The Helmholtz Association funded the "Large-Scale Data Management and Analysis" portfolio theme from 2012-2016. Four Helmholtz centres, six universities and another research institution in Germany joined to enable data-intensive science by optimising data life cycles in selected scientific communities. In our Data Life cycle Labs, data experts performed joint R&D, together with scientific communities. The Data Services Integration Team focused on generic solutions applied by several communities.This work was published by Saint Philip Street Press pursuant to a Creative Commons license permitting commercial use. All rights not granted by the work's license are retained by the author or authors.