Jovana Dadic Babovic

The aim of the initiative was to achieve a high level of flexibility regarding products delivery and enable a lean process flow for process-oriented areas.

I initially designed and supported several Agile pilot teams: Scrum for product-oriented teams and Kanban systems for process-oriented teams. After pilot teams showed great results, I worked with executive stakeholders to scale Agile practices horizontally by onboarding new teams and vertically by:
• Designing custom agile mechanisms for project portfolio management.
• Designing agile enablers in different support functions of the bank (HR, procurement, maintenance).

I defined the project and project portfolio management methodology (including Waterfall, Agile, and related budget planning practices) with supporting tools and provided training to all current and new project managers. I also set up the mechanisms for project portfolio monitoring that focused on engagement of the executive stakeholders and achieving synergies at the organization level.

The aim of the project was to change the legacy core banking system to keep up with the industry and market trends and to form the basis for bank digitalization.

The project involved more than 200 members and multiple international vendors, including Oracle as the vendor for the selected target core banking platform Oracle FlexCube. The project had four distinct phases over the course of five years (feasibility, GAP analysis, implementation, and stabilization phase), and I took part in all of these with different roles.

This project carried many challenges in different areas:
• Developing tens of satellites in parallel to be integrated with the core banking and their integration with the core.
• Setting up data migration and verification of such data.
• Migrating the entire portfolio of the bank’s clients and products.

I also had the leading role in designing stabilization processes for tracking issues in production, prioritization of fixes, and executive decision-making for major questions.

The project was successfully rolled out and was followed by a stabilization phase.

The project’s objective was to change the bank’s card processing provider and implement new and modern solutions for authorization of debit cards, managing payment cards in the bank branch, digital channels, and back office.

I initially led the project discovery and executed several RFP processes for the selection of vendors. During discovery, I worked with subject matter experts on defining business requirements and with the IT team to define the system architecture for a very complex ecosystem, involving the internal applications and integration layers and the integration with the card processing provider.

Throughout the project execution, we encountered many challenges, particularly in keeping business continuity while making necessary changes to the services offered by the bank and making sure the card processor supported them.

As the project manager, I successfully led the rollout of the card acquiring phase. When I moved to a new role in the bank, I performed handover to another PM for the remaining part of issuing implementation and rollout (also successfully executed).

Initially, I set up the methodology for creating a continuous employee sizing model and agreed with the executives on the approach to implementing it.

The model was based on real-life branch transaction measurements, which my team collected over a series of bank branch visits. The model was further enriched with forecasted volumes of transactions and was, therefore, able to project an optimal number of employees in different roles.

We validated the model in a series of dry runs, after which the model was applied to production.

The startup aimed to build a social network to allow Generation Z users to share their opinions, as millennials do on Twitter. The users could create their own customizable 2D avatars, animated with skeletal animation, enabling high fidelity reactions on content.

I acted as the project manager on the mobile app implementation, coordinating the development and design team and the entire user feedback process during the beta testing. I also developed the financial projections and negotiated with partners and potential investors.

The project eventually received 2 pre-seed investment proposals, which were turned down due to incompatible strategies.

I performed an analysis of alternative loyalty programs in the telco industry, exploring historical effectiveness, data, and fit for selected target groups. Created a business case analysis for these programs that included financial projections and cost-benefit conclusions.