This year we added a “Learn” component to Codefest; even ninjas need to upgrade their mastery. Ernst and Young highlights talent as one of five strategic imperatives in their latest report “Leading through innovation; The future of banking in emerging markets”.
High quality IT talent is particularly scarce in banking and industry winners will be able to attract and retain it the best. In addition to Codefest motivating IT talent with autonomy, mastery and purpose (watch the video below) we have also developed a three month programme of learning sprints to help our IT professionals learn their cool stuff before they need to build it.
Doron Klotz, CIO RMB Global Markets is leading the initiative which he hopes will hopefully continue next year.
“The Masterclasses take place in the 3 months leading up to codefest, with a different topic being covered in each of the sprint weeks. Sessions will be held at all main FirstRand campuses; Fairlands, Bank City and Merchant Place. Earlier this year we ran a survey to see what topics our developers would like to cover and four topics emerged as most popular: cloud computing, AngularJS, NoSQL, and Docker.”
During each learning sprint there are 3 x 1 hour sessions of White Belt, Green Belt and Black Belt which progress the learner through increasing levels of mastery.
Alternatively just attend the White Belt session for an introduction to the topic or only come to Green or Black if you have already moved on past the elementary level of the topic.
Business people are also attending as they recognise the importance of understanding technology; they cannot own IT-enabled projects without a basic grasp of how it all works.
The sessions are also held at lunch time which offers a welcome break from work with the bonus of learning something new. We have partnered with excellent skills providers such as Dimension Data, Entelect, Microsoft, IBM and Couchbase who have made top trainers available to run these sessions.
Other aspects of Codefest such as Xfest, Ideation and DevOps Day also rely on external partners who bring excellent industry knowledge into the organisation.
Every day thousands of IT professionals across FirstRand are learning and applying the latest technology skills and tools. A culture of continuous learning is what helped FNB become the most innovative bank in the world in 2012.
Masterclasses offer additional opportunities for learning new skills and developing existing knowledge; learn your cool stuff and help drive fintech in FirstRand.
