Goran Bokun
Verified Expert in Project Management
Project Manager
Goran has worked at both large corporations and small startups, as a developer, consultant, and project and product manager. He has coordinated both small and complex projects in both resource-starved and glutted environments. He specializes in ERP, billing, CRM, integration, prepaid energy, localization, and compliance projects.
Project Highlights
Expertise
Work Experience
Product Manager
Advisera
- Led the development of Conformio, a compliance and cybersecurity platform for small and medium-sized businesses.
- Defined product strategy.
- Transformed the development process.
- Created product roadmaps based on strategic direction and regular contact with clients.
Project Manager
Inchoo
- Managed eCommerce projects on the Magento platform.
- Trained junior PMs.
- Provided pre-sales and project consulting.
- Defined company-wide PM processes and practices as part of Agile transformation.
- Participated in marketing and sales activities.
Product Manager
Siemens Convergence Creators
- Managed products in billing bystems, indoor positioning (localization services), smart energy (prepaid systems), and mobile money (e.g., toll payments).
- Created budgets, roadmaps, and plans, leading dislocated teams and being involved in the design of solution architecture.
- Took over the product in a difficult situation and prepared and executed a successful pilot project.
- Successfully planned and executed the transition of the product line with several parallel running projects from offshore to nearshore location while reducing the R&D costs by more than 25%.
Director of Product and Technology
Farmeron
- Handled all operational aspects of the company, including business plans, product development, technology strategy, resource management, team development, customer contacts, and partner development.
- Grew the company from 5 to over 30 employees in two years and drove the development of processes and organizational structure change that made Farmeron fit, fast, and flexible.
- Established a development process that reduced the bug backlog by 90%, doubled the planning window, and increased the feature delivery date reliability to almost 100%.
- Established an employee onboarding process that reduced the time to productivity for new employees from months to two weeks.
- Steered development of the Farmeron product to successfully combine both the simplicity and ease of use with complex enterprise-grade capabilities: two-fold increase of paying customers and increased satisfaction of customers, both small family farms and large enterprises.
Consultant, Project Manager
Siemens IT Solutions and Services
- Consulted on presales and business activities for CRM, integration, ERP, BRM, and SOA.
- Worked with TIBCO and Oracle technologies, performing business and system analysis, EAI and SOA architecture, consulting, and requirements engineering.
- Led a team of 30 people located in four cities and two countries; took care of planning, resource allocation, competency management, and all other issues related to the team.
- Trained requirements engineering team members and junior project managers.
- Took over the ailing and disorganized SOA team (three out of four key persons left to a competitor, clients were unhappy and the team morale was low). Within a year, the client list was increased by 200%, the team was enlarged by 50%, know-how and expertise improved, and more than ten projects were successfully finished.
Developer, Application Lead
Siemens Program and System Engineering
- Developed Java code and led projects around the world.
- Led application operations, responsible for product, coaching of project leaders, and managing the team (5-10 people).
- Saw over 50% growth in served subscribers over a period of 18 months for the application under my leadership.
- Handled more than $10 billion worth of vouchers stored in and managed by VoMSXpress in installations worldwide.
Research and Teaching Assistant
University of Osijek
- Taught courses in computer science, probability, and statistics.
- Working on projects in applied mathematics.
- Published two papers in numerical mathematics and statistics.
Project History
Centralized VoMS
Led the implementation of a high-performance and secure centralized voucher management system at a telecom in southeast Asia.
VoMS 8/8/8
Led the implementation of a performance-leading solution at one of Africa's biggest telecoms.
Integration Platform Upgrade
Led a project to consolidate and upgrade separate integration platforms and related projects for integrated systems.
The project team I managed consisted of five different teams from my company, two teams of subcontractors, a subcontractor contracted by the client, and the client's own project team.
The project was finished within the budget with a surprisingly small delay for an integration project.
Farmeron - Dairy Farm Management
Drove the development of processes and organizational structure change, managing the product from early stage to maturity.
As the company grew from 5 to over 30 employees in two years, I drove the development of processes and organizational structure change that made Farmeron fit, fast, and flexible:
- Established the development process that reduced the bug backlog by 90%, doubled the planning window, and increased the feature delivery date reliability to almost 100%.
- Established an employee onboarding process that reduced the time to productivity for new employees from months to two weeks.
During that time, the product was enhanced with many large and small features, changes, and improvements: Protocols, various software and hardware integrations, advanced reporting, usability improvements, etc.
CPS: Indoor Positioning Platform
Led product strategy definitions, prepared and executed a pilot project, and defined a framework for IPR monetization.
I took over the product in the early technology demo stage. After defining strategy options for two different markets (consumer and industry/security) and executing a pilot project, I helped define the next steps for the technology: monetizing IPR.
Siemens BCM
Successful transition of a product line with several parallel projects running from offshore to near-shore.
In parallel, there were three running projects in various stages of development.
Executing the transition meant careful planning and balancing of the old team's project work, training of the new team, and the new team's involvement in the running projects.
The transition was completed successfully, with R&D costs reduced by more than 25%.
Sloanex.com eCommerce Site
Led the development and continuous improvements of Sloanex.com eCommerce site.
I took over the project after the launch of the new site. The goal was to stabilize the site and create a roadmap and a plan for future development. During my work on the project, the site behavior was stabilized and the performance and revenue grew. Besides leading the quality improvement initiative, I initiated and executed UI and UX improvements, new marketing capabilities, shipping reorganization, and product category restructuring.
Education
Master's Degree in Mathematics and Physics
University of Osijek, Department of Mathematics - Osijek, Croatia
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