Jan Zubíček
Lead Kate Architect
ČSOB
Honza has been in the IT world for 17 years, during which time he has worked in both garage start-ups and large corporations. Honza has worked in many roles – from a project manager over analyst, consultant to architect. He has experience with projects managed according to agile, waterfall and completely punk principles.
For the last 7 years he has been working at ČSOB, where he first participated in the digital transformation of the bank’s paper processes. However, he gradually moved into the field of artificial intelligence and now focuses on implementing AI in the banking environment. Together with Tomáš Votruba, he launched Kate, a unique virtual assistant, within 10 months, which he continues to develop in the System Architect role.
Tomáš and Honza Zubíček are one of the founding members of the Kate Project/Agile Train. Here, in just 10 months, they managed to introduce cloud services into the regulated environment of the bank and developed the first version of the Kate virtual assistant. Tomáš is still working on its all-round development.
Tomáš Votruba
Release Train Engineer / Program manager
ČSOB
Tomas started as a freelance analyst, developer and tester in one – in the garage working on small projects. By now, he has been managing projects and programs in the banking sector for 8 years. During his time at the bank, he has worked his way through a number of roles – from a trainee over project manager, line manager to program manager and Release Train Engineer. Some of the most interesting projects he has worked on include the implementation of the new CEB corporate banking system, the introduction of robotics into the CSOB group and, most importantly, the implementation of Kate, a virtual assistant. In his practice, he has managed both traditional waterfall and agile projects, and has been largely involved in the introduction of both methodologies into the corporate organization.
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Kate the Digital Assistant – Can you deliver an agile project in a non-agile environment?
Kate is the latest innovation at ČSOB. She is the client’s virtual assistant who will help them with their regular banking and non-banking agenda, give advice, arrange or keep an eye on deadlines. It is possible to talk to her like a regular assistant – she understands the client and responds to their questions and commands without having to search for anything complicated. In the digital world, the client thus benefits from a personal approach. Kate is there around the clock, available wherever and whenever a mobile phone is at hand.
Kate is an innovative solution delivered agilely in a non-agile, highly conservative and regulated environment. Does such an activity even have a chance of life? Does it make sense to invest in such things? What impact does such an activity have on the rest of the organization? In this talk, we will discuss these topics and tell how we tackled this topic at ČSOB and how we have been impacted by it.
We would like to treat the lecture as a discussion. So we will talk about what you will be interested in. The main topics are the digital assistant and how it works. A cargo cult or agility in corporations. Innovation as an accelerator of organizational transformation.
