Technology teams are becoming more diverse, yet women remain underrepresented in senior technical and decision-making roles. In this interview, Milana Kotova discusses what leadership looks like when systems are complex and the cost of mistakes is high how credibility is earned under pressure, and how careers grow from delivery to ownership.
Bio
Milana Kotova is an AVP, Senior IT Business Analyst / Project Lead at Barclays (Prague). She leads cross-system initiatives where data integrity, operational continuity, and risk considerations are tightly linked. Earlier in her career, she built and led a Business Analysis department from scratch, managing 15 business analysts and establishing hiring, onboarding, standards, and governance to help the organization scale.
She is the author of From Task to Outcome: How to Build an IT Business Analysis Department, a professional guide based on her experience building analysis capability in complex environments. More about her professional background and work is available on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/milana-kotova.
Systems Integration Leadership: Preventing Costly Failures Through Clear Ownership and Decision RightsQ1: Technology teams today are more diverse than ever, yet women remain underrepresented in senior roles. From your experience, what role do women play in modern technology teams?
Women often become the people who hold different parts of a system together when complexity increases. Modern technology work is rarely just about implementation anymore. More often, it requires keeping business context, users, data, and risk in view at the same time.
In my work leading cross-system delivery, I’ve seen that the biggest failures are ownership gaps: unclear decision rights, undocumented assumptions, and inconsistent data definitions across teams. This is where integrator thinking becomes critical.
I’ve seen many women work comfortably in these overlapping spaces, where technical decisions immediately translate into real-world consequences. In mature teams, this often turns into an integrator role connecting engineering choices with business priorities and decision-making.
This kind of integration can make the difference between a system that barely functions and one that continues to work under pressure. When it’s missing, teams tend to struggle with misalignment, rework, and decisions that don’t fully account for their downstream impact.
It’s usually at this point that diversity starts to matter in practice when different perspectives don’t just exist, but actually influence decisions. In technology, where the cost of mistakes can grow quickly, that influence becomes especially important.
Where Technical Depth Meets Risk OwnershipQ2: In your own work, you operate at the intersection of technical depth and system-level decision-making. How do you see women’s contribution to deeply technical roles, and how is the perception of technical leadership evolving in the field?
It’s important to challenge the idea that women contribute only through coordination or communication. I’ve worked with many women who excel in deeply technical areas from complex system design to data integrity and architecture where precision, rigor, and technical depth are essential.
In banking technology, technical leadership is inseparable from risk leadership. Much of the highest-leverage work isn’t obvious in a sprint report data lineage, controls, and decision traceability but it determines whether a system can be trusted, scaled, and operated safely.
Although technical knowledge, training, and learning resources are more accessible than ever, the perception that technology is “mostly a male field” still persists. This perception doesn’t always reflect reality, but it continues to influence who feels confident, visible, or welcome in technical roles.
That said, the situation is changing slowly, but noticeably. More women are entering technical positions, staying in them, and being recognized for their expertise. This shift matters, not only for who works in technology, but for how the profession itself evolves.
Non-Linear Path to Senior Leadership: From Banking to Technology Through Structured Thinking and AccountabilityQ3: Based on your experience building and leading technology teams, what entry paths have you seen work most effectively for professionals transitioning into technology roles?
One of the most persistent misconceptions is that a career in technology requires a single, predefined entry path. For many women, this belief becomes a silent barrier before the journey even begins. In reality, many effective professionals enter IT through adjacent disciplines such as business analysis, quality assurance, operations, data, product, or domain expertise.
My own transition into technology did not follow a textbook trajectory. I entered the field after working in traditional banking roles, building on a strong mathematical and economic foundation gained through my education at the Faculty of Informatics and Robotics. What proved decisive was the ability to learn quickly, ask structured questions, and take responsibility for outcomes in unfamiliar environments.
For women especially, roles that sit between business and technology can be powerful entry points. They allow professionals to build technical literacy while already contributing visible value. Over time, this foundation often opens the path to leadership, architecture, product, or delivery roles through sustained contribution and reliability under pressure.
From Execution to System Ownership: Leading Multi-System Modernization With Operational ContinuityQ4: You have led complex initiatives and shaped how teams operate at scale. How does leadership in technology change as responsibility grows from execution to system-level ownership?
As responsibility grows, the nature of leadership changes. Early on, success is often about execution delivering a task, a feature, or a specific piece of work correctly. Over time, the focus moves away from individual outputs toward responsibility for how systems and teams behave as a whole.
In my own work, this meant moving from owning specific deliverables to being accountable for how multiple systems interacted, how decisions aged over time, and how teams functioned under pressure. In large-scale migration and modernization programs, leadership is often defined by whether the organization can maintain continuity while changing critical infrastructure. The baseline is not losing data integrity, control, or auditability.
When I built a BA department from scratch, leadership shifted from “doing analysis” to designing an operating model: standards, onboarding, governance, and a clear cadence for stakeholder decisions. The goal was simple delivery should not depend on individual heroics.
Trust at this level builds gradually. It doesn’t come from a title, but from handling complexity repeatedly, taking responsibility when outcomes are uncertain, and standing behind difficult decisions. Over time, this is what leads to responsibility for larger, more complex initiatives.
I’ve also seen that many women grow into these roles by expanding their scope rather than chasing titles—moving from tasks to systems, and from features to platforms. This path may look slower from the outside, but it often results in credibility and leadership that holds up when things become genuinely difficult.
Field Contribution: Authoring a Professional Guide on Scaling Business Analysis CapabilityQ5: You recently authored a book focused on building business analysis capability. What motivated you to write it?
Over the years, I repeatedly observed the same pattern across organizations. Strong analysts delivered excellent work individually, yet teams struggled due to lack of structure, shared standards, and clarity of responsibility. The problem was rarely talent. It was system design.
My book, From Task to Outcome: How to Build an IT Business Analysis Department, grew out of practical experience building and leading business analysis functions in complex environments, including establishing a BA department from scratch and managing a team of 15 analysts hiring, onboarding, training, setting standards, and creating an operating model that scales.
It is intended as a professional guide for scaling analysis capability not by promoting a single methodology, but by documenting principles that help technology organizations grow responsibly: clear roles, structured thinking, governance, and outcome orientation. These are universal needs in technology delivery, especially when systems and stakeholders multiply.
Executive Presence in Global Teams: Making Ownership and Decision Logic VisibleQ6: In leadership and decision-making roles, confidence and self-positioning often affect whose voice is heard. How have culture and upbringing influenced this dynamic in technology teams?
Cultural background or cultural code plays a much bigger role than we usually recognize. I grew up in an environment where the unspoken rule was: work hard, don’t stand out, and eventually you will be noticed. Problems were meant to be handled internally rather than raised early, and visibility could be perceived as inappropriate.
When people raised in that framework enter Western professional environments, the contrast can be sharp. In many Western teams, visibility is not optional—it’s part of normal collaboration. Achievements are expected to be articulated, and risks are raised early so they can be handled collectively.
This dynamic often affects women particularly strongly. Many women are socialized to avoid being “too loud,” to smooth friction, and to be “convenient.” Over time, that can unintentionally limit growth—not because the work is weaker, but because it is less visible when decisions are made.
I eventually realized that positioning yourself is not about self-promotion. It is about operational clarity—making sure others understand what you own, why it matters, what assumptions exist, and where risks live. I now treat visibility as a responsibility: if decision logic and ownership are not visible, systems cannot scale safely.
Developing Talent and Standards: Mentorship and External Evaluation in Technology CommunitiesQ7: You are often sought for guidance and mentorship. What role does professional mentorship play in shaping talent and standards within the technology field?
Mentorship becomes especially important at moments of uncertainty—when it’s hard to tell whether you’re hesitating out of caution or fear. A mentor doesn’t provide answers, but perspective. I’ve seen careers change direction after a single honest conversation at the right moment.
In my experience, informal mentorship is often more impactful than formal programs. Watching how experienced people think through messy situations can shorten the learning curve dramatically especially in environments where systems, risk, and stakeholders are tightly interconnected.
Today, I mentor women in technology through professional communities and remain accessible through professional platforms. I also contribute to external evaluation activities such as participating in judging or review processes because it helps keep mentorship grounded in real standards of delivery, quality, and leadership.
Access to guidance should not be a privilege. Willingness to learn and take responsibility should be the only prerequisites.
High-Impact Decision-Making: Balancing Delivery, Compliance, and Long-Term Operational StabilityQ8: You have worked on complex, high-impact technology initiatives where decisions had long-term consequences. How do you approach responsibility and decision-making in environments where systems, data, and risk are tightly interconnected?
In high-stakes environments, I prioritize responsibility over speed. In banking technology, a rushed decision can create regulatory exposure or operational risk, so I insist on clear ownership, traceable assumptions, and explicit trade-offs.
Practically, that means documenting decision points, keeping data definitions consistent across teams, and checking downstream impacts before a change goes live. A solution has to work technically, but it also has to be safe to operate, auditable, and stable over time.
I start by making sure the full decision context is clear: which systems are involved, where data flows intersect, and what risks are acceptable versus irreversible.
That also requires reconciling competing priorities delivery timelines, technical constraints, compliance requirements, and business objectives while ensuring decisions are made with a shared understanding of consequences. I do not treat decisions as isolated technical choices. I see them as commitments that shape how systems will behave under pressure months or years later.
Because of this, I place particular emphasis on traceability and accountability: who owns the outcome, how assumptions are documented, and how decisions can be revisited if conditions change. Over time, this approach is why I’ve been relied upon to guide high-impact decisions especially when failures would be costly or difficult to reverse.
Guidance for Future Leaders: Building Credibility Through Learning Velocity and OwnershipQ9: What advice would you give to women considering their first step into technology or to those who are already there?
I would start with an honest analysis of where you are today. Ask yourself how you think. Some people manage many moving parts at once; others go deep into unfamiliar topics and make sense of them. Some bring domain knowledge that is immediately reusable. Others think algorithmically, visually, or creatively. All these mindsets have a place in technology.
Very often, the fear that holds us back exists more in our own heads than in reality. That fear is also what keeps many people silent when their perspective could be useful.
If you are already working in IT, don’t hesitate to speak up even when your perspective feels incomplete. Many meaningful discussions begin that way, and waiting for certainty often means missing the moment.
Confidence often shows up only after you’ve done something uncomfortable and survived it. Focus on fundamentals, ask questions early, and take responsibility even when the scope feels larger than you’d prefer.
In technology, trust grows when people see how you think, how you learn, and how you handle what you don’t yet know and when you make ownership and decision logic visible. That is how you move from execution to leadership.
Media Contact
Company Name: consulting-corp
Contact Person: Milana Kotova
Email: Send Email
Country: Czech Republic
Website: https://www.consulting-corp.org/
