Šmonland

Background

Welcome to my obligatory first post! I’m a geek that can speak non-geek, who has worked in the IT industry for the last ten years. In the last five years, I have consulted to businesses and government departments of all shapes and sizes, on all things SharePoint.

Most recently, in my last two and a half years at Microsoft, I spent a lot of time coaching and advising my clients’ own internal development teams. This included advising on development on the SharePoint platform, solution architecture, application lifecycle management, testing, and SharePoint infrastructure.

The last year has brought a lot of change in my life. A year ago I worked as a Senior Consultant for Microsoft Consulting Services in Canberra. Since then, I got married in Thredbo, started a family, gave up my job at Microsoft, and moved with my wife and 6 month old to Slovenia!

Before leaving Australia, I had the fortune of meeting Adam Cogan from SSW in Sydney. Earlier this week, Adam offered me a role with SSW as a Regional Scrum Master. I have accepted Adam’s offer, and am looking forward to bringing SSW’s high quality work to Europe.

A new chapter with SSW

I’m excited about working with SSW, and expect that it will be both challenging and rewarding. My focus will be on bringing the quality and expertise of SSW to Europe, and spreading the word on Scrum, ALM and the Microsoft development stack in the community.

One of the things that I like most about SSW are their rules. I’ve always focused on consistency and knowledge sharing with clients. This is often best achieved with a knowledge base where developers and other team members can document their discoveries and methods. Team members can then implement functionality in a consistent manner. This reduces time wasted where many people end up solving the same problem. This also improves maintainability as more people become familiar with the same implementation approach.

SSW’s rules are not only used internally, but are also published on the SSW website. This means that many developers and IT professionals around the globe have easy access to this very valuable resource. I personally know many IT professionals who regularly refer to SSW’s rules. Joining the SSW team, I look forward to actively contributing to their evolution.

One of my other priorities is getting to know and support the local SharePoint and .NET communities. I’m keen to get involved and help out, including speaking on ALM and SharePoint related topics.

Blogging intentions

I’ve thought about blogging for a while, and recently came to the conclusion that now is the perfect time to start! I intend on blogging on a range of topics, with a focus on my experiences working with SSW and the ALM, .NET and SharePoint communities.

As well as software development, I dabble in photography and Slovenian folk music. From time to time I will also share my experiences living in Slovenia, and photos from exploring this beautiful country!

If you are looking for assistance in solving a business problem using technology, or would like to refine your development processes, please do get in touch so that we can identify how SSW can help.