Software People Stories

Continuing our special series for the year end, Shiv asks colleague PM Powerian Gopalan how he stays calm even under pressure and moreThis series of conversations will help you reflect on the year that was and identify some actions you may want to take in the new year.More about Gopal at https://pm-powerconsulting.com/experts/gopalan/Can reach Gopal @https://www.linkedin.com/in/gopalgopalan/

In this episode, Paramu Kurumathur, Consultant at PM Power consulting talks about various situations in his career. When he had the opportunity to latch on to an idea, develop it to concrete action.He talks about how there are many ways to do that and that age is no bar, based on his own experience.Specifically, he talks about the following approaches that have helped him-Explore, expand an ideaCollaborateResearch, learn, internalize, let it simmer : one day, it will come outLook for metaphors, analogiesDefine some boundaries.. scope.. 108 facts..Look for gaps in models / Getting a coach / teacher; being self awareKnow more about him herehttps://pm-powerconsulting.com/experts/parameswaran/You can reach him athttps://www.linkedin.com/in/paramu-kurumathur-01489a6/

In this episode, Raghu Viswanathan, knows as Raghu, shares his story with details ofBeing an alumnus of the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, which got the first computer in IndiaHis initial ‘hate’ for computer science, mainly due to the use of punched cards!Joining TCS [Tata Consultancy Services] as a management consultantHaving to play the role of an IBM expert on his first overseas project, as an individual contributor with no other colleagues with himBeing asked to teach IBM to the client and seeking support from his manager Gaining confidence after that successful assignmentWriting code the traditional way - in Australia - from creating pseudo code and getting it reviewed before writing a single line of codeIf you want to work on a good project, think through, write pseudocode, consult with peopleHow the rigour at ISI prepared him for increased confidence in the futureThe importance of understanding the domain for a developerHow, understanding the business [and implications] help in one situation to not only avoid a penalty, but also help the bank make moneyThe evolution of the concept of offshoring or distributed working in his organizationFinding major lifestyle changes in young Indian professionals when he came back to IndiaFeeling happy about India’s progress over the yearsTrekking and volunteering and pacing his activitiesThe joys of retirementHow he discovered the interest in trekkingHis career tipsHis perspective in Decentralized Finance [DeFi]Viswanathan Raghu, Started his career as consultant in TCS. Later working with Various firms like UBS(Formerly Swiss Bank) ,Bank of New York, Societe Generale, Deutsche Bank and Russel Investments.Was head of change for Finance in Deutsche bank's service center in Mumbai before relocating back to US. Responsible for implementing Process efficiencies in the offshored processes. Implemented Finance’s strategic transformational program for Financials and Regulatory reporting. Program enabled offshoring of globally consistent re-engineered processes to the service center.Also Managed -Vendor delivery management, Departmental management, IT Program / Project management, Globally managed large and diverse teams for the full project life cycle.His Specialties: International delivery experience in US, European and Asian work cultures. Vendor business application product implementation. Wide Investment banking domain knowledge & management experience across functions. Cross functional IT program management. Full life cycle experience in managed services implementation. Global manager of large and diverse teams for the full project life cycle. Prepared budgets and managed financials for an entire department.You can reach him @ https://www.linkedin.com/in/vraghu/

In this episode Raksha Rao, CEO and Co-Founder of Parjanya Creative Solutions using interactive media technologies in the space of health, fitness and arts, is in conversation with Chitra GurjarA trained classical vocalist, starting at age 4 and working with music via interactive mediaMelding technology and health & fitnessLearning and pushing herself with challenges and problem solving, always interested in the "Why", beginning of entrepreneurshipA desire to see the larger picture and the timing being right Trigger to move back to India, technology, family, supportStarting a company in just before the pandemic brokeInspiration from remote music concerts, influence on building interactive apps, spatial audioBody movement tracking app and teaching yoga remotely, help people visualize where they need helpHer experiences around building the company from hiring, building a culture of adaptability and changeWork, passion and hobby being oneLessons a woman entrepreneur - Learning from others, value yourself, be your own championLife lessons - Building the right thing & build it the right way; have a learning mindset; be open to change"Raksha is the CEO and Co-founder of Parjanya Creative Solutions. Born in Bangalore, India, Raksha worked as a software engineer for a few years and then moved to the US in 2012. She pursued her MBA in Information Science at California State University and worked as a backend engineer at several different firms small and big including Zillow, one of America’s largest real estate tech firms. Being a professional musician with over 20 years of practice and performing experience, along with setting up and getting the bootstrapped company off the ground, Raksha also pursued and completed her Masters in Music while being the mother of an active 3 year old. At Parjanya, Raksha is passionately focused on building user centric, cutting edge products that push boundaries of technology. As the CEO and a woman entrepreneur, Raksha is determined to grow Parjanya as a company that can offer the most incredible and innovative solutions while helping and mentoring other young and determined female developers and designers “Social media handles:LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/raksharaoTwitter: https://twitter.com/raksha_raoCompany website: www.parjanya.org

In this conversation, Nash Narasimhan, GM of Ecommerce business of HP India, shares his experience and perspectives related to His academic qualifications include being an engineer and MBAStarting his career with Eicher and then moving to Muscat and becoming a product manager for a Ford dealershipReturning to India for a role, actually two - with HCL and then moving to DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation) Getting an intrapreneurial opportunity to set up the online store for Compaq, when internet and ecommerce were just beginning in IndiaBecoming the largest ecommerce company in India in a very short periodMoving to Singapore for a Channel partner development roleReturning to India to head the technical services divisionPlaying the CMO roles for large business units in APACComing back to India to play a leadership role with the ecommerce and PC business and also hold the responsibility for the digital GTMHaving witnessed 4 major and many small mergersCars to computers to cloud to commerce- 4CsHis approach to manage and perform in these transitions across domains and businessesRisk appetite, being a Biker, taking calculated risks, Transition 1: leveraging the marketing experience [4Ps being the same across industries], product management was the sameTransition 2: company was the sameTransition 3: leveraging the BCP experience in the services business, to make ecommerce available 24x7Anchoring on onen common factor to leverage and one uncomfortable or new factor to spur learningLetting results speak for oneselfBeing a good manager helps in thriving in a mergerThe strength of empathy for people needed for a leader to bring about a smooth mergerThe shift in thinking and approach needed when moving from selling hardware [boxes] to selling software, services and solutions that may be less tangibleThe idea of products being consumed as servicesApart from product, price, place and promotion, one has to add process, people and proofHis experience of working with software delivery teamsCareer advice: courage to go after your passion and keep reinventing yourselfLook for satisfaction over successDo your job as an act of serviceNash Narasimhan Tupil is Digital Business leader with over 3 decades experience in the IT industry. He is currently country GM of Ecommerce business of HP India. Prior to this CMO of multi billion dollar HP Asia Pacific and Japan enterprise business. He is a motorbiker, blogger, photographer and digital enthusiast.Can be reached @ https://in.linkedin.com/in/nashtupil

In this episode, Raghu Srinivas, Change and Transformation Lead in HSBC, is in conversation with Gayatri Kalyanaraman sharing his career journey and decisions that led him to where he isRaghu started as a developer in TCS after completing his education in BangaloreHe was inspired by him mentor to broaden his horizon and desire to move to BusinessMade an internal transition to business and now leads the strategic transformations in HSBCRaghu believes that having a good business sense is like a spine that has to be strong and flexible based on conditionsHe talks about the business disruptions that have happened and compares consciousness and understanding of the ecosystemRaghu shares the experiences of working in business starting with the business case and seeing the change through the lifecycleRaghu shares his stories on being a technocrat of bridging the business and technology seamlessly and sharing his wisdom in a wise mannerCommon sense of vision, purpose, commitment that’s built over trust brings large teams together to work, communicate and collaborate betterRaghu shares the constraints that his generation has put on self and how that needs to go off as we usher in the millennialsRaghu shares a vision of banking that would lead to normalised set of offerings prior to taking offRaghu Srinivas is a VP, Strategic Business Change Manager in HSBC. He has 2 decades of years of experience in shaping, managing, delivering and embedding strategic organizational change and delivering cutting edge technology solutions. His vast experience covers a range of activities in project/program lifecycle involving hiring, budgeting and forecasting, contracts management and Request for proposals(RFP), project initiation project planning/execution, leading to benefits realization tracking and project/program closure.His expertise in Business Analysis has enabled to apply the right tools and techniques for enterprise business analysis, assess capabilities, perform the required gap analysis, assess “Where to play”/”How to Win” strategies, identify strategic choices and make the right recommendations. Raghu has more than 10 years of experience in playing people management roles, capability building, motivating individuals to achieve team objectives and at the same time enabling them to achieve their individual career goals.His vision is to be actively involved in driving department/organization strategy, enabling business units, people, teams and be the driving force for business change management overallRaghu can be contacted @ https://www.linkedin.com/in/raghu-s-51b07a11/ 

In this episode, Krishna Prasad, known as KP - Coach at PM Power shares his experience related toBeing a coachWhy middle management is usually underserved in terms of coaching helpHow he had handled his own personal transition from an individual contributor to a middle managerHis expertise Areas – New Product Development, Product Management, Lean-Agile Transformation, Digital Transformation, LeadershipHis education background includes, Ph. D from Indian Institute of Science, Masters in Software Engineering from BITS, Pilani and Bachelor of Engineering in Mechanical Engineering from NIE, Mysore, India.

In this episode, Naresh Jain, Developer, Consultant, Conference Producer and Startup Founder of Xnsio  shares his insights and experiences related to -  Starting his career 20 years back building Neural networks for ISRO, and how he got into corporate life-  His experience reading the paper “Test infected” by Kent. How it helped him see the value behind extreme programming-  How he and his friends put together the first Agile India conference from 2004-  Challenges that comes across while organising different community- based conferences-  How to build communities using conferences-  His approach to put a good program/conference together-  How to balance the aspiring and the experienced speakers, which gives equal opportunities to both-  How he landed up as a coach/mentor and influence people while working in Thoughtworks-  Differences between roles of coach, mentor, trainer and a captain-  His love for coding and difference between code room (one step at a time) and board room (quantum leap)-  How he handles a board room coming with expectations and big transformations-  How to unlearn what you think is the best practice and how it helped him. Re-evaluate yourself-  What you can expect in the upcoming “Agile India conference” -  How Ward inspires him as a great speaker -  His view on full stack -  His advice for aspiring coaches/Mentors-  Agile India conference to be held : Nov 18th-20th a 3 day conference  More details at: https://2021.agileindia.org/ Naresh Jain is an award-winning, internationally recognized Technology & Product Development Expert. Over the last 15 years, he has helped many Unicorns and fortune 500 companies like Jio, Google, Amazon, JP Morgan, Hike, Directi, HP, Siemens Medical, GE Energy, Schlumberger, Shell, Dell, EMC, CA Technologies, etc. to streamline their product development. His hands-on approach of coaching teams by focusing on product discovery and engineering excellence is a key differentiator.  In 2004, Naresh started the Agile movement in India by creating the Agile Software community of India, a registered non-profit society to evangelize Agile, Lean and other Leading-Edge Software Development methods. He is responsible for creating and organizing 100+ international conferences. In recognition of his accomplishments, in 2007 the Agile Alliance awarded Naresh with the Gordon Pask Award for contributions to the Agile Community.You can find more about him here: https://confengine.com/user/naresh-jain Contact handles:Twitter: https://twitter.com/nashjainLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nareshjain/Website: https://nareshjain.com/

In this conversation, Dr Asoke Talukder shares his experience and perspectives related to His aspiration to be in performing arts, when he was youngWinning in a detective story writing competition, getting into puppetry and becoming a leading shadow puppeteer in Kolkata Wanting to get into a teaching role, attracted by the vacation periods, to pursue his other performing arts interestsStarting his programming as a research scholar at Jadavpur universityThen joining the National Informatics Centre (NIC) before moving on to ICL India (ICIM)Taking on challenges when others had given up and this beginning the inception of his interest in multiple areasThe regulations, restrictions and other technical constraints as well a customer expectations required him to design and implement solutions that were somewhat unprecedented in the Indian contextA tricky issue caused by unstable connectivity over low speed lines in reverse emulation of terminals in India Delays caused by satellite link latency that had to be overcome through an innovative setup, in a matter of a couple of days, to make things work for an important customer eventGetting new customers by taking on problems that have been lying on their plates for a long time and solving themHis getting into genomics and startupsHis passion for teaching, to ignite young minds to get into academics and researchWriting a syllabus making book based on his entrepreneurial experience with mobile computingThe importance of security aspects to be treated as functional requirementsConverting a mis-use case into a functional requirement when it comes to securityHis current interest areas of AI, machine learning and deep learningBeing still hands on and writing code in R, Python, C/C++ or javascript, node.js, to create proofs of concept that can be enhanced by othersHow his width of knowledge and experience helps him solve or relate a problem to something he might have seen elsewhereSynthetic systems and the challenges in understanding and solving healthcare related problems and there is no one-size-fits allThe need for horizontal knowledge, to be a successful solutioning architectHis approach and process for quickly leveraging existing knowledge and experience to build more complex solutionsHis career advice, in particular about being a lifelong learner and possibly getting into academics / researchAsoke Talukder is a creative individual with expertise from Compilers to Cancer and Puppetry to Precision Medicine. He worked in India, USA, UK, and Singapore in technology domains for companies like ICL, Fujitsu-ICIM, Microsoft, Oracle, Informix, Digital, Hewlett Packard, Sequoia, Northern Telecom, NEC, KredietBank, iGate, SRIT etc. He cofounded companies like Cellnext and InterpretOmics. He Internet enabled Microsoft PowerPoint. He engineered the first 64-bit database (Informix) in the world for Digital DEC Alpha. He engineered Oracle Parallel Server for Fault Tolerant computer Sequoia, and developed many killer technologies and products. He engineered the first secured international communication network for Hong and Shanghai Bank Bombay and British Bank of Middle East, Dubai. He setup the first X.25 network in India for Department of Telecommunications (currently BSNL & MTNL), and the first Java Competency Centre in India.He engineered the Network Management System for Queen’s Award winning PDMX. He is recipient of many international awards for innovation and professional excellence including ICIM Professional Excellence Award, ICL Excellence Award, IBM Solutions Excellence Award, Simagine GSMWorld Award, All India Radio/Doordarshan Award etcetera. Asoke has been listed in “Who’s Who in the World”, “Who’s Who in Science and Engineering”, and “Outstanding Scientists of 21st Century”. He authored many research articles, book chapters, and textbooks. Two of his books have been translated in Chinese language. Asoke did M.Sc (Physics) with Bio-physics major and Ph.D (Computer Engineering). He was the DaimlerChrysler Chair Professor at IIIT-Bangalore, Visiting Professor at VIT University Vellore, Adjunct Faculty at ABV Indian Institute of Information Technology & Management, Gwalior and Adjunct Professor, Department of Computer Science & Engineering, NIT Warangal. Currently he is an Adjunct Faculty Department of Computer Science & Engineering, NITK Surathkal teaching Machine Learning, and Chief Science & Technology Officer at SRIT India. 

In this episode, Seema Joshi, global product leader at NICE is in conversation with Chitra Gurjar sharing her insights and experiences throughQualifying as a Civil Engineer, and doing site work, to pursuing an MBA and her first job in techMoving into tech and landing different jobs, finding what she wanted to doWorking on the frontlines of technologyHer life as a technical account manager and helping close sales dealsLearning about personas, how customers buy, who influences, who usesWearing different hats each time every dayDeal or no deal, a zero or a oneContrast in experiences based on what she felt was a good deal and how things turned outUsing various approaches to prioritization of backlogs like3 P approach - Persona, problem and pervasiveness of the problemThinking in line with a top down business strategycreating delighters for the customer, the KANO modelBuilding a great product team, starting with product managers themselves feeling comfortable with ambiguity, taking decisions with little data and being under the spotlight in a room full of stakeholdersBuilding partnerships of trust and collaborationStaying in the problem space, wearing different thinking hats, assumptions, solutions and discoveryHaving a sports mindset in your work - her volleyball analogy Working with engineering teams, incumbent on the PM to find the rhythm of the team and keeping a good tension across different teams by having all ideas on the table and open discussionHer suggestions for people wanting to pursue a product management career or a career in technologySeema is a Product Leader by profession, Engineering & Management graduate by education, voracious volunteer by belonging, sportsperson at heart, and poet by hobby. With 20 years of experience across Product Management, Innovation & Entrepreneurial roles, she is passionate of building products that delight customers and create business impact. Currently a Global Product Leader at NICE, she heads CXone India Product Management and UX teams.Passionate about community building & diversity Seema actively contributes to various industry initiatives, is Secretary at SEAP (Software Exporters Association of Pune), ex-founding Board Member of Product Leaders Forum, and is a TedX and keynote speaker.LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/seemajoshis/