Software People Stories

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]

In this conversation Ved Prakash, Chief Knowledge Officer (CKO) at Trianz, shares his perspectives and experiences with Sivaguru from PM Power Consulting, about: His education in engineering and management His experience as a techie Being the first person in the company to lead an industry vertical How he was asked to make knowledge management more effective in wipro; what, he thought would be a 2 year stint, became the turning point in his career The opportunities he saw in making larger impact and hence taking up new roles in other organizations Bridging an engineering mindset that may need clear specifications to the KM domain, where many things could be exploratory How his doing an MBA helped him become a knowledge oriented person The key role for a knowledge officer What is the role of knowledge management in the context of startups and beyond organizational boundaries Adopting some simple practices, such as scrum and using simple techniques to manage collective knowledge in startups His thoughts on whether AI and ML will replace knowledge management professionals The traits needed to be a successful KM professional and the opportunities as a career in KM Ved Prakash is a well-recognized senior industry professional with a global experience of 28 years in a variety of leadership roles with strategic, business and operational responsibilities. He is currently Chief Knowledge Officer (CKO) at Trianz, a Silicon Valley based Management Consulting firm helping Fortune 1000 organizations transition to a digital enterprise. He is also an independent KM Strategy Consultant to other organizations, guiding them on their knowledge transformation journeys. Prior to this, he spearheaded Knowledge Management at Montreal-headquartered CGI Inc. He led a large business transformation program across the organization there and was also a member of the Global Application Services Council at CGI. Ved was with Wipro Technologies for two decades where he was the CKO in his last role. Under his leadership, Wipro was the proud recipient of Global, Asian and Indian MAKE (Most Admired Knowledge Enterprise) Awards and was also granted a US patent on KM. Amongst other leadership roles at Wipro, he led the Healthcare and Life Sciences vertical with P&L responsibilities, and incubated and grew the Energy and Utilities business as the Practice Head. Ved has been an invited speaker in many national and international forums. He has been a driving force over the past many years in the conduct of CII Knowledge Summit, the annual flagship event on KM. He has consulted organizations across the world and across industries on their KM strategies. Ved is on the India Jury of Global MIKE (Most Innovative Knowledge Enterprise) Awards. He has been a member of several industry bodies including KM Global Network, KM Advisory Committee at National e-Governance Division of central Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, CII National Committee on KM and Business Transformation, and Bureau of Indian Standards National Committee for KM Standards. He holds an MBA from Indian Institute of Management Bangalore, and a B.Tech in Computer Engineering where he was a Gold Medalist.

In this episode, Balakrishnan Sreenivasan - a Distinguished Engineer with IBM shares his perspectives with Sivaguru from PM Power Consulting on His experience that led to becoming a distinguished engineer How one has to internalize and abstract models [such as TOGAF] to solve large enterprise problems Starting with documenting an existing architecture.. How hard could that be - until you realize the possible ways in which it can be used On whether he has seen Conways law in practice How abstracting shared or common services helps simplify organizational design as well How he got to thinking of problems from an organization or business point of view, rather than technology alone How to look at microservices to enable robust architectures The dimensions an enterprise architect should know, when considering cloud based solutions How an architect balances the anticipation of future technology and the need to implement something today by the dev teams Benefits of embedding Site Reliability Engineers into dev squads An experience from a delivery transformation exercise to reduce the average release cycle from 3 months to 3 weeks Implications of mixing and matching homegrown and open source components in enterprise solutions Shifts in business models with the acceptance of ‘... as a service’ concepts The blurring lines across industries Considerations for building ecosystem based solutions His tip for future proofing one’s career in IT Balakrishnan Sreenivasan is an IBM Distinguished Engineer and Chief Technical Officer in IBM's Global Business Services. He is a Subject Matter Expert in Cloud Transformation, Application Modernization, DevOps, Application Operations on cloud, Offering development & enterprise architecture He is a Technical Advisor, who guides senior client executives on IT strategy and enterprise architecture including Cloud strategy across varied industries. Capability in offering Client Services for Cloud Application Services in IBM's Global Business Services (GBS); As a Thought Leader, he bridges the gap between IT and Business to improve business flexibility and agility using approaches such as BizDevOps, Cloud, Microservices & API economy. Responsible for cloud computing, DevOps Transformation and Hybrid Cloud / Multi-Cloud Architecture. Bala is recognized as a Cloud Solutions Evangelist for Cloud adoption including DevOps transformation with excellence in ensuring continuous improvement of Cloud offerings and building Cloud-scale data services.

Tune into this episode, a deep exploratory conversation between Sivaguru from PM Power Consulting and Rinka Singh, Co-Founder, AccelerateFire shares his stories of Being a serial start-up-person Doing things outside of the day job, including starting the Software Process Improvement Network (BSPIN), Bangalore How he got interested in quality, process etc The experience of getting representatives from many organizations to come together and share data Some of the driving thoughts behind the open source movement, and Linux, in particular Can the NIH syndrome be broken to help with opensource adoption? How an external [customer] trigger pushes internal adoption What would be one overarching reason to use open source About the value proposition of superior performance for the lucene search engine, from his startup How github is helping small companies and developers Need for and possible implications of creating new ways of developing software Zero cost reviews in open source Trends influencing the software development process, including the limitations of hardware Challenges in computing posed by large volumes of data - and dark data The need to look beyond the von Neumann model of computing His career advice to those aspiring for careers in IT or are looking at the next stage of growth Rinka has conceived and is working on a Technology Startupcurrently early stage. He has previously defined and implemented product road-maps, managed multi-million $ contracts out of India and has participated in Industry Forums his company representative. His technology and domain experience is in the systems software and protocols which covers various processors (ARM, ATmega, x86, VIA, Alpha, Sparc, boards from Motorola, Arduino & TI), various OSs (VxWorks, pSOS & various flavors of Unices) and both Datacom (TCP/IP & IPv6 stacks, WAN & Routing protocols) and Telecom (ATM, ISDN, etc). His specializations include architecting, product and technical management organization management, delivery and people management .

In this conversation between Sivaguru from PM Power Consulting & Sharad Sharma, co-founder of iSpirit Foundation, Sharad shares several off the beaten track perspectives on His multi-threaded career navigated via multiple s-curves How to create innovative software products, a dual immersion necessity If you read it in the news, dont follow it! Solving problems through different layers of work happening in different realms - the apple and android battery case. Understanding your personality archetype and going from good to great. Developing a contrarian mindset Sharad's has three decades of experience in the Internet, Enterprise Software, and Digital Infrastructure markets and is a prominent voice in India's technology ecosystem. Sharad is a passionate evangelist of the software product ecosystem in India. He co-founded iSPIRT Foundation, a non-profit technology think tank devoted to making India a product nation. Earlier, he Chaired NASSCOM Product Forum in its formative years and was a member of the NASSCOM Executive Council from 2009-13. Sharad co-founded Teltier Technologies Inc., and is an active technology angel investor with over two dozen investments. He was also instrumental in the success of India's first IP focussed fund, India Innovation Fund. Sharad has held several senior R&D executive positions with leading technology companies, including Yahoo, VERITAS Software, Symantec, Lucent Technologies, and AT&T. Zinnov gave him the R&D Visionary Award in 2008 for his work on creating a strong MNC R&D footprint in India. Sharad is a member of SEBI's Financial and Regulatory Technology Committee. He has also served on RBI's UK Sinha MSME Committee and National Digital Payments Committee. Sharad got interested in kernel software development while doing his Electrical Engineering at Delhi College of Engineering. He started India's first Student Minicomputer Club in 1984 as served as the Chairperson of the IEEE Student Chapter.

Tune into the conversation between Pallavi Srinivasa, Director of Product Management at Cisco and Chitra Gurjar from PM Power Consulting where Pallavi shares her basket of a variety of experiences and thoughts around - Magic happening via bits n bytes - Connectedness of people, information & energy - Customer experience, product thinking and development, and the role of human emotions in developing solutions - Cost of impatience in using technology and AI v/s slow growth in a holistic manner - Getting customers to open up about their real problems & placing the product in their thinking - What customer connect means despite being a big brand like Cisco, tips for product managers - How an organization rallies behind a customer, across engineering, sales, marketing, product mgmt - Her journey into product management, from a human factors engineering person and a technical marketing engineer - A message for people considering product management as a career option - Her belief in boundless potential to help humanity through technology Pallavi Srinivasa is an industry veteran with over 18 years at Cisco in various leadership roles in areas of product management, technical marketing and sales. During the course of her career at Cisco, Pallavi has led product management and technical marketing teams in the areas of enterprise networking and analytics applications. Pallavi has also spent a significant amount of time focused on driving business growth in India in the enterprise and data center portfolio. Most recently, Pallavi has been leading Enterprise Switching Portfolio Outside of Cisco responsibilities, Pallavi is also very active in mentoring STEM programs, driving diversity of leadership in technology companies.

We welcome our listeners back to the Software People Stories with our first podcast for 2020. Gayathri and Chitra, colleagues at PM Power consulting thoroughly enjoyed this un-crafted conversation and were pleasantly surprised at what unfurled. Tune into their conversation where Chitra shares her experiences on - How a career journey is often not on a ladder but looking at it as an exploration Mindswitch happened when she moved from development to testing Looking at software from customer empathy as a system tester Moving from an individual contributor to a manager Tips on interviewing Entrepreneurship through co-creation How there needs to continuous learning and curiosity Accomplish over something with power of sleeping over something and connect the dots Situation on STEM in India Wonder of networks with 2009 with 14 people started and moving to large movement of volunteers - How the conference gave a voice for women in various organizations and helped to create tech communities for women in many ways

Its been a great year with 54 episodes. Plenty of stories from around the world through the voices of people sharing their experiences, insights, lessons, advice, perspectives and so much more. We take this opportunity to thank our listeners and our guests for supporting the Software People Stories and wish you all a very happy new year. We are taking a short break and will be back with people stories and much more. Stay tuned! Cheers, Sivaguru, Chitra and Gayathri PM Power Consulting.

This conversation highlights stories and experiences of Jayesh Chakravarthi, Co-Founder and CEO of Recast technologies with Sivaguru from PM power consulting on Selling technology, solutions & software Envisioning solutions to solve Bengaluru traffic problems Entrepreneurial experiences and product validation 3 good tips for entrepreneurs on how to take an idea to a feasible business The importance of having multiple founders; including thought & experience diversity and how to handling change management Selling v/s developing technology; converting desires into products; His ideal of a good architect What changed in his leadership style through his years of experience Competency, communication & culture Leadership principles & experiences from his own leadership journey Why he would chose to be in IT, if his career were to start today and how he would envision his evolution. Jayesh Chakravarthi has over three decades of experience in the technology and the financial services industries. He has held leadership positions in Business Developmemt, Sales & Marketing, Brand Management, Advertising, Strategic Planning and Program Managemenet, spanning Indian companies as well as multinationals. Over the last ten years, Jayesh was the country head for Fidelity Investment’s offshore technology services; prior to which he was vice president at MindTree Consulting. Jayesh was Director for channel distribution at Sun Microsystems, India Operations. He started his career at Wipro in brand management. Jayesh has been associated with CII, NASCOM & BCIC. His other interests include writing, teaching and mentoring. He can be reached via LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/jayesh-chakravarthi-a167191/)

Listen to Jeetu Narayan, Business Executive, Entrepreneur and Technology specialist share insights with Sivaguru from PM Power Consulting on a wide array of topics that include - Being a second generation IT professional in his family Considering himself to be a product technologist Getting hooked on to computers through games Addictive products and the attention economy Building things useful for your customers Different learnings from startup, mid market companies The importance of EQ Waterfall, agile and natural approaches to software development How nature’s changes are about the ecosystem His perspectives on the impact and trend of where AI is headed The considerations for distributing work in a globally spread team Going beyond outside-in metrics only How he went about managing stress at work Being considered as a rainbow character and a data person : using the Strengths Deployment Inventory His way to handle the commute stress.. In bangalore traffic! A lesson he learnt from his manager about working long hours How he is trying to influence the curriculum for technology related subjects in educational institutions to also have softer aspects such as Emotional Intelligence And whether there would be a third generation IT person in his family! Jeetu Narayan is an experienced technology veteran as a Business Executive, Entrepreneur and Technology Specialist having invested over 2 decades in product ventures and, having managed initiatives across Business Intelligence & Analytics, Hybrid Cloud, Mobile solutions and SCM domains. Jeetu’s expertise lies in blending the best practices from his experience spanning across Fortune 10 companies through to medium and entrepreneurial ventures. He holds a Post-graduation in business management and a Master's degree in software systems. https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeetunarayan/

This is a conversation between Hariprakash Agrawal, Entrepreneur & Agile Coach with Sivaguru from PM Power Consulting, where Hari talks about: Graduating from IIT Kharagpur and coming to Bangalore Taking up a process related role as a fresher Starting his first company ‘OpCord’ for optimization and coordination Building his first automation Creating a product based on Excel to create BDD [Business Driven Development] based tests Starting a solution for car pooling, to address some common social challenges such as pollution How he encountered he bumpy road of carpooling solutions and its impact on the OpCord business Pivoting to a B2B model and adding cab services His preference to being a systems or process thinker How he had to convince about his interest to join a CMM course And how that led to him getting a new job Some differences between developing application software and embedded software The need to think of mistake-proof designs to reduce possibilities of errors, such as poka yoke Giving architects and designers their due recognition How a fresher caught an inconsistency in error messages How starting up is much more than an app or just software Work life balance for an entrepreneur Getting new joiners to be excited about the company purpose Advice for people aspiring to get into IT About our Guest: Hariprakash (Hari) is a serial entrepreneur and an enterprise agile coach. He is Founder/CEO of RideAlly Travels (Cabs, Taxis, Carpool), OpCord Consultancy (Consulting/Training) and also an Enterprise Agile Coach. He started RideAlly platform in 2011 and formed RideAlly company in 2015 which offers cabs services and custom-made ride-sharing platform to corporates. As an agile coach, he has transformed 200+ teams using various Agile practices from Scrum, XP, Kanban, SAFe, Lean etc. He has taken care of agile transformations at ABB, Cisco (SBG/CSTG groups), PayPal (DT division, CE2 program), Mango Technologies (acquired by Qualcomm), eRevMax, Sigma Infosolutions, Cosmonet solutions etc. Prior to 2009, he worked in SEPG/QA at Freescale, MindTree, STMicroelectronics and Sharp to enable processes based on Agile, ISO, CMMi, CMM, Six Sigma, PMP, RUP etc. He is an active volunteer and have served many NGOs, like, Rotary Club, BSPIN, Suncity Apartments Associations (1200+ flats), ASCI, Alumni Association, Orphanages etc. On academics, he is an M-Tech from IIT-Kharagpur in Reliability & Quality Engineering and BE from MBM, Jodhpur in Mining Discipline. His detailed profile can be accessed at LinkedIn,http://in.linkedin.com/in/hariprakash/ His other social media handles: 1. Twitter - @hariprakash 2. LinkedIn - @hariprakash 3. Facebook - hariprakash.agrawal

A candid conversation between Madhavi Ravanan, SI Delivery Head at Nokia and Chitra Gurjar from PM Power Consulting, covered several topics from Madhavi's experiences on Luck by chance entry to NIT Trichy to get her degree in engineering Early development days for telecom software learning standards, switches and conducting experiments Role diversity and how she took on business development Developing technical practice as a means of incubating ideas, finding adjacencies and becoming a trusted advisor to customers How to keep new engineers challenged & focused Developing customer intimacy for effective stakeholder management Changing times of engineers then and now Re-learning and internalizing dev ops Importance of constant learning & re-inventing ones self Madhavi is a technology professional with a couple of decades of industry experience. She is an alumna of NIT-Trichy, from class of ‘98. She started her career as a software engineer, developed software for a variety of telecom and networking gear, led product engineering teams, took a stab at business development, account management and technology practice development before moving into the current role. In her current role, she heads the telco cloud integration delivery unit in Nokia Software’s core services organisation. She is passionate about technology as an enabler, thrilled with the pace of disruptions in the industry, enjoys new ways of working and likes doing some crystal-gazing. She is an avid reader and occasionally puts her pen to paper. Tune-in to this podcast to hear her look back on the path she has taken, her views on what’s happening in the industry, what may lie ahead, how to stay future-ready and more.

In this episode, we bring you what "pay it forward" means to some software people, currently associated with PM Power Consulting. Sivaguru: Being grateful for the nudge from a neighbor and the in person tutoring and guidance to see me as an engineer, without expecting anything in return, and how teaching is a way of sharing your own experience Chitra: being spotted by a coach to get inducted into basketball, being tutored and mentored by a professor in college and one way she pays it forward is to teach children play basketball and draws a lot of energy from their happiness. Sivakumar: the selflessness of caregivers for elder care that he was touched by and an idea to institutionalize paying it forward Anand (Anantha Natarajan) talks about the emotional kindness that he received and paying that forward and sharing words of appreciation pretty much every day, as a habit Gayatri, remininesces on her grandfather’s words.. About the wellness of everyone in the world and, how volunteering has been her way of paying it forward in different areas and her wish for more social enterprises to address very serious issues such as environment Vishu narrates how he realized that what interests him most is doing good for the world and has a very nice story to illustrate the theory of abundance, some of the initiatives he is associated with Gopal talks of random acts of kindness that he has received and experienced in his life and how extending a helping hand makes his day and is very empowering and his passion to share as an act of paying forward Paramu can relate this to practices in ancient Greece or Indian societies, the difference between gratitude and indebtedness JV says that it is a wonderful concept and one feels very good and the world is a livable place only because many people pay it forward and JV wants to pay many things forward, starting with what he received from his father How can you pay it forward? Do what you are passionate about, to see success in other people. And, of course, you can share your story on this podcast, Software People Stories. Do write to us at [email protected] , and share your story.

In this episode, PM Power colleagues Gayathri and Chitra are in conversation as Gayathri shares narratives about Learning in the face of continuous change Owning your career and sustaining like marathon runners How business is getting re-invented and 4 dimensions of business agility Purpose driven learning & how organizations can unshackle themselves Alignment of purpose and business agility Of cruise ships and yachts Experiences, outcomes & results and how these impact an organizational culture Her narrative on preparing and undertaking a physically and mentally demanding journey with a team of 10. Message on uncovering the learner within one’s self.

In this episode Ramkumar, VP Technology from MiQ Digital is in conversation with Sivaguru from PM Power Consulting. Ram shares his views on - How he got into software to have greater flexibility in terms of companies to choose from How he understood that every software, every company provides great opportunities to do great work Qualities he looks for, when hiring What does empathy for users mean to backend teams? Contextual choice of Agile or Waterfall How to effectively organize teams that produce microsservices and consume microservices Testing during an architectural transition of a software platform Evolving safety nets for development practices as an organization grows The importance of being adaptable in one’s career progression Handling stress at work The future of a software career Ramkumar has over 2 decades of experience working in US and in India. He has worked in different domains such as ERP, Oracle Core Database development, E-commerce, Big data. Currently, he heads the technology team at MIQ which is a leading independent marketing intelligence company. His Linkedin Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ramkumar-venkatesan/

We welcome back a fellow PM Powerian, Vishu Hegde in conversation with Chitra where Vishu shares a flow of thoughts on Connecting with organization vision with 2-steps removed Building a temple and laying bricks Principles of flow and identifying bottlenecks using flow metrics Understanding flow of work by visualization, metrics, work-in-progress & throughput Starting with mindset and structure to enable organizations to see a "flow" How companies can move from IT agility to business agility Systems thinking paradigms and dys-functions Building a leadership canvas, Engaging leaders in a VUCA world Transitioning s-curves & examining points of discontunuity Navigating stuck points in life and work - the middle challenges 4 dimensions of S-Curves, a teaser. Making the leap with guidance and coaching

In this conversation, Sivaguru from PM Power Consulting talks to Sukumar, Co-Founder of Tiny Magiq, where Sukumar shares his stories about: His friend who inspired him to get into software How, on his first day at a client’s place, he did something totally unconnected - as he thought - to software His first lesson at work - attitude! What one can learn from working on a maintenance project How his first role with a sales responsibility was so stressful, tending to a breakdown Mustering the courage to seek guidance to change the vicious cycle to a virtuous cycle His personal transition to handle uncertainties in his CXO Roles What he learnt from a war veteran on doing pilot projects Taking an integrative approach to knowledge management and process to deliver knowledge just in time How the blogging experiment opened up cross Business Unit exchanges Some techniques he used to foster innovation across a large organization Inspirations from the paper ‘Ronald Coase Penguins’ by ‘Yochai Benkler’ on socio psychological rewards Why his company is called ‘tiny magiq’ Applying tiny changes in his own life - as in push ups His perspective on the future for a career in IT Sukumar has 31 years of experience in the IT services industry. He runs a Digital transformation & Behaviour transformation enabler startup called Tiny Magiq with 4 co-founders since Feb 2015. He left Cognizant in April 2014, after nearly 19 years, where he served as Senior Vice President, Global Chief Information Officer & Global Head of Innovation. Sukumar in his 8 year stint as a CXO in Cognizant led award-winning transformation programs in IT, Innovation Culture and Delivery Management. Sukumar is an avid blogger/twitterer, a fitness enthusiast and a travel bug. He researches the Indus Valley Civilization in his spare time. Sukumar received lifetime recognition for his work in IT through the 2014 Computerworld Premier 100 IT Leaders program. Sukumar is rated by Huffington Post as one of the Top 100 Social CIOs in 2014 & 2013. His social media handles: linkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rajagopalsukumar/ Twitter: @rsukumar Facebook: https://facebook.com/Sukumar Website: https://tinymagiq.com

In this conversation, Paramu shares his experiences on writing books with Sivaguru. Listen to this chat between 2 colleagues at PM Power Consulting covering Paramu's views on : Where ideas come from, or where he gets his inspiration on topics to write about Specific triggers for this two published books so far [and the third - a technical book - he is working on now] On writing sequels and if they are expected by the readers as more of the same Book writing being a team sport The challenge of understanding reader expectations, for the first or even the second book About pivoting the idea or narration across evolving versions of the manuscript Inserting ‘hooks’ to keep the readers engaged The next 2 books he is working on, now On why he wants to continue writing technical books Are software development ‘methodologies’ myths? A sneak peek into the upcoming technical book, on Agile practices The five principles related to Agility in an organizational context A sampler fable of the hare and the rabbit race

Many stories play out in our lives. Listen to a lively chat between Sivaguru from PM Power Consulting and Yogesh Gupta, President and CEO of Progress Software, talking about - How he got into IIT How a joystick that got him into programming His early interest in AI Embedded code to Enterprise code Building a distributed relational database Building on something that he already knew, to get into completely new areas, such as marketing His thoughts on ‘AI in everything’ How technology can be considered additive Integrating multiple products to create value for the users Looking at acquisitions also based on clear use cases Some of the cultural challenges in integrating different products [and teams] and mutual respect - for values, culture, background etc The importance of explaining the why to everyone, to get them on board His approach of teaming young professionals with much more seniors, soon after he took charge and the benefits His thoughts on the open source model and the nativescript project What he hears as one of the top expectations from his customers His advice to aspiring IT professionals, based on his own experience And finally, his experience in the transition from a techie to a leader A technologist at heart, Yogesh Gupta is passionate about how technology can make life simpler—both for businesses and individuals. Since joining Progress in October 2016 as its President and Chief Executive Officer, he has strengthened the company’s market position, improved customer relationships, launched new products, acquired three companies and significantly improved operating margins and cash flow. Progress has also refreshed its Board of Directors, increasing the diversity of the Board with four new independent members to build a strong new leadership team that can drive further success. Prior to joining Progress, Yogesh was President and Chief Executive Officer at Kaseya, Inc., a private equity-backed software company providing IT management software solutions to managed service providers. Before Kaseya, he served as the President and Chief Executive Officer of FatWire Software, a VC-backed marketing automation software company. He led FatWire through the great recession and doubled its revenue over four years, leading to a successful exit to Oracle. A 30-year software industry veteran, Yogesh held several corporate officer roles at CA Inc., including the role of Chief Technology Officer for five years and Chief Strategy Officer and head of M&A for two years. A recognized expert in emerging technologies and industry trends as well as a published author, Yogesh holds a patent in the field of neural networks. He earned a master’s degree in computer science from the University of Wisconsin and a bachelor’s degree in electronics engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. He also serves on the boards of Beth Israel Lahey Health System (BILHS) and Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council (MassTLC).

Episode: 4 decades in 2 phases Sub title: Consultant to Implementer In this conversation Sivaguru from PM Power Consulting is in conversation with his old friend Neelu (PK Neelakantan). Listen to their conversation as Neelu talks about: Two significant phases of his career Playing software development and business development roles A major personal decision to move base from India to the US An urge to do something on his own About losing the job at the time of the dot com bust About an environment where programmers were younger than the programs they were working on Some challenges in managing knowledge workers Literally jumping into a data lake! Assigning a monetary value for software, for a buyer Some challenges in concluding a sale of a platform product What you tell demanding users Resisting the urge to do it yourself and letting team members learn by doing Handling things beyond your control Managerial style of doing together and inspiring Earning the team’s trust by adding value in all interactions And not being able to please everyone all the time Neelu has about four decades of experience in software development having worked with organizations in India and the United States in different capacities. He lives in San Diego where he works at the San Diego Community College District as their Application Development Manager overseeing the student administration systems. We invite listeners of the Software People Stories podcast to join us and celebrate International Podcasting Day, on the 28th of September 2019, hosted by Hubhopper in Bangalore. We would love to meet you. Please register yourselves here (https://podcasts.hubhopper.com/o2podcollective-international-podcast-day?fbclid=IwAR312Zbr8VdPHI0p4eJurzzkoROGiQMSpPk9tmpRV_3MMMDxf2CLRLVg_IA) quickly and block your dates. See you there!

In this episode Jayaprakash JP, coach and consultant talks to Chitra from PM Power consulting about - Being an engineer at heart & how his career began in the software industry, working in product & services organizations - Continuous rediscovery, love for learning, and curiosity - Building enterprise health applications - Experiencing different work cultures between services & product organizations - Co-discovering & co-developing customer needs in a VUCA environment with inclusivity & collaboration - Being agile in daily life, experiments and learning - Becoming an entrepreneur - Why leaders should have an entrepreneural spirit - A message for coaches, enablers and people enabling transformations in organizations - Enabling inspiration in children. Jayaprakash Puttaswamy (aka 'JP') is passionate about coaching people and enabling co-creation of game changing possibilities! What he loves most about coaching is the opportunity it provides, to do a deep inquiry about self and to impact other human beings' lives through co-creation and growing together. With a “Bachelor of Engineering” degree in Computer Science, JP has about 16+ years of overall experience in IT industry and is a Leader in modern Software Engineering. He is practicing agile since 2003 (with Scrum, XP & Kanban), JP has trained over 2000 people in 40+ organizations. In the last 8 years, JP has coached about 900 people in 7 large-scale transformation engagements. JP has worked with Pete Behrens, driving agile transformation and co-facilitating Leadership Agility workshops in GE HealthCare and McKinsey & Company. His recent coaching was to drive enterprise-level agile/lean & DevOps transformation at Target and and Siemens. He can be reached via https://www.linkedin.com/in/jputtaswamy/ Here are some of his talks Continuous Product Discovery and Business Agility (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBH2KAYKtqM) Live Coaching Demo & Practice Workshop (https://youtu.be/L56fPhmNmJI) Dealing with, and coaching senior Management and Leadership (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gF-rjdfGq4) Product Discovery to Delivery – Connecting practices end-to-end (https://youtu.be/ql6NhlyKLz8)

This conversation between VK Kumar, a seasoned architect and Sivaguru from PM Power Consulting brings to light Kumar's narratives on The solid grounding that formal and structured training can give His initial work on one of the first globally successful products from India What he learnt about practical use of technology from a consulting role Becoming an architect What cross-over cables taught him Challenges of working in a distributed team Making meetings effective through a practice of readouts A good practice related to architectural governance Some key aspects to be considered for resilient architectures The cyclical nature of architectural models Whether being an architect - as a role - is more stressful than other roles in software development Architecture and Agile What he finds as an effective tool for communication for architects Whether an architect is an individual contributor or a team player Kumar Venkataramiah, is a senior architect at a reputed financial telecommunications company. He specializes in application architecture, design, business continuity and performance. He has close to 40 years experience in the IT industry and has expertise in transaction processing, message switching, networking and databases. He has managed several IT delivery teams. He has no hobbies and enjoys his free time.