- Posted by Bojan Jovičić on June 28, 2009
I had a great pleasure to be a part of the big Scrum event held in Belgrade.
Initiated by one of the key players in design patterns and the father of organizational patterns, as well as a CST (Certified Scrum Trainer), James Coplien, with the help of his Scrum Alliance fellow members and CSTs, Dan Rawsthorne, Alan Cyment together with by our own Branislav (Bran) Selić, the event took place 8-10 june 2009 in Belgrade, Serbia.
James had already been our guest back in 2004 and this time together with Dan, Alan and Bran organized or offered this event with Siniša Vlajic’s support and direction. At the Faculty of Organization Sciences (FON) they organized 3 parallel Certified Scrum Master trainings with a fee that was almost an order of magnitude lower than usual.
I was honoured to be part of this giants team, and to be the co-trainer for the largest group together with James. On the third day two-hour tracks were given by James, Dan, Alan and by Bran. You can take a look at third day topics in agenda.
The event was organized very professionaly and the feedback I received afterwards was excellent. I really enjoyed all the discussions about a wide range of topics that we had in this 5 days (most of our guests arrived a few days before), and it was really inspiring to listen to these men.
For the ending, James, Dan and Alan (with Scrum Alliance’s blessing) gave their trainer’s fees to Sinisa to give it to charity cause of his choice.
The photo at the top, taken after the last lecture on the 3rd day and giving the fees to charity is showing (from left to right): Branislav (Bran) Selić, Dan Rawsthorne, Bojan Jovicic, James (Jim) Coplien,Siniša Vlajić. In row bellow on left you can see Alan Cyment during his CSM training, and on the right you can see James and me discussing with our students.
- Posted by Bojan Jovičić on May 4, 2009
A few weeks ago, our company, Delta Sport, successfully made The Big Jump : from version 3 of MBS Axapta to Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 (version 5).
To our information this was done before Microsoft's patch for Eastern Europe. This was a large project with risks which have been mitigated by our previous experience and knowledge. Our IT Department, agile as we are, together with NPS as our partner, had prepared thoroughly, performed considerable number of modifications, worked closely with our key users, and now we are up & running. This is a huge benefit for our development team with all the new possibilities that Dynamics AX 2009 now offers us, as well as to the whole company with its new business features which are now available. The first benefits are already visible and we expect much bigger things in times to come.
Our success story has been published in number 102 of a popular magazine - Internet Ogledalo (Internet Mirror), titled Case study: Delta Sport and NPS - Story of Success (click the title of article to see it in their excellent online magazine viewer). You can find some shots from it below:
Once again, congratulations to all teams from the IT Department, and the whole Delta Sport.
PS> If anyone is interested in exchanging information about migration/upgrade from version 3 to Dynamics AX 2009, don't hesitate to contact me.
- Posted by Bojan Jovičić on January 8, 2009
The end of the year 2008, brought the last number of InfoReview magazine for year 2008. This issue (number 6) amongst other articles featured the article "Software Engineering Evangelists", about my brother Nenad and myself. Also an article was published about the Discobolos ICT Awards, with one photo of me was published together with other winners, and one of Delta Sport team. Both my brother and I were very happy when we found out that an article will be published about us and our efforts in promoting software engineering. We had the opportunity to work with their photographer, which was a real nice experience, and you can see the results. InfoReview is very high quality magazine, in high quality press, with articles in both Serbian and English.
Below you can see some scans of pages mentioned. First row is from "Software Engineering Evangelists", with left photo in first row showing my brother Nenad and me, and right photo in first row showing Pexim team (upper) and Delta Sport team (lower). Second row is from Diskobolos article.
Update:
- Posted by Bojan Jovičić on December 29, 2008
After successful presentation of our solution in final rounds, I am happy to announce that Delta Sport has won International ICT Award, Diskobolos (Discobolus) in services category.
The DISCOBOLOS award is given by JISA (Unique Information Technology Association) for the best achievements in the usage of information and communication technologies in almost all fields of social and trade life. According to the jury votes, DS Retail - Delta Sport retail software was announced the best one in the Services category.
At the official ceremony in the Continental Hotel, on behalf of the company, I received the award. I am glad that I received good feedback about my presentation at finals and speech at award ceremony, since speaking from static stand was a new experience for me.
I would once again like to emphasize that this solution is result of work of whole company, and it's long time know-how in retail, and to thank to all the people in company, and especially the ones that I mentioned in the post about our solution getting into finals.
Here are some photos from finals presentation (first row) and awards ceremony (second and third row).
- Posted by Bojan Jovičić on December 11, 2008
As one of speakers at Microsoft Sinergija, I have been invited to participate at Sinergija@University. The idea of this manifestation is to bring the content from Microsoft Sinergija closer to university students, which are not usually tipical visitors of Sinergija conference. Since I am deeply involved with academia, I loved the idea, and gladly accepted. Here is the list of all things that are happening: http://msacademic.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!C77D458057E160C9!131.entry
Today (11.12.2008), I will speak at Computer Science Faculty, Belgrade.
Tommorow (12.12.2008) at Faculty of Technical Sciences, Novi Sad.
At both events I will speak about Writing Maintainable and Robust Applications with Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Team Edition for Software Developers (there is an error in agenda).
Update: I had great audience at both session, and they were very involved. Here are some photos from the events (first row is Belgrade, second is Novi Sad):
- Posted by Bojan Jovičić on December 9, 2008
I am very happy, because our (DELTA SPORT) software solution has entered final round for Diskobolos (Discobolus) International ICT Award in services category. I will be presenting our software solution tommorow (10.12.2008) at the Serbian Commerce Chamber, infront of DELTA SPORT.
You can read more about the Diskobolos prize at: http://www.jisa.rs/engleski/diskobolos/diskobolose.htm
This solution is results of work of whole company, and it's long time know-how in retail. The people that contributed most are my closest associates. Althought the team is very small, we are trying to maintain very high quality standards. We are focused on Scrum, and also use agile principles like continious integration, pair programming, etc. Our team is very flexibile, and we are using newest technologies. We try to find proper balance between generalization and specialization, and apply solutions like design patterns.
Here are the people that made the core of our Development team for this project (in order that they started working): Nemanja Vrndić, Marijana Šneperger, Milan Novaković, Ivana Gojković, Boris Tarana, Marko Mihajlović, Vladimir Dimitrić
- Posted by Bojan Jovičić on December 2, 2008
Yesteday (01.12.2008), I did my first bigger humanitarian effort.
My company (DELTA SPORT) together with Delta Humanitarian Fond has visited five shelters for the uncared and disabled children in Belgrade, Sombor, Subotica and Pancevo. In conversations with the directors of these shelters, my collegues came to a conclusion that they need any kind of help. Namely, children from 0 to 18 live in these institutions, and they need wardrobe, footwear and toys. Besides these basic necessities, they would also like to have trappings, room decorations and everything else that other children, who live in homes with their parents, want for New Year’s and Christmas days.
Together with my brother Nenad I managed to collect more than 30 pieces of apparel (pants, shirts, t-shirts, sweaters) [Thanks Nenad]. I also decided to part with most of my Magic: The Gathering trading cards collection. It has more than thousand cards, and I hope that some of this kids will have as much fun with them as I had in my "Magic" time. I also added my DCI Judge (certified judge for Magic: The Gathering) T-Shirt, and some other items like: hand watch, calculator, camera, key-chains, pendants, pen, etc.
If you have any similiar items that you don't need any longer, and wish to help, please contact my company's marketing department (marketing@deltasport.com) and join the cause.
You can read an article that I wrote about Magic: The Gathering back in 2003. at: http://www.sk.co.yu/2003/04/siak01.html
- Posted by Bojan Jovičić on November 18, 2008
On 25.11.2008 I will be speaking at .NET User Group meeting. During Microsoft Sinergija 2008 I have been asked to join it by one of its founders, and this Lecture will be an great opportunity to share experience and point most actual problems.
.NET User Group gathers people with strong professional background in Microsoft Technologies, but also people who focus on this field in their pastime. The attendance is free, and everyone is welcome to come and share their knowledge with others. The meeting is taking place at the Microsoft Office in Belgrade, and it will be in "chalk & talk" manner. My intention is to speak about Team Foundation Server, Scrum and Agile Software Development.
I am very glad that the interest in Scrum is slowly growing in my country, and that my effort as one of rare CSMs (Certified Scrum Master) is starting to show results. You can see my Certified Scrum Master profile at: http://www.scrumalliance.org/profiles/35118-bojan-jovicic
There is also a post about this meeting at Microsoft Forge (Web portal of Serbia .NET User Group): http://msforge.net/groups/dotnetugbgd/blog/archive/2008/11/18/novembarski-sastanak.aspx
Update: Since this was "chalk and talk" session, I used only flipchart and pen, and spoke about Agile Development with Scrum for 2.5 hours. The audience was very involved and I received great feedback after session. Here are some photos from the event:
- Posted by Bojan Jovičić on November 2, 2008
On 12.11.2008. I will be speaking at Career Fair, where my company DELTA SPORT, is golden sponsor.
My track is about aplication of new technologies in my company. I will try to cover as much as possible about how we use Microsoft .NET (3.5), Team Foundation System, Dynamics AX 2009 / 3.0, and all other related technologies. I will probably add in some Agile stuff, probably Scrum. Agenda of tracks can be found at http://www.sajamkarijera.rs/?field=visitors&page=6. If you are looking for a job, and want to have a good career in our company, please come. I will be available for all talks, and questions. As for my track, be sure to come early, because I have information that there is already a great interest in it. 
- Posted by Bojan Jovičić on October 17, 2008
It was that time of year again - Microsoft Sinergija (Synergy). This time entitled "Where IT all comes together", MS Sinergija 2008 was tech event of the year. It lasted from 14.10. - 17.10. and had over 100 lectures held.
I had great pleasure to be one of the speakers with most lectures, and I held 5 lectures. Two of them were in IT Management track, and other 3 were technological. In one of them, I spoke together with my brother Nenad, who also had 5 tracks like me (we were the only ones speaking at 5 lectures).
This lectures are results of long time effort, but also of hard preparations before the conference. I received great feedback, both from people attending the conference, but also from other speakers who attended some of my lectures.
The lectures I held were (in order that they were held):
- Wednesday
- Domain Specific Development With VS 2008 (together with my brother Nenad)
- Agile Development with Team System
- Thursday
- Writing Maintainable and Robust Applications with Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Team Edition for Software Developers
- Visual Studio Team System 2008 Extensibility for Agile Project Management with SCRUM
- Friday
- Improving Code Performance with Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Team Edition for Software Developers
At each lecture I gave presents: 3 books (Mostly Design Patterns from GoF and Refactoring from M. Fowler) and 2 Nike T-Shirts (one for men and one for women, courtesy of my company, DELTA SPORT). So in total 15 books and 10 T-Shirts. I am sorry I could not reward all the people who where involved in lectures, and will try to fix this next year.
You can see some feedback (with focus on my Agile lecture) at http://horizontblog.com/?p=171