influence on how we work together.

What motivates you in your day-to-day work?

What motivates me most are conversations with clients and those moments when we work together with them to solve a specific problem—that moment when a complicated requirement is suddenly transformed into a working solution. I especially enjoy on-site visits with clients because that’s where you get to experience the processes and people firsthand, not just on paper. And last but not least, teamwork: working together to refine a solution is what really makes the work come together for me.

Over 20 industries

Our consulting services cover a wide range of industries. For each of these industries, we offer specialized solutions tailored to their respective unique challenges and needs.

Discover Industries

What are your main responsibilities as an ALM Consultant?

My role is very versatile. At its core, it’s about advising clients: I listen, understand the client’s challenges and processes, and translate that into concrete solutions. This also involves scrutinizing existing processes and adapting them where necessary—not every process that has evolved over time is necessarily the best one. On the technical side, I develop and program customizations and enhancements that are precisely tailored to the client’s needs. And at the end of a project, training the clients is also important to me—a solution is useless if users can’t operate it confidently.

In simple terms, what does application lifecycle management mean to you?

For me, Application Lifecycle Management is one thing above all else: a roadmap that lets you see at any time where a requirement, a test, or a change currently stands in the development process—from the initial idea to the finished, delivered product. Instead of scattering information across emails, Excel spreadsheets, and the minds of individual people, ALM brings requirements, development, testing, and changes together in one place and makes it clear how everything is connected. Simply put: ALM ensures that a product is not only created, but that you can also explain later exactly why it was created the way it was.

Amir on his way to a client meeting

What typical challenges do you see in ALM projects?

Eine der größten Herausforderungen ist, dass ALM-Projekte selten nur ein Tool-Thema sind – sie berühren Prozesse, Organisation und oft auch eingefahrene Gewohnheiten der Mitarbeitenden. Widerstand gegen Veränderung ist deshalb ein ständiger Begleiter, gerade wenn Teams jahrelang mit anderen Methoden gearbeitet haben. Added to this is often a complex, legacy system landscape with historical data and special cases that must be migrated cleanly and transferred to the new system without losing traceability. And last but not least, requirements often change even during the course of a project because the customer only realizes what they really need as implementation progresses—flexibility in project work is crucial here.

How can you tell if an ALM project is successful?

For me, the success of an ALM project isn’t measured by the acceptance deadline, but by what happens afterward: Do users use the system willingly and without issues? Is traceability—who changed what, when, and why—actually practiced in day-to-day operations, and not just theoretically possible? And can the system be adapted to new requirements with reasonable effort when the customer’s context changes? If so, the project was successful not only technically but also in terms of its substance.

ALM Consulting

Discover services that will transform your product development. Our experts offer In-depth consulting and customized solutions for seamless application lifecycle management.

Get in touch

How do you handle situations where customer requirements are unclear or changing?

When requirements are unclear, I don’t start with the tool; instead, I begin by listening and asking questions—often, a vaguely worded requirement hides a very specific problem that the client simply hasn’t put into words yet. I like to work in small, tangible steps: I’d rather show an initial prototype (MVP) or draft and gather feedback than spend months refining a perfect concept that ultimately doesn’t work out. I don’t see changes during the project as a disruption, but as a normal part of the work—it’s important to validate early and often, rather than realizing at the end that we’ve been working at cross-purposes.

What role does communication play for you in complex projects?

In complex projects, communication is almost more important to me than the technical implementation itself. I’m constantly translating between different languages—the technical language of development, the process language of the business unit, and the strategic expectations of management. Most of the problems I’ve encountered in projects didn’t stem from a lack of technical skill, but from misunderstandings that arose early on and weren’t discovered until later. Clear, regular communication prevents exactly that.

Amir supports ALM projects in the energy sector, among others

What is particularly important to you when working with clients?

Trust and honesty are my top priorities—including being willing to point out when a requested solution doesn’t make technical sense, rather than simply going through the motions to fulfill requests. It’s just as important to me to understand the actual needs behind a requirement, rather than just implementing the requirement itself to the letter. And I want clients to feel well-informed and involved throughout the entire project, not just at the kickoff and acceptance stages.

What trends do you currently see in the areas of PLM, ALM, or digital product development?

I’ve noticed that the lines between ALM and PLM are becoming increasingly blurred—customers want end-to-end traceability from the initial requirement to the finished product, not just within a single tool, but across the entire toolchain. At the same time, automation is on the rise—for example, in test coverage and requirements management—and AI-powered features are becoming increasingly common, such as for analyzing requirements or automatically detecting traceability gaps. Cloud solutions and model-based systems engineering (MBSE) are also gaining significant importance.

Project Updater: New Release

With Release 2607 of our Polarion Project Updater, you can manage Polarion templates from creation through rollout. This release combines centralized template management, clear conflict resolution, and secure updates.

Read the press release

You studied industrial engineering. How has that shaped you?

This background is essentially the perfect preparation for ALM consulting. My background in production engineering has given me a solid understanding of real-world development and manufacturing processes; my experience in systems development has given me a sense of how complex systems composed of many individual parts work together seamlessly; and my studies in industrial engineering have taught me that every technical solution must also be economically and organizationally viable. It is precisely at this intersection of technology, process, and economic viability that I operate today in every ALM project.

What appeals to you about the intersection of technology, processes, and people?

It’s exactly this versatility. No two projects are alike because the technology, processes, and people involved are constantly being recombined. I’m drawn to solving technical problems, but just as much to understanding why a team has approached a process in a certain way up to this point, and how to design change in a way that gets people on board rather than having them resist it.

Amir in a support call with a customer

Which topics would you like to explore further?

Over the next few years, I would like to specifically expand my knowledge in the area of PLM, particularly at the intersection with ALM. Many customers manage requirements and development in an ALM system such as Polarion, but manage bill of materials, CAD data, and product structures in a separate PLM system—the end-to-end integration of these two worlds is a topic I would like to explore in greater technical depth, because I see significant value there for customers in the future.

What would you like to accomplish during your first few months at ReQonsult?

In my first few months, my main goal is to further improve the quality of our customer communication and consulting—to work with customers in an even clearer, faster, and more understandable way, so that requirements are captured more precisely from the start and solutions are implemented with even greater precision. In addition, I want to actively contribute to ReQonsult’s continued growth as a company and to further strengthen its market position—whether through compelling project work that attracts new clients or through ideas that enhance our visibility and reputation in the ALM/PLM sector.

About Amir Seyfi

Amir Seyfi is an ALM consultant at ReQonsult and an expert in the digital transformation of complex development processes. With in-depth expertise in Siemens Polarion, requirements engineering, and compliance issues, he combines technical depth with a clear vision for traceable, scalable, and future-proof ALM solutions in demanding development environments.

You can learn more about our ALM consulting services on our product page.

Contact Amir

Would you like to know what Application Lifecycle Management can do for you? I would be happy to advise you personally on ALM topics and show you how to make your processes future-proof.