Software People Stories

In this episode, Sivaguru from PM Power Consulting is in conversation with Ujjwal Trivedi and his stories aboutWanting to be a scientist, when he was graduatingWhy he had to take up a job, due to family situationGetting some inputs from colleagues and managers and recognizing his aptitude for more business oriented rolesJourney from a software developer to a business analyst and then to a product managerBegan blogging as a means of sharing his learning of new technology Finding that his creativity in writing poems could be channelised at work as wellHow to develop empathy with customer needsNever second guess your userHow to validate your product idea and staying away from candy questionsRecommended book reads for product managers and on product managementUjjwal Trivedi is a product guy with over 15 years of experience in building software. He is currently working as Associate Director Products, MoveInSync. He has worked on web and mobile products for US and Indian markets as a Techie and moved to Product Management about 8 years back. He loves poetry, reading, and actively contributes to the Indian startup ecosystem as part of Headstart.Ujjwal can be reached via :linkedin.com/in/ujjwaltrivedi@ujjwaltrivedi 

Continuing with our 2-part Year End Special, our episode this week features PM Power coaches Gopal, Srini, Sivakumar, Sivaguru & ParamuThey share experiences, observations, insights and tips for anyone in a leadership role or aspiring to take up the role, in a dispersed mode of working. Tips include -Becoming situational leadersCopiously communicateEmpathize with individualsDont overdo anythingSupport associates, recognize mental well-beingKeep the big picture of business, partners and members of your household in mindHave fun and remember, we are all in this together.

Check out my late2020 threw up challenges like no year before, in anyone’s living memory. As coaches from PM Power Consulting, many of us went saw and experienced changes that affected our coaching practice. Through observations, sensing and experimenting, all of which were activated differently, we un-learned and re-learned to respond to our client needs. As 2020 draws to a close and a new year ushers itself in, tune into part 1 of our 2-part Yr End special where we PM Power coaches speak of challenging moments and how we adapted.In this episode we feature Gopalan (Gopal), Vishweshwar Hegde (Vishu), Anantha Natarajan (Anand), Srinivasan Soundararajan (Srini) and Sivaguru (Shiv). st episode!

In this conversation, Krishna Prasad - aka KP - a coach at PM Power Consulting, shares many of his personal experiences with Chitra. Among other things, he talks of: A mechanical engineer, with Masters and PhD in software Mercedes, Tata, Terex, Delphi Own journey of various roles in the Software industry, experiencing and contributing to various aspects of SDLC His origin story: typical middle class family, aspiring kids to be engineers or doctors; though liked the doctor profession, did not want much of biology and defaulted to engineering Wanted to get into sales [and marketing], appeared glamorous, though at heart i was an R&D person Tried sales and did not enjoy it; but realized that even if you are in development, you need to go to customers, to make the customers feel happy Though in automotive, true software started in avionics; i became a true software developer in Aeronautical Development Agency, developing military standard software Joining Daimler, was again forced, that I am happy about now, into software Aha! Moment - developing software from India, that goes into international products We need to get empathy to feel like a driver, difficult for a youngster to just imagine this Always good to think how someone would actually use the software While a lot of knowledge has been built about, say, braking systems, today, the systems have grown complex and need to work with multiple other systems Only the nature of rigour has changed to more agile ways of working Used to get a few thousand pages of document of requirements, we used to take a few months to get back on how it can be implemented Everyone has now realized that we cannot afford to write so much of initial documentation Rigour is still there, with incremental development - nature of development has changed; everything now is ‘continuish’ Systems getting complex, regulatory requirements are also increasing We have to bake in compliance; no longer a bolt-on Feels model based development will have a significant impact and many freshers are not prepared for that Career advice: develop T shaped skills.. With multiple skills being deep and not just one Question to ask yourself: with your T shaped skills, how can you continuously contribute The benefit of lateral movement across different roles in an organization Internalizing the concept of ikigai - balance passion, mission and profession; magic happens when all these intersect Secret for rallying teams around a leader’s vision: People should know that the leaders are making the right choices What worked for him: Have seen a couple of transformation journeys - they were only partly successful; start with high aspiration and expectation; most often - may turn out the aspirations were unrealistic No matter what, this transformation journey is important There cannot be just one end point - it is a journey - with great learning for leaders and teams Prospects in IT: fantastic area to get in; so broad, you can pick up any area and make a positive impact using technology We have to be really aware that when we enter this technology area; there is a half life of skills; this is reducing dramatically There is no ways of getting into technology areas that will keep you ahead for 305 years Constant need for learning - new skills, honing skills, learn something different Now we have unlimited access to resources, to learn every day Robin Sarma - 5 AM club - daily learning; learn anything, every day

Sunita Rao and Chitra Gurjar are in a conversation where Sunita shares her stories and experiences about -Being a Hyderabad person, who chose a path of computers through Math & designed solutions for the Nasdaq using VC++ -Cutting teeth in the world of telecom tech working at companies like Nokia, Motorola & Ericsson -Moving from a file systems protocols engineering role into product management and the transition experience -Understanding customers needs via figuring out the problem first & being an ambassador for the company as a product manager -3 focus areas for managing outcomes & transitions from existing business models to new models -The importance of mentorship & developing a product management mindset -Managing customer requirements by doing your homework, understanding needs & hand holding them as you deliver -Defining outcomes & how to monitor and manage them, key aspects that PM's should note -Relationship building as a key skill for PM's as they have no direct control -Balancing the pillars of product network -Her “pay it forward” stories through social causes for caregivers, women & women professionals -A message for listeners on you can do anything & never to give up. Sunita Rao is Senior Director of Product management at NetApp, a leading storage infrastructure and data services technology company headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. She has over 2 decades of experience in managing both rapidly growing startups and mature businesses. She did Engineering leadership roles prior to transitioning to Product Management and successfully led multiple business development and partnership activities across various technology areas. She currently leads “Keystone”, a strategic CEO initiative to transform the systems business to a recurring subscription / consumption model. Sunita, serves non-profits in India that foster creativity and growth in the minds of young girls interested in technology She can be reached via her Twitter and LinkedIn handles. https://www.linkedin.com/in/raosunitha/

Tune into a chat with a Mental Conditioning Coach Badri Narayanan, Founder of Quantum Leap Sports, with Gayatri Kalyanaraman from PM Power Consulting covering - -How he translated his interest in psychology to help him transition from software to being a mental conditioning coach -Squashing barriers to mental health -Players interest in data and insights to help manage their performance -Data and psyche of the mind -How he handles context switching across coaching sport, leadership and organizational change management -Managing multiple coaching relationships -Different players having different checklists, maintaining unique footprints for each athlete -Managing the coaching relationship using data to support the process -Data driven approach in psychology -Leadership coaching & material management company consulting experiences -Translation challenges across continental cultures Badri Narayanan is a Sports Psychologist, Mental Skills, Strategy and Performance Coach, Organizational Development Coach and an established Life Coach with more than 16 years of experience in this field. Badri works with a wide range of Athletes in the highest professional level across all sports, notably Tennis, Golf, Racing, Cricket, Soccer, Basketball etc.. He is also involved in Mental Training for sport parents as the family is often highly vested in the player’s development and parents benefit the most in knowing how to train their budding talent! His services are focused in improving their Mental Performance in their desired area of work. This includes understanding the mindset of the participants, their goals, motivation for success, monitoring and tracking their progress. He is also a Life coach and Organizational development coach for corporate and professionals. Prior to starting his Sports and Life coaching company, he worked as a project manager in Gladwell Technologies, Prosper Inc and Ingeo Systems. He did his engineering in NIT Trichy and Masters in Information Systems and a PhD in Philosophy from Utah State University. He can be reached at https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebelbadri/ or https://www.topmentalsuccess.com

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

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

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

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