Software People Stories

Conversation with a RPA and MI Lead Anuradha Venkatesh, at Ford with Gayatri Kalyanaraman from PM Power Consulting on Starting her journey as a civil engineer and built bridges After taking a career break during childbirth, Anuradha started in Geographic Information System as she stepped into software development Anu shares her exciting journey across Java, BI Dev and RPA technologies while solving real problems with innovation and focus Anuradha covers some of the interesting stories on keeping her day enjoyable and having fun with everything you do How she keeps learning at the core even if there was lot of trepidation in the recent leap with RPA and soon in ecommerce Anu shares her wisdom on how she’s chosen to travel for work based on impact that creates for the family and the risk it takes to make the change Anu shares her perspective on Data security and how one has to have a balance while using apps and understand personalization benefits Anu talks about being the first engineer in the extended family and talking about choice of his father to have got her married after 10th standard Shares RPA story - Consider bots as another system in the team without any knowledge of system boundaries. It removes silos in the org and brings short term quick benefits Creating a new frontier using image search and AI ML coming together would revolutionize day to day work As a takeaway she asks everyone not to tag themselves in a specific bucket - be open and continue to explore Anuradha Venkatesh, RPA AI & ML Lead – Ford Motor Company Anuradha has spent over 25 years in the software industry; working on application delivery, business strategy, captive management and vendor management specialties. She started her career as a civil engineer working in Kolkata and Mumbai. She stepped into software development after she took a break due to childbirth. She was a MIS manager for a GIS firm. She joined as a java developer in Hexaware in 2000. She later took up several interesting programs in Java and became a program manager. She joined HP in 2008 as a Sr. program manager and made the switch to ERP and BI systems. In 2016, she joined Ford motor company. She continues in Ford right now. Anuradha is the RPA and ML lead for the marketing team within Ford. Throughout her career, she has been recognized for bringing excellent relationship management and program management capabilities to the table. She’s also known to look at different ways of making delivery models effective. Anuradha passed out of NIT, Warangal. For more details, visit https://www.linkedin.com/in/anuradha-venkatesh-a301764/

Conversation with a Chief Digital Officer Sundar Sukavanam, at firstsource with Gayatri Kalyanaraman from PM Power Consulting on Role of CDO has always been there with work done by CIO, CTO and the CEO Digital has made people think of business models differently - Digital office has quite a few roles like Intelligent Automation (RPA), machine first capability, partnerships, evangelization Talks about 18,000 puzzle pieces coming together as an art! Sundar talks about experience as an account manager working in the US for P&L leader Wearing the architect hat (not being an empty suit), powering the enterprise for Cognizant and learnt how to make the most of it Business Operations manager for the insurance team and understood the need for automation and shares stories Sundara speaks about traveling across the globe and themes that triggered moves Enterprise IT is like utility. No one knows when only till it stops working! Think of the users in enterprise IT rather than the sponsors or the conduits Alvin tofflers’ quote on twentieth century literate are those who learn, unlearn and relearn soon Today it has to be fail fast, learn faster Key takeaway for everyone should be to how do you balance what the technology can offer and what Human ingenuity can make happen Sundara Sukavanam is Chief Digital Officer (CDO) at Firstsource Solutions. He drives the ‘Digital First, Digital Now’ agenda for the organisation with the focus to help our customers in their digital transformation journey. Sundara leads Firstsource’s Digital Services including Intelligent Automation, Analytics, and scaling Business Process as a Service (BPaaS) offerings. He also manages global partnerships with industry-leading platforms in RPA, ML/AI and SaaS and integrates that IP into their solutions. As part of the CIO’s office, Sundara built large scale enterprise platforms across Operations, Sales and Marketing, Planning and Forecasting, and Enterprise Performance Management, in partnership with the business. Sundara is a business and technology leader with over 24 years of experience in the IT & Operations industry, working with the world’s leading corporations across the Manufacturing, Utilities, Retail, Financial Services, Healthcare, and Media & Information sectors – delivering solutions in Application Development, Core Modernization, Cloud Migration, Quality Assurance, Analytics and Intelligent Process Automation. Sundara has a Master’s degree from National Institute of Technology, India and Certifications from the Stanford Business School. He is based in the US with his wife and teenage son. Sundara is an avid reader and a sports buff. https://www.linkedin.com/in/sundarasukavanam/

Passion and Commitment, something that you will hear throughout this conversation with Pravin Gandhi, a pioneer in the Indian IT industry. With over 50 years in the industry, Pravin is known nowadays for his angel investing and mentorship of entrepreneurs. What you may not know is that his association with the industry started as a software professional! In his journey over the years, you will hear about spotting opportunities, wanting to solve other people’s problems and dreaming big. In this conversation with Sivaguru from PM Power Consulting, Pravin Gandhi talks about many things, including bringing Digital Equipment Corporation to India and closes with the need to embrace Digital! Other things he speaks about include: -Learning computers and programming in the 60s -Being among the first 100 employees at TCS and them moving to Mafatlal Computer Services -Switching out of the software development industry into an OR role -Moving again, soon into a sales and marketing role to find his calling -Leaving Coca Cola, just before they had to close down in India -Converting an opportunity to join Tektronix, an instrumentation company just as they started introducing computerized instruments , to become a promoter of a new company, Hinditron -About creating a pull by approached the end users -How every entrepreneur should be nimble and read to pivot, when it comes to survival of the business -How they were able to establish partnerships to make and sell PCs and solutions -The experience of working with and selling to government officials -Why he considers punctuality and respect for time to be very important -What is a reasonable measure of success, for an entrepreneur -Being a company builder and not a financier -What the right age would be to start up and what it takes to make it work -The role of a mentor, particularly for startups to grow and scale\ -2 questions he would like to ask entrepreneurs -His experience and lessons learnt from starting a software company to build an ERP solution -We, as a country, needing to dream big and large scale impact -Opportunities in the IT sector for both entry level aspirants and mid-career professionals Pravin Gandhi has over 50 years of entrepreneurial operational and investing experience in the IT industry in India. He was a founding partner of the first early stage fund India – INFINITY. Subsequently a founding partner in Seedfund I & II. With over 18 years of investing experience, he is extensively well networked in investment and entrepreneurial scene and is an active early stage angel investor in tech & impact space. Pravin holds a BS in Industrial Engineering from Cornell University, and serves on the board of several private corporations in India. Pravin is a former President of the Manufacturers Association of Information Technology (an IT manufacturers association in India), He is a Past President of TiE Mumbai as well as an Ex-Global Trustee of The Indus Entrepreneurs. He was an Executive Committee of Nasscom in the past. He is on the board of SINE, IIT Mumbai Incubator. He serves on Investment Committee of Aavishkaar Bharat Fund.

A conversation with Kishan Malur, Product Manager andChitra Gurjar from PM Power Consulting on - -His experience working with digital pay TV,Industrial IoT and Cloud Infrastructure -Passion for Products, moving from the what to answering the why? -A story about buying a computer and building a POS software -Wearing different hats as a product manager -Mastering empathy in 3 different ways -Staying connected to your network, during the pandemic -Coaching, paying it forward and other passions -How to ask the right questions, 3 steps towards practising it -3 messages for young people aspiring to be product managers Kishan Malur is a Product Management Professional at VMware on Cloud Infrastructure. In his career, he has had the opportunity to build products in various areas like Cloud Video Delivery Platform, Internet of Things, Manufacturing, and now Cloud Infrastructure. In this exciting journey, he has been instrumental in setting up high performing Multi-Site, Multi-Cultural Global Agile Teams, and leading complex global Tech Integrations for premium Customer Accounts. Kishan is involved in contributing to the Product Community in India. He actively mentors professionals in Product Management. As a career coach, he helps professionals in Career Transformation and Acceleration. He has more than 300 hours of coaching experience and Counting! Kishan holds an Executive MBA from the Institute of Product Leadership, M.S. Software Systems from BITS Pilani, and a Bachelor’s degree from BMS College of Engineering, Bangalore. A fresh brew of Filter Coffee and Great Product conversations is something that Kishan usually doesn't say no to. He can be reached via - LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/kishanmalur/ Twitter - @KishanMalur

In conversation with Preethy Padman, Product Marketing Executive with Freshworks with Gayatri Kalyanaraman from PM Power Consulting Preethy talks about her career starting in India working for networking software firms She discovered her passion for technology and later in product development and later in product marketing. She has also tried being Chief of staff. She talks about building a career leading to be a General manager and how all these career choices have made sense Preethy shares a story on the risks that she has taken for a role and how that had helped her to understand new ways of working It has also brought a real sense of being out of the comfort zone and continuous learner Preethy talks about tips on building your first few weeks in a new firm She elaborates on being a mindful practitioner and teacher as well as a volunteer and how the social engagements have helped her take decisions in her professional life Preethy talks about stories around investing and how she chooses them Preethy is passionate about creating a self awareness in oneself and taking time to do that She also advises on building strong mentors relationships that work around you and create a habit that grows with you Preethy Padmanabhan is the Head of Platform Product Marketing at Freshworks. Prior to joining Freshworks, Preethy was the VP of Marketing at Panzura. She is also an angel investment partner with SV2, Portfolia and a Board Member for Nextstem.ai. She started her career as a Software engineer at Hughes, India. She moved to the US to take up technical and business responsibilities in large companies such as Cisco and Dell. Later she moved to hi-tech startups such as Nutanix, Panzura and grew her career across product management, marketing and sales. Preethy has 20+ years high tech and leadership experience across marketing, sales & engineering. She is a strategic problem solver and connector who brings teams together to create exponential value for companies. Preethy has strong leadership, management and people skills. She has effective interpersonal and communication skills with customers, partners. She has delivered multiple customer EBC, demos, sales & partner training, trade show presentations, webcasts etc. Preethy has a high tech background in virtualization, Cloud, SaaS, Networking, Security, Collaboration, Video, Mobile, Enterprise & Service-Provider marketing. She is a self-starter, strong communicator with customers, partners, internal teams and a business leader with a can-do attitude She served in various non-profit boards focused on economic empowerment, women, children and education. She’s a mindfulness teacher and lives with her husband, teenage son and their dog in Palo Alto, California. Preethy can be reached at https://www.linkedin.com/in/preepadu/

In this episode, Manoj Deorukhkar, CIO of Sterling and Wilson Pvt Ltd, shares his experiences and stories with Sivaguru from PM Power Consulting about: That he got into IT by accident -His love for nature -Starting his career in the steel industry -Playing various roles in the organization, from shop floor to executive assistantship -His transition to a CIO of a group company after implementing a corporate wide SAP rollout -How entering IT at a later stage in his career and working with much younger colleagues created mental pressure -How guidance from his CEO helped him identify his core strengths in the software development process -That there is much more in the world than just IT -That person to person conversations are very powerful and effective & how to bring out the best in individuals to make great teams - Making time for intra-networking - His advice for persons considering an entry into IT and for mid career IT professionals - Three important things to keep in mind Manoj Deorukhkar is the Chief Information Officer of Sterling and Wilson Pvt Ltd. (SWPL), part of the Shapoorji Pallonji group company. Manoj brings a treasure of software development expertise and a massive track record of 20 years in the industry. He is an engineering leader with technology strengths comprising SAP portfolio, Information Security, Infrastructure, Cloud Strategy, Digital Transformation, Office applications, Budgeting, and Procurement. He has driven various roles and tasks in business transformation initiatives across several domains. He trusts IT leaders must adopt a strategic management role and drive transformation throughout the enterprise. During his career, he has been associated with Real Estate, Engineering & Construction, EPC, Utilities, Oil & Gas, Metals, and Manufacturing sectors. Manoj has earned his B. Tech degree from IIT Mumbai and holds an MBA degree from Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies, Mumbai. He has wide experience in leading large projects and has directed the planning and implementation of enterprise IT systems in countries like the UK, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Singapore, and India. [email protected] [email protected] https://www.linkedin.com/in/manoj-deorukhkar-1180316/

Listen to a conversation between Deepak Visveswaraiah, VP of Platform Engineering at Pega Systems and Chitra Gurjar from PM Power Consulting a s Deepak talks about -His early days growing up as a Bangalore native and how he started out in software development -Experiences as a C & Unix Programmer -His work across several domains like Nuclear Energy, Semiconductors, gaming and publishing -Co-founding a healthcare startup and learning key customer empathy lessons -Essential fundamentals of product engineering, writing your best 2 lines of code, user empathy & designing products for the enterprise -Investing time in learning & being adaptable -Transition to leadership roles learning people engagement and flourishing as leader -Lessons from driving innovation- future perspective design & doing a few things insanely well -Customer centricity; all about the empathy, and what customers really want from you -Hard lessons; from building a product the way “we engineers thought” -Building relationships with a mindset of establishing a relationship and not to sell or make a transaction -Balancing the sense of urgency with instant gratification and moving on the curve of constant change, a formula 1 inspiration -Defining moments in his career; being the first SVP in a global role outside of the US -Message for leaders and those aspiring to take up leadership roles Deepak Visweswaraiah is a leader in the technology industry playing global roles based out of Bangalore, India. He specializes in leading large engineering organizations, driving innovation and bringing products into the global markets. He has extensive experience in establishing Global In-house Centers (GICs) for multinational companies. Passionate about building next generation technology, transformative approach, business leadership and mentoring startups. Deepak brings 30+ years of experience in the enterprise software development industry. Deepak is currently Vice President of Platform Engineering at Pega Systems leading the core platform organization out of India.

In this conversation Pankaj Rai, Leader of Strategy, Digital & Innovation teams at WellsFargo shares his stories with Sivaguru from PM Power Consulting related to -Growing up in a small, but cosmopolitan city -How he was inspired by his Dad -Getting into IIT, IIM and a startup -The advice he got from his boss, when he moved from a consulting role to a lending advisor role -When he decided to focus more on earning than learning -The 4Es he learnt from Jack Welch -About taking leaps of faith, particularly when it comes to role or career transitions -On not having a fear of failure -Comfortably navigating in what might appear as chaos -Organizational strategy and culture -The significance of collaboration and why win-win is so natural -Importance of inclusion and diversity in deploying organizational strategies -Not having different ‘official’ and ‘personal’ versions! No version control challenges -Creating a personal priority list rather than a todo list -Being updated on what is happening from the network -His advice for IT career aspirants as well as mid-career IT professionals -3C framework that he recommends for everyone -Problem discovery more than problem solving, as a life skill -Moving from a deterministic, order taking world to an agile world Pankaj leads Strategy, Digital & Innovation teams at Wells Fargo where he is responsible for creating a culture of 3Es (effectiveness, efficiency and experience) in the operations across India and Philippines. Prior to this he was with Dell where he led the Global Analytics team of over 400 members in Bangalore, supporting all the segments in Dell, i.e. marketing, online, supply chain and product quality, contact centers, services and DFS. Pankaj started his professional career as a management consultant at Feedback Ventures and then went on to work in the financial services industry in India. He worked with ICICI and GE Capital in a variety of roles covering sales, risk management, six sigma and operations. He moved to Standard Chartered Bank leading the Program Management Office in their Singapore regional office where he helped grow their shared service centers in India and Malaysia. Pankaj has been actively engaged in D&I and sustainability initiatives and has been engaged with various industry forums including NASSCOM. Pankaj studied Electrical Engineering at IIT Delhi and went on to complete his MBA at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. He is also a six sigma “Quality Leader” from GE. While at ICICI, Pankaj was among the 12 bankers selected for the British Council Chevening Fellowship (Young Bankers Program) administered at the London School of Economics in 1999. Pankaj’s wife Ritu is an artist and they have two daughters Pragya and Paridhi. He is also an avid marathon runner, cyclist and dabbles in badminton. Pankaj’s linked in Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pankaj-rai-he-him-b3923a/

Chitra Gurjar from PM Power Consulting in conversation with Anu Kannan, Partner Technology Manager at Google as Anu shared her views on -Being a quintessential engineer -Starting her career in embedded systems working on set top boxes -Love for travel, meeting new people and developing relationships that have helped her personally and professionally -Handling different use cases while building software for tangible hardware -Walking the floors with her father to understand products and how they were used -Visiting customers and incorporating a “DILO” approach to building products -How she built a network of trust as a fellow of engineering Creating a culture of innovation -A peak into what automotive software could look like - Her message for aspiring engineers Anu Kannan is a partner technology manager at Google, an embedded systems engineer and mother to two young boys. She has had extensive experience in designing and developing software for tangible hardware in the course of her 17 year career where she built entertainment set top boxes, android based data capture solutions, and now working with automotive software on android. She recently completed the LEAD business program Stanford University on Innovation. Anu is a telecommunications engineer from RV College of Engineering Bangalore and has a masters degree in Computer Science from New York University Polytechnic School of Engineering. She can be reached at http://www.linkedin.com/in/anukannan/

Today is a special day for us @ Software People stories where we are commemorating 100 stories completion and we decided to record with All three co-hosts Sivaguru, Chitra and Gayatri and talk about why podcasts and what makes them stay. Please expect some overlap conversations as this was a live conversation. Highlights of the conversation Sivaguru spoke about the origins of the podcast and how he wanted to capture the evolution of technology and the developments and it transitioned to real life stories and anecdotes that were never told Chitra spoke about her penchant for the platform and wanting to be an RJ and how it has been a very satisfying experience. She shares her chance conversation with Neeraja to come onboard. Chitra also shares how the platform has helped to get ideas and implement them in a sustainable way. Gayatri spoke about her interest in digital tools and ability to move away from her comfort zone and how nice it is to talk to people and connect with long lost relations. It is also wonderful to see emotions flow. She talks about listening to podcasts has pushed her fitness and hosting podcasts has made her a better listener. More information about this special day is here http://pm-powerconsulting.com/podcast-100-episodes/

Today is a special day for us @ Software People stories where we are commemorating 100 stories completion and we decided to do an experiment with live guests and a panel discussion with 4 of our past guests in Software People Stories comprising of Gopal from Global Automation, Neeraja from Jobsforher, Jacintha from Enquerro and Sukumar from TinyMagiq. All three co-hosts Sivaguru, Chitra and Gayatri also have participated in this special episode that we recorded on International Podcast day. Please expect some overlap conversations as this was a live panel convo which was largely unscripted with three questions forming the base part of the conversation. Highlights of the conversation Sivaguru spoke about the origins of the podcast and how he wanted to capture the evolution of technology and the developments and it transitioned to real life stories and anecdotes that were never told Gopal being the very first guest of our podcast spoke about being ready for experimentation and how he had always been moved by audio right from the initial radio days and how the focus on the topic stay right from origins of Quinoa. Gopal shares his ability to understand topics in audio medium far better than in any other. Chitra spoke about her penchant for the platform and wanting to be an RJ and how it has been a very satisfying experience. She shares her chance conversation with Neeraja to come onboard. Chitra also shares how the platform has helped to get ideas and implement them in a sustainable way. Neeraja shares her experience with Podcast and how she used this podcast to share her life journey in all her speaking engagements. She felt that the hosts made her at ease and how some of the clarity in impromptu has been unnerving at first and found it great with clarity. Neeraja also shares her experience with using audio as a medium for storytelling and how she’s talking to more people as the in person shyness is slowly come down Gayatri spoke about her interest in digital tools and ability to move away from her comfort zone and how nice it is to talk to people and connect with long lost relations. It is also wonderful to see emotions flow. She talks about listening to podcasts has pushed her fitness and hosting podcasts has made her a better listener. Sukumar shares his experience on coming on board and how covid has made him a convert of this platform. He also shares how he’s used recording training materials and made the online training for conversations and questions. This has fundamentally transformed or flipped the art of teaching. Sukumar shares how hearing or recording audio is the most natural way to record anything as there is no real changing of information. Its coming as-is from one to other. Jacintha shares her experience with giving an audio message as part of her Onmobile job and taking it further to provide a daily audio message on positivity. She also shared her experience in COVID using gram vaani to teach disadvantaged students, cooking using network of volunteers for migrant population and continuing her consulting work from her home. Jacintha added that how podcasts have become like honey flowing in your ears and this would be here to stay. We also heard stories from the audience More wishes from all our past speakers and audience please visit below http://pm-powerconsulting.com/podcast-100-episodes/

In conversation with Jayant Swamy, Program Manager and Author of many books with Gayatri Kalyanaraman from PM Power Consulting He started his career in finance with a CA, went on to do his MBA from IIM Bangalore, and learnt his penchant for teaching While doing his MBA Jayant swamy taught MBA students art of presentation and persuasion skills • Jayant Swamy has coached MBA aspirants in public speaking and taught finance at local B-schools • Jayant moved to the US in 1998 and works as a management consultant and corporate trainer • Jayant is known as the program manager who is also the glue that hold the team together. • Jayant ponders over two project implementation experiences and says how continuous learning has made him the person to be sought out for problem solving • His deep expertise in Finance and management made him the perfect conduit to interact, translate and influence program outcomes • Jayant shares his interest in writing stories and how he started unsuccessfully during his college days. He didn’t lose sight of it as time progressed. He has authored many books and has 2 under the works. More about Jayant’s books are here www.jayantswamy.com • Jayant shares his experiments in storytelling in his corporate career be it creating reports or saying a story via the presentations • Jayant narrates his teaching experience across decades starting with aspiring entrance exam students to a professional training for the University of Washington • Jayant talks about staying true to program management while pursuing many interests in storytelling, IMPROV and teaching at the same time. • Jayant talks about compassion for fellow human beings and bringing empathy in every transaction as a key message You can reach Jayant at the below address www.jayantswamy.com

In this conversation Harsha Mutt is sharing his career story with Sivaguru from PM Power Consulting where Harsha talks about *Lessons from role transitions *A Bangalorean, helping his father run a printing press during school days *Studying Engineering and cost accounting, in parallel *A career choice to join Infosys, that he is very happy about *Learning basics of computer science and languages from the founders of the company, as a trainee *His first major transition in life - moving from Bangalore to the US, from a day-scholar, cycling from home to the first flight overseas *How this was like hostel days, learning about new countries, cultures and people *Handling the first major transition in its stride, by not having any fear or inhibitions *When work is play, time passes quickly *How an introspection for annual planning helped him evaluate and consider options outside his first employer *About the many ‘firsts’ in his career with Infosys *On a daring approach to get re-immersed in the Indian ways of life, on returning from the US after a long stint there *The three main differences in his work scope, when he took up a job in HCL and what he learnt from that *What he learnt in becoming an investor and entrepreneur *How learning management concepts on campus and actually adopting these in practice are different and difficult His tips for entrepreneurs on what it means to ‘live within one's means’ *His story of the transition to being a coach from doing things by oneself *The value a coach can bring in with an outside in or a ringside view *His current interests to pay it back or forward *We conclude with his advice to both entry level and mid-career IT professionals Harsha brings more than three decades of General Management experience serving as Head of strategic business units, and from multiple global assignments. He is a mechanical engineer and a management accountant. He started his career at Infosys, building commercial software solutions to leading US companies in retail, distribution, manufacturing, telecom and financial services, and went to become a business leader leading multiple accounts and teams. He completed an Executive Education Program PMD at Harvard Business School. He went on to play a leadership role at HCL Technologies heading Technology and Operations for Capital Market Services. He is an accredited Executive Coach from Coaching Foundation India and actively coaches a select few CXOs each year. He started his entrepreneurial journey with Lukup Media Pvt Ltd, playing role of CFO and Board Member, which has since been wound up. He has enabled projects, teams, and businesses to scale multi-fold and grow. https://www.linkedin.com/in/harshamutt

Tune into the conversation between Chitra from PM Power Consulting and Nitya Krishnamoorthy, a seasoned IT veteran and leader. Nitya shares her journey and experiences on -Career choice, supporting parents & wanting to be far away from Biology -Start of career and 10 years as a technologist -Personal and professional transformation and taking a break in the middle of her career -Transition from an Individual Contributor to manager to IC again and managing teams across countries -Recognizing her own passion, strength and belief in “anything is doable” -Building capable, extensible and scalable teams -A complete shift in her view of people thanks to the mode of remote working -Messages for freshers on patience and working on pretty much everything -A few of Nitya's special interests Nitya can be reached at - linkedin.com/in/nitya-krishnamoorthy-770a6486 In her own words:- "I am a fun loving, passionate and self-driven individual with over 18 years of experience transforming people, processes, businesses through my project management and business operations skills. It's been an exciting journey working with brands, companies and businesses helping them transform their Digital processes and thus also evolving, learning and transforming myself."

In conversation with Tech Executive and Principal consultant from PM Power Consulting, Zafar Ahmed shares his experiences with Gayatri From PM Power Consulting on his journey. Zafar draws out his 4 decades of experience as 4 phases in a cricket match with one exciting inning built over another. Started as a passionate programmer in Tata steel working in their transformation In the second innings, became part of IT services revolution shifting base to US and owning a start up He moved to India in early 2000s and headed technology in Hughes software where he learnt the ropes of management, leadership and went through a transformation within Zafar is currently in his 4th innings where he wants to share his rich learnings as a leadership coach and a consultant in PM Power Consulting Zafar shares his many defining moments in his career starting with his focus in becoming part of Tata steel and completely falling in love with software He shares a story on how he stumbled upon agile transformation and became a student and internalised the mindset over practices Next big defining moment is his understanding of leadership style and his transformation along with an agile way of working. He talks about being a taskmaster and how he transformed later as a people’s leader away from his task orientation He talks about setting long term goals in his career as one of his misgivings and not taking enough risks in his career Zafar signs off with a positive note on covid situation and how technology has changed each and every human being on earth. Zafar can be reached at https://www.linkedin.com/in/zafar-ahmad-4704b76/ and https://pm-powerconsulting.com/experts/zafar-ahmed/ Gayatri can be contacted at https://www.linkedin.com/in/gaya3k/

In this conversation, with Sivaguru from PM Power Consulting, Ramesh Emani shares Starting his career with Tata Burroughs and after 3 years moved to Wipro Infotech, at that time - and stayed on for 25 years Being bitten by the entrepreneurial bug when he was almost 50, with a desire to have a startup before he retired How he became a manager in his second project itself, with less than 2 years of experience and had to manage most team members who were senior to him His principle of spending only 50% of his time in ‘management’ work and take up some individual contribution goals as well His tips for sharing the workload with the team(s) How he chose areas where he can add greater value and started focusing on them The importance of getting an executive level understanding of technology That one should always be a student, in the tech business His experience of being a business leader - getting and servicing a large account and being the first sales person in the US for his company What he learnt and why he enjoys the role of a Business Unit head About being comfortable with ambiguity and making the ambitions, possible How and why failing is not failure and being ready to take calculated risks About how he picked up healthcare as the domain for his startup Why you need more doers in a startup The role of meetings and how to carry the team with you in an organizational transition What retirement means to him and his hobbies His secret to avoid burnout Ramesh Emani can be reached via https://www.linkedin.com/in/ramesh-emani-4053a4/

PM Power Consulting is launching its second book soon, 5 Tantras of Enterprise Agility. Tune into this conversation to listen to the how the book evolved through the story from the author Paramu Kurumathur, the product owner J Veeraraaghavan and Sivaguru.

Episode Sub-Title: Living the Product Leaders’ Dream In conversation with Product Management Leader, Krupa Natarajan where her software experiences with Gayatri From PM Power Consulting on her journey Started technology journey with fervor to learn and curiosity about Technology Transformed her thinking during the dot com bust to understand value delivered by her and for the customer Established a career as a product leader after spending many years in the engineering side Engineering driven products have made our life smoother, as a product leader I see what else is possible? Product needs to fit in the users’ ecosystem and life completely.. Else the product wouldn’t stay in the market Understanding of 3 levels of users in the enterprise and creating a value prop early and continuously has been valuable In the consumption driven software economy, you will be outdated quickly if you don’t adapt Living the product manager’s dream as one doesn’t have to worry about maintaining number of versions or having a perfect feature set due to the shipping constraints. Its liberating to know that one can make small changes and see how user reacts and hence take several small bets along the way and has become less risk averse Staying in the wave of technology enablers and providing the needed features for enterprise customers has been quite enriching Consumers have more gadgets today than a CEO of the organisation. Envisions that would change and AI will be given in everything that we do Always ensuring that you wow people’s expectations beyond their dreams and out of the box and not just meet or exceed them doesn’t cut work. This has been her guiding principle Krupa can be reached at https://www.linkedin.com/in/krupanatarajan/ Gayatri can be contacted at https://www.linkedin.com/in/gaya3k/

In conversation with Coaching Guru, Sivakumar from PM Power Consulting , he shares experiences with Gayatri From PM Power Consulting on his journey Discovered passion in a cascading manner by way of experimenting Current full stack developers and enjoyed starting in software as a full stack engineer Software projects are social organizations that needs to be nurtured Understanding of fulcrum and levers that you have to balance people and capability development Stories of two contrasting software deliveries One with a large development project that started off with great fanfare ends up in legal tussle Second that starts with many SLAs ends up with customer accolades Bridge between the two lies alignment of vision, trust and teamwork Changes are evident now in business investing energy and effort in technology teams Stakeholder and People management - two sides of the same coin to manage culture, communication Can you become a person of influence - providing support, person of values and continuous beacon to facilitate conversations Highly momentous time personally to let go of control and let the team do their work Being a coach, Shiv points out various dimensions he’s found to add value based on the situation - as a mentor, agile custodian Imparting learning through story telling and case study nuggets Experiment early and understand your passions like Shiv has found passion for writing caselets/stories/monographs Find an unforgiving mentor to hold you to high standards or an uncomfortable mirror early in your career Shiv can be reached at https://pm-powerconsulting.com/experts/sivakumar/ and https://www.linkedin.com/in/sivakumar-subramanyan-1a78101/ Gayatri can be contacted at https://www.linkedin.com/in/gaya3k/

In conversation with Coach Extraordinaire and Technology Executive, Arun Swamy where his software experiences with Gayatri From PM Power Consulting on his journey Multi touch point start in software - as a research assistant, contract job after doing MS and finally landing US Army related work Returned to India to seek stability and part of the growth wave of product companies HP taught the value of Org values and profit being a side effect Proud to be part of two generations of agile way of working - initially in 1990s for small project development and later as EVO in a more formal way HP also saw challenges in org upheavals and learnt to stay in the web portal specialization Proud of being part of a product sunset which was executed in a least risky way Moved to be a leadership coach based on his experience of being a coach Coaching Stories based on his strengths on communication, empathy and staying impartial Understand what hat you are wearing a mentor, coach or a friend Fall in love with your work but do not romanticise it by staying realistic Staying truer to process and design and continue to adapt with technology Arun can be contacted at https://www.linkedin.com/in/arun-swamy-843410/ Gayatri can be contacted at https://www.linkedin.com/in/gaya3k/

In conversation with career Project Manager, Sankar V S, Regional Digital Services & Products leader in Arup he shares his journey starting from a part time trainer to IoT and analytics experiences with Gayatri From PM Power Consulting on His start of journey with software as a trainer in C++ Considers himself as a self starter and staying a continuous learner Difference in communication and unsaid patterns in HK China and that made him move to Project management/Business Analysis Fearless in taking high risk immigration project and learnt lawsuits, coding, quick thinking and sensors Leap towards IoT even before it got the name. Narrates a story of pattern recognition of cows vs human using lasers As a creative director in Arup, he’s enabling construction projects use data in the center exploiting IoT and analytics His view of technology has changed from using to increase commercial purposes (behavior analytics) to improve environment (plastics and landslide deduction) in the construction industry He shares his experience of being a fulcrum of IoT innovations across the globe by creating an alliance and connecting various players Collaboration is one skill he highly recommends to have as the team needs to sound like a symphony and not a single instrument solo Sankar can be contacted at https://www.linkedin.com/in/sankarvs/ Gayatri can be contacted at https://www.linkedin.com/in/gaya3k/

In conversation with an Infrastructure Automation Expert, Ram Iyer, where he shares experiences with Chitra From PM Power Consulting on How he became an automation engineer Early career in Infrastructure guided, mentored and learned with the help of great managers and lead engineers What it takes to understand an enterprise solution, from building reports to writing automation code How the operations view is missing when applications and products are built. Thoughts on design for scale and scale-out v/s scale Infrastructure as code, collaboration and the philosophy of “no silos” A DayIntheLifeOf an infrastructure automation engineer Cross-Cultural learning Lessons learned as a service help desk engineer very early on in his career Why he believes in volunteering A millennials’ message for building a career in tech and software Ram is an automation expert by profession who has spent about a decade in IT, an author of Powershell Core for Linux Administrators Cookbook (https://www.amazon.com/PowerShell-6-0-Linux-Administration-Cookbook/dp/1789137233#:~:text=Book%20Description&text=PowerShell%20Core%20enables%20automation%20on,to%20effectively%20administer%20your%20environment.) , a blogger, a typography enthusiast, a volunteer and an amateur podcaster. He likes to pick up issues that seem complex and break them down to digestible pieces—something he does at work, and tries to do on his blog. He can be reached via RamIyer (https://www.linkedin.com/in/theramiyer/)

In this conversation with Mritunjay Singh (Munjay), SVP, Infosys and Gayatri from PM Power Consulting explore Munjay’s journey Started the journey with Tata Steel in their computing arena Moved to software looking at the uptake in technology growth Changed his perspective on scaling technology sourcing after a large deal Belief in people can walk on water and having a cross functional skills has been a constant endeavor Speaking about modular sourcing, he shared how clients have contacted his team, as an advisory long after the ink had dried on the deal Scaling an organization (Pune DC for Infosys) came in the back of community building and creating infrastructure outside the campus to ensure that entire ecosystem thrives and doesn’t suffer. That experience taught me that purpose beyond daily work moves mountains Creating a future knowledge org with physical location agnostic, self managed and gig economy based delivery Turning point came in my initial days when I delivered a payment software in 2 weeks what was expected in 3 months with last minute change in specs Created a safety net of mentors who can be consulted and used their learnings As a CEO of Axicades, Munjay speaks about creating a playbook for the company in the form of culture. What are the parameters for decision making, customer relationships and acceptable behaviors. Culture of the leader is like a large shadow and first being aware of oneself and making small changes to the thinking that aligns to the vision All decisions are contextual and needs to be taken in the microcosm of that point in time and learn from the outcomes using feedback loops Munjay can be contacted at https://www.linkedin.com/in/mritunjay-singh-68a7b23/

In this conversation with Rajaram Venkataraman, Convenor Technology panel FICCI and CEO of VelTech TBI, Founder of Navya Insights, President SPIN Chennai and Gayatri from PM Power Consulting explore Rajaram’s journey Rajaram talks about his passion in computers started with his peers in the family He reminisces the Initial days of working in TCS with Lakshmi Narayanan(Vice Chairman of Cognizant) and Chandrashekar (Exec Director of TCS) in the same office in TCS Being a liaison between Government and industry bodies. Creating networking opportunities for thousands of people and hundreds of companies through FICCI Digital transformation has been accelerated during covid-19 with very specific examples and how technology has laid the foundation for working remotely Thriving start-up community with a number of grants from the large corporates innovative Innovation has spurred in different ways - an example with RoboChef firm providing delicious and safe food for corona warriors Witness to the transformation from order takers to agenda setters Potential to become Intellectual capital of the world with new services, ML, RPA Using COVID as an opportunity generator in different industries, Indian software gurus can make a shift Looking at possibilities in the changing world with a positive attitude and a learning mindset over doomsday attitude You may contact Rajaram Venkaraman at https://www.linkedin.com/in/rajaramv/

In this conversation, Nimisha Mukherjee, Engineering Manager at RedHat, shares her stories and experiences with Chitra Gurjar from PM Power Consulting about - How she fell in love with computers in class 3 First lessons in user interaction design Tips on how to get users to change a habit or become familiar with a new design Supporting the new age developer & development environments The evolving role of a developer and developers as first customers Blue sky opportunities for designing experiences Lessons for aspiring techies and designers Nimisha Mukherjee is an Engineering Manager with Red Hat. Her team works on delivering a simplified developer experience for building cloud native application on Red Hat OpenShift. She has 18+ years of experience in delivering cutting edge web applications. She always enjoyed building user interfaces that provides a differential user experience. She was one of the design track chairs for GHCI (https://ghcindia.anitab.org/), 2016-2018. She was curated the Devtools track for DevConf.IN 2019. She loves to explore new places and new cuisines. https://www.linkedin.com/in/nimishamukherjee/

In this conversation, Sivaguru from PM Power Consulting talks to Smita BS, Delivery Head at Torry Harris Integration Solutions. Smita shares her perspectives on: The various roles she has played over the 17 years of her career across multiple industry verticals Starting as a developer and creating frameworks for testing How her mentors trusted her to take on new responsibilities and provided guidance The advice she got from one of her mentors about not drawing self imposed boundaries How getting a broader view would be very useful in future career roles How she got an opportunity to experience a production issue related to code developed by her team earlier How she consciously pays it forward to mentor her team members Her transition to a leadership role, when, possibly overnight, some peers became members in her team How she learnt the importance and art of delegation when one takes up increasing responsibilities How she was able to not be stressed when taking on more responsibility and delegating How she enabled learning from each other in her team Finding the personal balance with work and two kids About her spouse also being an IT professional in terms of conversations at home Her advice for new entrants to the IT profession Smita has been in the IT Industry for close to 17 years now with experience in various domains like telecom, healthcare, energy management, retail, banking. She started her journey as a developer and has had a fair share of varied roles throughout her career, as she moved onto testing, operational support, configuration management then onto technical team leadership and management roles as release management, migration projects and project & program management. Currently she is a delivery head in Torry Harris Integration Solutions for Integration and Digital projects for certain customer accounts. On the personal front, she is an alumni of BMS College of Engineering, the batch of 2003. She is passionate about art, and a doting mother of two boys and loves baking. https://www.linkedin.com/in/smita-bs-70a79717

In this conversation Nalini Krishnan, Head of Competency Management at TCS for the Salesforce business shares her views on her career with Chitra from PM Power consulting on - - How much of our making is our own thinking and doing - How much of the past we carry as baggage or bias - Picking up all kinds of challenges and getting out of one's comfort zone -Various ways of looking at problems - her 3-dimensional approach to addressing technical debt - experience managing customers & clients relationships. - Having different personas at work and at home - What the Grace Hopper Platform has meant to her personal growth - a message for women wishing to take up a career in IT Nalini currently heads Competency Management for the Salesforce.com practice in TCS, within Enterprise Application Systems group. Strategic focus on growth initiatives, Center growth & sourcing strategy, talent transformation initiatives etc. are some of her many focus areas Nalini has held many senior positons in IT Delivery, Transformational program managemet and Client Engagement, across various verticals in TCS. Prior to TCS she been a part of companies like Thomson Reuters, Symphony Services & Zensar Technologies, and has held positions of responsibilities across development, QA, release management and business strategy. A technologist, and a customer & business focused leader with more than 20 years of experience in the Industry, she is self driven, optimistic & result oriented professional with experience in building and sustaining a motivated & skilled team, and driving performance in a complex, global environment. Nalini is passionate about technology and business transformation, that helps organizations translate strategy into action with solid planning and execution. She is active in external forums such as GHC India (https://ghcindia.anitab.org/) (Part of advisory committee in 2016, committee chair, member and speaker in previous years, chair for TechTalk track in 2018) and IEEE –WIE Internalional Leadership conference (http://wie.ieee.org/ieeewieilsgoa2017/) (speaker 2015 & 2017).

In this conversation with Santhana Krishnan (SK), coach from PM Power Consulting and Gayatri from PM Power Consulting explore SK’s journey Fascinated by computers through the eyes of the Tamil writer Sujatha Started as a tech entrepreneur setting up ERP for a spinning mill Worked closely with different persona of users and ensuring usability for tech agnostic members. Learnt true sense of agility by continuous integration, deployment and feedback While building India market for ThoughtWorks creating a trusted relationships as an important construct and that starts with genuine understanding of the risks and sharing with the customer to gain trust on the capabilities Key metrics for agility - concept to cash, ability to recover from failure Agility in the Education field is a passion - look at adaptable syllabus and emerging models to use during crisis such as lockdown, floods Using concept maps, knowledge graphs to trace the learning curves of students and create a personalized learning experience Learning and Keeping beginners mindset to see convergence of AI/ML with concept maps and knowledge graphs SK can be reached at https://www.linkedin.com/in/santhana-krishnan-ganapthy-01815b4/

In this conversation with Meera Chari from IEEE and Gayatri from PM Power Consulting explore Meera’s journey Started as a computer engineer with curiosity and need to learn Meera spoke about entering the electronic commerce world as a product engineer Learnt from a mistake made during prod deployment made her acutely aware of software development need to be supported by disciplined infra management Layers of software along with security, latency, firewalls’ importance in problem solving Understanding big picture moved Meera from software engineer to an application architect and enterprise architect Disaster aware and fail tolerant application architecture based on a disaster that struck in the US East coach Sharing her experience in creating company’s IT roadmap and decisions and parameters behind them Cloud migration experience on critical business process that are deep rooted in enterprise applications Entire Economy moving towards API dynamics powered by SaaS solutions Cloud maturity is constantly changing by way of continual progression. This is leading to creation of new roles that are enabling cloud maturity and migration Key takeaways for listeners - Listen to your customer, keep an eye on big picture and being curious about technology user or an innovator

In this conversation, colleagues Srinivasan Sundararajan (Srini) and Chitra from PM Power Consulting are talking about Srini’s experiences and stories around - - A product of circumstances - Education at IIT Madras in Mechanical engineer, introduction to computing and problem solving by working across departments at IIT - Developing backup software in a manufacturing company and early lessons - Examining data above and beyond - Risk taking, evaluating and owning your decisions - Transition from corporate (helping with solving a problem) to being an agile coach (helping people discover the solution) - Being a coach, facilitator & enabler & managing deliverables - Owning one's decisions

In this conversation with Thiagarajan (Thiagu) Ramakrishnan and Gayatri from PM Power Consulting explore Thiagu’s experiences around ML journey Worked as software engineer in IBM, ML Engineer in TeraData and Principal in Dell now Started the ML fascination with coursera course by Andrew Ng Research papers and meet-ups are a way of working in emerging technology on the multiplicative curve Benefited from the power of meetups to get clarity in way forward and continues to contribute in conferences, meetups and the likes Now working on creating ML platform and creating an abstraction layer for the users He learns ability to see big picture from seniors and takes one-step-at-a-time as a clear difference in mindset with millennials EQ 2.0 as an inspiration and Deep Work to improve high performance ML implementation in check clearance and how a Phone image and an API has solved the manual verification Looking forward toward appropriate product fitment and timing of the need while launching products More Information about Thiagu can be found here https://www.linkedin.com/in/thiagarajan-ramakrishnan/

In this conversation PM Power colleagues Ramki (Ramakrishnan Sethuraman) and Chitra explore Ramki’s experiences around How he got into software and IT Early programming days in C on mainframes and becoming a DB2 expert Change in mindset towards the what and why v/s how first Building performance into a system for a solid foundation Experience in the financial sector; at the forefront of adopting technology Essence of client interactions, empathy, value and understanding Playing several roles in his career and the importance of each of those roles Entrepreneurial lessons Being serious, passionate and having gratitude for his career

In this conversation with Karthi (Karthikeyan) Swaminathan (https://www.linkedin.com/in/karthiswaminathan/) , Vice President and GM of Tact.ai and Gayatri from PM Power Consulting explore Karthi’s experiences around Collaborations with doctors started in college Started working with products to customize and working closely with users Part of the open source movement and solve fellow developers problems Lost opportunities around cloud investments in the tool space Medical professionals creating an empathy for the end user by the developers in a big area of focus Staying focused with road warriors problem in Tact.ai with edge computing, AI and data Last decade has seen a tremendous shift in the designer/XD / Product talent Talks about rural students empowerment as a movement Embrace your journey with an open mindset Create space for the team to flourish their skills and mindset He can be reached via https://www.linkedin.com/in/karthiswaminathan/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/karthiswaminathan/)

This episode is an accompaniment and a broad spectrum exploration of experiences and narratives as collated by Sivaguru from PM Power consulting, during conversations with people across IT/Software and Non-IT businesses on how they responded to the needs of business with covid-19 changing the environment. The complete report is available here (https://bit.ly/7lockdownlessons) This episode, a conversation between Sivaguru & Chitra, delves into and across the findings shared in the report. The exploration includes - - Backstories in preparations for changes caused by the pandemic - What really happened even when a few large companies had a BCP in place - What was the thinking behind the unravelling of responses of companies in a series of phases comprising sensing, focus and response - How did leaders ensure that rallying around a purpose was achieved, remotely and how were employees engaged and how their work rose to another level inspired by a greater purpose - Creative approaches to sustaining or managing business - The sense that a collective approach to discovering easier, safer things to share & increased empathy alongside the survival instinct - Though we all appear to be alone, we are certainly not alone; a contrast and take on how we associate ourselves with a mission and purpose and how the system in turn supports people and organizations. We would love to hear from you and your experiences. Please reach out to us at [email protected] Please also see this blog http://pm-powerconsulting.com/blog/7-lockdown-lessons-on-agility/ for an overview of the report

Rajiv Puranik, VP platform engineering and cloud operations at Vocera Communications & Sivaguru from PM Power Consulting are in conversation as Rajiv shares His professional experience with Twillio, Apigee, Yahoo before Vocera covering corporate, engineering roles as well as startups What developers should know, when building products, the ‘-ities’, beyond the algorithms A personal devops horror story How developers can have empathy of what happens after code is written Devops is the first line of defence, and engineers are the second line About differences in the safetynet, depending on company size or areas of operation His tips for techies taking on leadership / managerial roles to be effective His mantra for scaling as a leader What the forced work from home implies for individuals and leaders in their approaches to work How one should move to a nurturing style, even if starting with a directive approach, to develop others Why quality is a business metric What is acceptable quality Making decisions when there is ambiguity The impact of AI in decision making and leadership responsibilities What he enjoys most about his career When it comes to career decisions, the one question everyone should ask themselves Rajiv can be reached at https://www.linkedin.com/in/rajivpuranik/

Sivaguru from PM Power Consulting is speaking with Badri Narayanan, Vice President of HCL Technologies Ltd Geography and culture aspects of IT delivery plays a critical role in not just UX/UD Communication/ project mgmt and various inter dependencies Roll mapping of local talent in critical roles and having close business relationship are key things to put in play for long term success Bridging cultural differences in Japan was around having additional business analysts with bi lingual capability to understand specs and pair program with the developers to ensure gaps are reduced German teams needed accuracy in functionality as much as the accompanying documentation Change in expectations in IT landscape with integrated business & IT Several changes have happened from owning small functions in y2k to smaller SDLC parts to owning entire app stack we have grown quite a bit Digital tsunami needs dual crossing with owning IT and making IT more valuable IT Decision are continuous and not be outsourced to only a nuanced role Conscious relearning is required to re-equip ourselves in the new digital world in terms of technology and soft skills Business outcomes would need to be innovation led and internal teams/systems need to be delivery/engineering led - Dual engine Learnings from failure and crystalize them to the next level seems to be the way forward to accelerate the art and marry the engineering discipline

In this episode, Sivaguru from PM Power Consulting is in conversation with Jayantha <> who shares his life as an engineer and working in Europe amongst other things such as - - Telecom engineering to data engineering - Getting help and guidance in a new place and new company - From his lens of how software has evolved over generations - designing products for different customer segments - How data engineering folks work with other people like product managers and business folks - The importance of understanding users of the product even for data engineers - Understanding GDPR while working on personal data - What different views of data down a funnel can reveal and recognizing anomalies - Transitions from telecom engineering to a services company and then a product company - How agile practices need to chosen to suit ones needs - shares thoughts on people considering an IT career and moving to Europe for work Telecommunications Engineer turned Software Professional turned Data Engineer working at Omio in Berlin as a Senior Data Engineer and Lead of the Business Intelligence platform team. Formerly worked at Thoughtworks in Bangalore. (Hobbies are guitar, sports and art) LinkedIn | jayantak | linkedin.com/in/jayantak/ Instagram | mellowcolour | https://www.instagram.com/mellowcolour/ Twitter | mellowcolour | https://twitter.com/mellowcolour

In this conversation Shravan, a Doctoral student, shares his thoughts and experiences with Sivaguru from PM Power Consulting, related to How a comic strip triggered curiosity to explore software development How writing software is like solving puzzles His interest in security aspects while programming His initial personal projects Where one can get problems or ideas to take up research in the realm of security Vulnerabilities related to the software supply chain How verified programming as a technique is still nascent The evolving concept of software sandboxing Power demands of complex computing, such as bitcoin mining and IoT devices Some research into saving power on android phones The possibilities of 5G The eroom’s law and increasingly complex algorithms How quantum computing can help in compute intensive areas such as drug discovery Applications of AI for social or societal problems Technology fighting technology for good [such as anti-virus] On offensive security His thoughts on taking up IT as a career or field of study / research Shravan Narayan is 4th year PhD student in the fields of computer security and programming languages at the University of California San Diego. He spends his time working on how to safely include untrusted buggy code in large applications through the use of memory isolation, colloquially called sandboxing. Before this, he worked at Microsoft for three years in Redmond, Washington as a software engineer in the windows update team. His non computer science hobbies include playing the tabla and speed solving Rubik's cubes.

In this episode, part of our series on Women in IT for the Month of March 2020, Chitra Gurjar from PM Power Consulting is in conversation with Shobha CS, Founder Director of Tent Cinema School where Shobha takes us through her journey of - - Start of a multifaceted career in software development and management to skill development and cinema - Using her creative bent of mind to find motivation & strength at work and manage life better - Having an open mind to handle changes, welcome anything new - Learning from the networks of BSPIN (Bangalore Software Process Improvement Network) and knowledge management special interest group - How a group of companies came together to share experiences in software development and gain trust to share data for purposes of benchmarking - A proper approach to get people to rally around a purpose - Using knowledge management practices to share and successfully roll out organization wide initiatives - Some insights from her experience in the field of KM - Learnings from having spent a lot of time in quality engineering - Transition to skill development and later to cinema - Her thoughts on the future of education - Living a life full of colour Shobha CS is the Founder Director of the Tent Cinema Film School. She started her career in software development at Kirloskar Computers and later at PSI Data systems. She worked at Perot systems in the role of SEPG Head and Sr. Director of Quality and Operational Excellence that included Knowledge Management. She has over 30 years of experience in focusing on software delivery and internal operations. She ran her own venture Artis Academy a training institute offering vocational training in broadcast journalism in collaboration with NDTV, along with courses in hardware and networking, spoken English and ethical hacking. Shobha now runs a film school offering workshops and courses in film making, acting, scripting, cinematography, Editing, and lyrics writing. Shobha holds an MSc in Physics from Mysore University. She has received awards from BSPIN, given guest lectures at various institutes on Knowledge Management and has been an active participant in the CII Innovation forum. Her interests are in the area of connect between Quality & Knowledge Management, Training young minds, Leadership and Spirituality, Culture and Learning.

This is a special series of episodes, called Dispersal, in view of the ongoing pandemic, that has caused what we believe is a widespread dispersed working from home. Whats working and whats not, how are people feeling and other insights. We share perspectives of PM Power coaches and from some of our clients as well. In this episode, Malavika Garimella, marketing consultant for PM Power Consulting, shares her views and tips as an experienced worker from home and how she is handling her work at this time with the following - Sharing my workspace with more people, making space Keeping kids engaged, handling interruptions, regulating screen time, accessing free books and audio resources Grandparents help, rope them in Dedicating playtime, respecting kids time like they do yours Keeping a schedule, flexible Managing work with identifying communication modes, pro-active outreach What to do when you are stuck

This is a special series of episodes, called Dispersal, in view of the ongoing pandemic, that has caused what we believe is a widespread dispersed working from home. Whats working and whats not, how are people feeling and other insights. We share perspectives of PM Power coaches and from some of our clients as well. Listen to this quick monologue from Gayathri Kalyanaraman from PM Power Consulting on Be organized, get things moving, as a home care taker Allocate rooms for house members and give space to each other, better still time box it Taking care of your health, with early morning and late evening walks as a scheduled activity Continuing with online events as a facilitator, creating virtual break out rooms and facilitating collaboration with proper tool handling

This is a special series of episodes, called Dispersal, in view of the ongoing pandemic, that has caused what we believe is a widespread dispersed working from home. Whats working and whats not, how are people feeling and other insights. We share perspectives of PM Power coaches and from some of our clients as well. Listen to Sethuraman, Delivery Manager at Metric Stream share his perspectives with Sivaguru from PM Power Consulting on - Managing a support team Customers understand BCP communication Experience with him as an individual working from home to an entire team working in a dispersed mode How to start and end the day Handling range of team maturity from face-to-face discussions to now getting onto skype or teams [or webex with customers] We will know our productivity better in a few days 3 things that help Trust the team Give them guidance: week plan, daily goals Have SPOCs for smaller teams Send everyone: team + management: what is the EOD achievement

This is a special series, Dispersal, focusing on the aspects related to forced, dispersed working from home.This captures perspectives from PM Power coaches. In this episode, listen to Paramu Kurumathur talking about - Dealing with lonliness - Worries and anxieties about the future and no one to talk to - On what leaders can do - How teams can continue daily practices of scrum and keep with agile values - what the future of remote working can look like - Remembering to have fun through this current situation

In the third episode for the women’s special in the month of March, Gayatri from PM Power Consulting talks to Shalini Chaudhary, Head of Technology Caspian Systems about her journey and challenges and learnings across - Understanding algorithms for making tea Social conditioning and wearing specs to create a geeky self Moved by the full page ad from Infosys to join the software industry Creating a lightening resume Moved from developer mindset to testing and customer mindset Feeling powerful as a quality gateway Story of importance of integrity in one's role Keeping lights on when apps were down, technology leader experiences Location strategy of moving 9 cities across 3 continents Understanding your priority and believe that you are adding value to the org and speak your mind Be able to accept consequences Creating working agreements with spouse makes relationship stronger! Soul searching and what emerged from there Pay it forward model in all three dimensions

This is a special series of episodes, called Dispersal, in view of the ongoing pandemic, that has caused what we believe is a widespread dispersed working from home. Whats working and whats not, how are people feeling and other insights. We share perspectives of PM Power coaches. In this episode, Chitra shares her views with Shiv on - Why this mode of working feels like a disruption - Dispersal in nature v/s whats happening now - What teams can do - in terms of holding each other and creating virtual circles of trust - What individuals can do - in terms of acknowledging what they are feeling, sticking with routines and doing at least 1-2 things each day - Looking out and appreciating nature around us with hope that this too shall pass

This is a special series of episodes, called Dispersal, in view of the ongoing pandemic, that has caused what we believe is a widespread dispersed working from home. Whats working and whats not, how are people feeling and other insights. We share perspectives of PM Power coaches. In this episode, S Srinivasan or Srini as he is popularly known, shares his views on - The word from agile values - "over" - What people can use "over" as to discover a higher order purpose - Loss of water cooler moments & side-bar conversations - Formal remote work mechanisms would work, but.. - Social distancing and isolation - Planned banter & a sense of belonging - Inducting new joinees into an organization at this time

This is a special series of episodes, called Dispersal, in view of the ongoing pandemic, that has caused what we believe is a widespread dispersed working from home. Whats working and whats not, how are people feeling and other insights. We share perspectives of PM Power coaches. The first one, by S Sivaguru is captured via his blog here (http://pm-powerconsulting.com/blog/tips-for-a-suddenly-dispersed-team/) . He shares perspectives on - Distributed v/s dispersed teams - Tips on time planning, Home planning and work activities We'd love to hear from you. Please do write in [email protected]

In the second episode for the women’s special in the month of March, Gayathri and Chitra from PM Power Consulting are in conversation with Jacintha Jayachandran, Author, Coach & HR professional and Sushma Joshi a communication & employee engagement specialist who have worked for tech companies. They share stories of their non-IT roles and working with IT professionals and cover topics such as - Coming to IT by accident; the journey from pharma and journalism to IT Understanding the vocabulary and language Culture shocks and back to work after a decade, stepping from a victorian era to plush officers Building relationships versus being pushers, connecting with business to build partnerships in IT HR in IT as partners in governance rather than policy or process makers 7 blind men and the elephant, perceptions about the role of communication & employee enagement Importance of respect and understanding roles to becoming a powerful collaborator and active listener to enable the right culture Software people love their data points and HR can bring more agility leaving aside ego Moving towards a Narrative 2.0 where we can do career pacing. Discovering and enabling women’s core strength work The empty nest syndrome and tapping into an ecosystem to pace and chart alternate career graphs Having role models and getting success with happiness is key Networking a super-critical act and starting with your local organization Staying authentic to yourself and expecting the same from others without judgement Our guests - Sushma Joshi is the Employee Engagement, Culture and Experience Leader at Symantec in Pune. She is also a passionate DEI evangelist. Sushma started her career as a journalist with the Maharashtra Herald and came to the IT world after a break of a decade when she joined Nihilent Technologies and later Persistent systems. She has spent the last 13 years with Symantec where she has a diverse set of roles across such as a global content strategist, communications consultant to the leadership team, partnering with engineering product groups to drive innovation and driving employee engagement. Sushma has a BA (Hons) in English from University of Kolkata and Bachelors of Communication and Journalism, media and mass communication from the University of Pune Jacintha Jayachandran In a span of 25 years in professional life, she has been an integral part of and led teams in defining best in class talent management practices in organizations such HP, Infosys, OnMobile and in the past 10 years as an entrepreneur has co-founded 2 organizations; Transcendix a Training and Development organization and LeadNOW an organization enabling women to start, stay and soar in their careers by providing research based solutions. Jacintha is a seeker, a learner, a human in the pursuit of living a meaningful and authentic life, also an entrepreneur, author, teacher and public speaker; who has inspired over 40,000 participants in various learning and coaching engagements across organizations and domains and geographies. She is Trustee and chief volunteer at HopeWorks foundation which is currently impacting 500 girls from disadvantaged backgrounds to live , learn and grow with Hope. She has also served as the evangelist trainer , member/head ethics committee and compliance and coordinated all Posh related processes at Infosys Technologies, Infosys BPO, OnMobile Global Ltd. Eli Lilly, SFL, Enquero Global amongst others. She recently co-authored and published the book Words Matter aimed at women and girls. Jacintha is certified in change management from Cornell University, certified in conflict management through mediation by Meta culture and is a post graduate in Social work from Bangalore university

We begin our special series for the month of March in celebration of Women's day with 4 episodes. In this one, Maggie Imbamuthaiah Managing Director of Anita Borg India India is in conversation with Chitra Gurjar from PM Power Consulting where she shares her experiences and perspectives on Bringing technical women together through stories How women easily fall into an isolation trap Discovering and working with exceptional women Cultivating a place for support for entrepreneurs - a possible way to sustain in future Sustaining businesses & innovation, creating safe spaces to be vulnerable and thrive Balancing passion and practicality through diverse capabilities Having a personal board in addition to a company board; in addition to having a solid revenue model, watching costs and getting the right talent Picking up comp sc in college and liking creativity in programming Joining Infosys in its early days and cutting teeth with software development Starting in tech, learning personas through OOP Liked being an interface between technology and business Why design thinking and solutioning remain key skills Her personal transformations through yoga and being a teacher of yoga Focusing on the present to be purposeful Future of tech and what to be watchful for, asking the right questions and bringing one’s concious self to work A Message for listeners Maggie Inbamuthaiah (https://www.linkedin.com/in/maggiei/) is Managing Director of AnitaB.org in India. She works with various community and Technology organizations to advance careers of women in technology and on the various programs including the flagship event Grace Hopper Celebration India (GHCI - https://ghcindia.anitab.org) She is a big believer in equal opportunities across gender, social status and backgrounds. This has led her and her friends to create Mandram (www.mandram.org), a platform to curate ideas and talks in native languages so that they can reach people across the social diaspora with no impediment of language. She was the Co-Founder of Employee Experts (www.employeeexperts.com) and MyCampusDays (www.mycampusdays.com). A great learning experience that helped me work on end to end aspects of running an organization from people to sales. In her corporate career spanning ANZ, Infosys and Dell Computers, she has led many global Technical/ operational projects and and led virtual teams across Asia. She has a Post Graduate degree in HR Management and Organizational Behaviour from University of London (College of Birkbeck) and am a Computer Science Engineer from NIT, Tiruchirapalli. She writes regularly on the technology, gender and social equality and occasional philosophy on LinkedIn and various other topics on my blog "A balcony with a view" at https://maggiei.wordpress.com. She is a runner, yoga practitioner and teacher and an environmentalist at heart.

In this conversation, Mani Ratnam, Senior Vice President at Strategic Education Inc shares his thoughts and experiences, with Sivaguru from PM Power Consulting, related to: The transition from being a techie to someone visualizing and creating a larger impact How wanting to take ownership of the impact helped in this transition over time Getting guidance from many experienced mentors and learning by doing / failing Using a data driven experimentation approach, based on some formal models such as lean thinking, six sigma etc Understanding the user personas and their challenges when designing the key value propositions for the company Why data alone is not sufficient to make decisions His views on delivering knowledge not just in tie, but also just enough as needed at that moment The significance of a culture of innovation Encouraging teams to take risks How to help new team members think team results above individual contributions His thoughts on work life balance Getting teams aligned to a larger goal His perspective on the future of IT as a career option, and his own learning in this career Mani Ratnam is a Senior executive with deep business and technology experience leading Strategic Business Transformation initiatives and Operations. His Specialties include: Strategic Planning, Information Technology, Product Development, Big Data, Analytics, Customer Experience, Operations, CRM (SalesForce). He can be reached at: www.linkedin.com/in/mani-ratnam-6812044 (https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.linkedin.com_in_mani-2Dratnam-2D6812044&d=DwMFAg&c=bzqg8wBG-gmCffjjhiRy9RUbPhJ6AtQiizA-WVtoiSk&r=sXnBnMpFCw7fwo0iMNgQ1knmlCaviVvmE-p5pRkTjh0&m=dNRh88K60K8BHElfY2Tal5hihHqfrvYAS79U2VkyJy0&s=oydhc4HDRCi4YTyWTzqJ7YcGo2jc5bCFSr52PTSHiaM&e=) [email protected]