Jan Hovancik

Open-source enthusiast, connecting the dots in Product teams. CV with contact info

I believe in power of open-source, communication and sharing of knowledge.

I'm listing my full time occupation together with my open-source projects, mentoring experience and more, since they are equally important to me and make me who I am.

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Open Banking Product Manager

Ceska Sporitelna, Prague (Czechia), Sept 2021 – current

Česká spořitelna is the biggest Czech bank and part of the Erste Group.

Getting to more developer-oriented product, I began by focusing on improving the business onboarding process for companies interested in utilizing the bank's API. This meant easier integration of banking services into clients' preferred systems and multiplied number of API users. Later, I turned my attention to enhancing the bank's proactive role in client processes. To this end, my team developed a real-time Notifications API, enabling clients to receive immediate updates on transactions. Similarly, we also developed Cards API, enabling cooperation of bank and a spending management startup.

Open APIs, PSD2

Product Manager

CN Group, Prague (Czechia), July 2020 – Sept 2021

CN Group is a IT Software Development and Consulting services company.
BurdaStyle.de is an online shopping platform and community.

Starting as a constultant, I helped the budget owner to inspect issues and create a bussiness plan to remove them and get the stakeholders' approval. I followed that by becoming a product owner of a new team working on updated platform to shorten feature development and increase business impact.

E-commerce

Gorkana, a Cision company, is the UK's leader in media intelligence.

Joining an international team of Gorkana, I started by getting backlog and prioritization into shape, allowing the team to concentrate on working to upgrade users to a new platform. By taking care of in-company communication and filling the gaps between business and tech, I moved the work forward, removing any impediments and improving agile processes.

CRM

Product Manager and Analyst

Box+Dice, Prague (Czechia), Aug 2018 – Dec 2019

Box+Dice is a real estate property transaction platform and CRM serving almost 1000 offices and over 14 000 users in Australia and New Zealand.

Working in Product for the Australian company, I started with the opportunity to redesign mobile app to solve the UX issues, introduce new features and migrate the majority of users to the latest version. After its succes, I also led a project to align web app and branding across the company based on the mobile app's design. One of the challenges of this role was working with a team scattered around the globe. Therefore, beside product development, I also prioritized and allocated work for the team of developers, UX and testers, while helping them to understand what problems we were solving. I enjoyed communication with third parties and finding a way how to best fulfill their wishes while respecting the needs of our customers and business.

Agile, Product management, Scrum, Business analysis, Mobile, Desktop, APIs

Mentorship for early-career Ruby developers

Ruby Me, online, May – Aug 2019

Helping a developer from Nigeria to get professional development experience by contributing to if me - a community for mental health experiences.

Docker, Ruby on Rails, React, OSS

Product Owner and Web developer

Mixit, Prague (Czechia), May 2016 – May 2018

Mixit, beloved Czech start-up, is known for high-quality muesli and fun experience, where customers can create their own mixes.

Came to use my knowledge from Ruby and found myself introducing Mixit to agile methodology (revamped engineering process, implementing weekly iterations and agile product management) and enjoying facilitating good level of communication between departments and external entities. I was a part of many projects like separation of platform for wholesales customers that ensures great experience for customers while giving sales department all the tools and data they need, to increase revenue. I was putting my time and my mind to designing and then developing solutions for the e-shops and internal tools as much as to the role of project manage.

As part of my job, I've released mina-supervisord, Supervisor wrapper for mina.

Ruby on Rails, Agile, OSS

Rails Girls Summer of Code

Rails Girls, online, Jul - Sept 2016 and 2018

Coaching a team of 2 developers to help them kick-start their developer carreer and contribute to KeystoneJS.

Mentoring a team of 2 developers to work on my open-source Stretchly application to help them expand their skill set.

Electron, Node.js, React, Git, OSS

Stretchly

open-source, 2016 - current

Stretchly is cross-platform app that reminds you to take breaks when working with computer. With over 500 000 downloads, it is still growing and evolving to the needs of the users and my greatest joy is the community that evolved around it.

Electron, Node.js, OSS

Web developer

6 Artisans, Prague (Czechia), Feb 2015 – Apr 2016

6 Artisans was a web agency focused on design, development and management of innovative web products.

Working in small agency I had the opportunity to become more than just developer. I took part in the process in which we were helping clients to identify weak spots and to find the technical or non-technical solution. Chance to see the projects from the first ideation to deploy. The nature of projects varied from the game for HBO's Mamon, Techambition's teaching platform, Domena's registration system to sms based DoDo delivery.

Ruby on Rails, React, Node.js, Agile

BSD

open-source, 2013 - current

My interest in BSD operating systems grew into few open source projects with hundreds of daily readers and subscribers: BSD Weekly (a free, once–weekly e-mail round-up of BSD news and articles), BSDSec (deadsimple BSD Security Advisories and Announcements), DiscoverBSD (community driven link-log) and Awesome BSD (database of BSD-related awesomeness).

Ruby on Rails, Svelte, BSD, OSS

Web developer

Parity Cube, Mumbai (India), Dec 2013 – Nov 2014

Parity Cube is a Performance Marketing company.

AIESEC internship in India delivered all it promised - working with new technology - check, more time to learn on the job - check, multicultural experience - check, testing and strengthening problem solving abilities in extreme situations - check. It was my first experience with Ruby and Ruby on Rails and I'm in love with it since. While there, I developed a mailing-list tool to speed up internal communication, automated and redesigned Housie game for forum members to increase the number of players and remove the need to manage it manually and coded company’s website, blog and several prototypes (ie. Black Friday website).

Ruby on Rail, Angular

IT specialist

Mobis Slovakia, Zilina (Slovakia), Nov 2011 – Jul 2012

Hyundai Mobis is a public South Korean car parts company.

Working on small in-house tools while supporting production department and assembly lines. Chance to compare what I was learning at school with realities of day to day job.

.NET

Other notable experiences

Kings Dominion, Virginia (USA)

3 summers doing Work and Travel program in family amusement park to better my English skills and enjoy multicultural environment.

AIESEC, Ukraine

Volunteering internship via AIESEC in Summer camp for children.

Education

Computer Science

University of Zilina, Zilina (Slovakia), 2006 – 2012

Bachelor: Informatics, Master: Information and communication networks.
Activities and Societies: ESN, AIESEC

Erasmus

Technical University of Sofia, Sofia (Bulgaria), 2009 – 2010

Student exchange program.

Business cooperation program

Yeungjin College, Daegu (South Korea), 2012 – 2013

Partaking in Mechanical engineering classes with Korean students, leading English zone and joining school activities.

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