It is about eight and a half thousand kilometres from the Upper Palatinate in Germany to Korea. It takes a good twelve hours to fly such a distance by plane. Claudia makes this connection a little easier and faster - all it takes is a few kicks and punches.
Claudia is 28 and a software engineer at EDAG Engineering in Regensburg. And she is also a Tae Kwon Do fighter. She started at the age of nine in her home town of Nittenau, a 9,000-strong community in the Upper Palatinate some 30 kilometres north of Regensburg. Today, she is a 1st Dan black belt. There are ten such master grades. So even after 20 years in the sport, the fighter never gets bored, nor will she in the long run.
Asian martial arts bring to mind tough, muscle-bound figures like the legendary Bruce Lee or Jackie Chan, who took on whole armies of bad guys in Hollywood and knocked and kicked them out of the way, bypassing all the laws of gravity. And Claudia? A graceful young woman who exudes a gentle, friendly charm ... For her, Tae Kwon Do is much more than just fighting. She also sees it as a metaphor for a successful software development process.
The 2,000 year old martial art, she explains, has its roots in Korea and is a unique way of combining jumping and kicking (TAE) and fist and arm techniques (KWON) with a physical and mental maturation process (DO). "A Tae Kwon Doin - that's what people who practise Tae Kwon Do are called - is familiar with physical laws and can apply the required force in a very specific way to achieve the desired potent effect."
For example, smashing wooden boards two- to three-centimetre thick with the side of your hand or foot. Claudia remembers breaking a board for the first time, when she was eleven. "At first, I was really quite nervous - and then the thing broke on my first try. I was so proud of myself!" Now that she coaches children herself, she is, of course, aware that the boards used in the first tests are not all that thick, so as not to frustrate the youngsters. "Technique, strength and willpower enable you to do things that you would never have thought possible," as she knows from experience. "It's a great sport for the whole body and the mind, it strengthens your self-assurance and confidence in your own abilities."
With this philosophical approach to energy, technology and performance development, she was really already well on the way to studying information and communication technology in Erlangen, "especially as maths was my favourite subject at school". Getting to the bottom of things, developing strategies for her own success and implementing them with great discipline and maximum efficiency led her to her Master's degree. The subject of her thesis focussed on new features for machine communication in the LTE-Advanced mobile communication standard.
As a car fan, Claudia is not fascinated by horsepower or certain brands, but by the technology on the road. She was therefore delighted to start working for a development service provider in the automotive industry after university. Working as a software tester for embedded systems in the energy management department at BFFT, and then later EDAG, in Regensburg, she immediately felt at home. "Because, to me, software testing is meaningful work. In our team, we are working on the future of mobility and are helping to make driving safer and more environmentally friendly."
The EDAG team in Regensburg specialises in development for volume production. Software testing is therefore always about getting new developments up and running in the vehicle. "Our software will shortly be on the road, so it has to meet various safety requirements and comply with standards."
As a software engineer, Claudia and her 25 or so colleagues in the team are involved in the entire process, as represented in the V-model: from the inquiry, through the customer's requirements and development of the software architecture, to its integration in the vehicle. "We combine our work in line with the V-model with agile software development, and usually complete our work packages in three-week sprints," says Claudia.
Agile software engineering evidently strikes a chord with the Tae-Kwon-Doin. "Just following some kind of rigid pattern would not be enough for me. I like to achieve success through strategy, as I do in my sport". For instance in functional training, where more that anything else you use your own body weight. Occasionally also outdoors, in the park – "The main thing is that it's fun!" she says. Rigid running programmes or gym workouts are definitely not for her, she adds with an apologetic shrug of her shoulders.
This will be one of the reasons why Claudia is not particularly fond of competitive sports. Tae Kwon Do fights, in which people are sometimes knocked out, are really not her thing. "Obviously, competition is part of it, but what I find much more interesting is the way that self-defence is aimed at de-escalation and the conscious use of the techniques and harmonious movement sequences that we practice in training." This, combined with the discipline you have learnt, makes you more self-confident and calm in your everyday life and job, even in critical situations.
As a developer, Claudia is always open to new ideas. A year ago, she discovered salsa dancing. "This is enjoyment at its best." For the software engineer and martial arts expert, this means: everything in DO - the physical and mental maturing process - is progressing. Maybe one day she'll make the eight and a half thousand kilometre trip to Korea after all, to the roots of Tae Kwon Do and her own sense of calm.
