Software People Stories

In this episode,Sivaguru from PM Power Consulting is in conversation with Dr. Pramod Varma, CTO of EkStep and Chief architect of Aadhaar, where Pramod talks aboutHis early school years studying in his mother tongue, MalayalamGetting into Applied mathematics for higher studiesJoining Infosys and learning to address the challenges of teaching academically high performersHis experience in using some of the earliest technology components of the internetHow his research and teaching led him to conceptual thinking and architectural thinking, through a non-linear learning approach for himselfHOw he developed the skills to communicate the big vision to individual contributors too - by thinking and working in a startup modeHis principles to Abstract, Isolate and define interfaces firstMaking sure the interface and automation are sollidBuilding for refactorabilityImportance of understanding the why behind the why behind the whyDesign for a decade, implement for todayHis idea of coming up with an addressable recipient for paymentHis thoughts on Chief architect or design by committee modelHis four tips for an aspiring architectDr. Pramod Varma is the CTO of EkStep, a not-for-profit creating learner-centric, technology enabled platform aiming to provide learning opportunities to 200 million children in India. In addition, he continues to be the Chief Architect of Aadhaar, India's digital identity program that has successfully covered more than 1.2 billion people in a short span of 7 years. He is also the architect of various India Stack layers such as eSign, Digital Locker, and Unified Payment Interface (UPI) all of which are now working at population scale in India. He has, along with Nandan Nilekani, co-founded beckn.org a non-profit creating open source protocol specifications for hyperlocal commerce.He is an advisor to Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), National Payment Corporation (NPCI), Goods and Services Tax Network (GSTN), National Health Authority (NHA), Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), and helps with many digital public infrastructure initiatives. He regularly speaks at technology conferencesand is part of advisory groups of various national projects from time to time.Before joining UIDAI in July 2009, he was the Chief Technology Architect and Vice President of Research at Sterling Commerce, now part of IBM. He joined Sterling in 2005 when Sterling Commerce acquired Yantra Corporation, a leading supply chain software company based in Boston, USA. At Yantra Corporation he has been anchoring all technology and architecture strategies and has been key part in building Yantra’s founding team. He began his career as part of the research team at Infosys Technologies and has been part of team that built an Internet banking module and a powerful web application server as early as 1995.Over the past 25+ years, he has studied architectures spanning from mainframes to web and has worked extensively with most programming languages, platforms, and databases. He has researched and taught various courses in Database Tuning, Distributed Computing, Internet Technologies, and Computer Architectures among others.Pramod holds a Master’s and Ph.D. degree in Computer Science along with a second Master’s in Applied Mathematics. His interests include Internet scale distributed architectures and intelligent systems. He is passionate about technology, science, society, and teaching.This podcast was created on Hubhopper studio. If you wish to start your own podcast for free, visit www.hubhopperstudio.com. Hubhopper is India's leading podcast creation platform. Start your podcast with Hubhopper studio & get your voice heard across platforms like Spotify, Gaana, Google podcasts, Wynk Music and more. Click on the link in the episode description or visit www.hubhopperstudio.com

In this episode Jerome Ruwe, Master Agile Coach is in conversation with Gayatri from DBS India. Jerome shares his experiences on Starting his career as a Finance specialist and falling in love with technology  Adopting Business Intelligence based software development & recognising power of dataConnected to Jeff Sutherland and adopted SCrum practices and handled soft aspects of hard questionsMeeting Boss Vode and experimenting with what we now know as LESS frameworkDeja vu when working as a scrum master for a universityThe pandemic level setting and humanity to the forefrontHis love of bringing people together, asking feedback in large forums and creating small experimentsHow technology can bring in objectivity and reduce discrimination The shameless self promotion culture and how he feels agile coaches are diluting their brandHolding hard conversations on the success of the organization and how an agile coach equally shares the burden along with the C-Suite membersHaving common goals and keeping your customers and culture at the center makes your endeavor meaningful Understanding points of diminishing marginal returns and how Change agents can structure their work and perspective Always staying honest to oneself, inviting mentors into your circle of trust and staying humble to continue to learn and growJerome is a master Agile Coach enabling several organizations in their agility journey. He’s been in the industry for 30+ years and enabling organizations and powering them with Agile ways of working for 25 years. He has worked as Scrum master, Agile Team Coach as well as Enterprise coach with large firms. He is passionate about bringing agile to companies and truly embodies the message of empowering everyone with his innate style of bringing his genuine self in every interaction. Jerome is an avid speaker in several forums and also works with many fellow agile journey people to uphold the message of staying true to agile values. His methods, drawing from traditional Lean & Agile practices (Scrum, Kanban, XP) as well as scaled frameworks and cutting edge techniques (LeSS, SAFe, Scrum at Scale, Dual Track Agile) bridge gaps which commonly exist between Product and Technology and establish objective measures of performance across critical OKRs (Objectives / Key Results).Jerome’s prioritization of business outcomes and process efficiency gains result in a transparent, collaborative, engaging and profitable experience for my key Stakeholders - from individual team members to the C Suite.Linked in: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeromeruwe/ This podcast was created on Hubhopper studio. If you wish to start your own podcast for free, visit www.hubhopperstudio.com. Hubhopper is India's leading podcast creation platform. Start your podcast with Hubhopper studio & get your voice heard across platforms like Spotify, Gaana, Google podcasts, Wynk Music and more. Click on the link in the episode description or visit www.hubhopperstudio.com

In this episode Liran Haimovitch, CTO and co-founder of rookout is in conversation with Chitra from PM Power Consulting. Liran shares his experiences onWorking across multiple technologies & roles Having a computer at age 6 and writing programs since then2 impacts from his cybersecurity experience - (1) the importance of understanding software & its complexity (2) doing something beyond just writing codeAging systems, lost design intent, and the most common form of tech debtThe 3 reasons for tech debt and what drives fear in engineersHow he co-founded Rookout, born out of his own frustration trying to understand how software worksThe idea of seeing code live, running in the actual environment to understand whats happening, rather than static codeMaking life easier for software engineers & enabling them to see flow of code How Rookout is helping customers reduce cycle time for new builds & adding new codeInfrastructure complexities of cloud and spinning up 1000's of servicesSimplicity in software engineering & the philosophy on building simple componentsThoughts on starting small & working agile & Ways of working for agile teamsFocusing on creating short, frequent feedback loopsA message for anyone taking up software engineeringLiran is the Co-Founder and CTO of Rookout. He’s an advocate of modern software methodologies like agile, lean, and DevOps. Liran’s passion is to understand how software actually works. When he’s not thinking of code, he’s usually diving or hiking.Social Media Handles:Twitter- @liranlastLinkedIn- https://www.linkedin.com/in/liran-haimovitch-652bba95/This podcast was created on Hubhopper studio. If you wish to start your own podcast for free, visit www.hubhopperstudio.com. Hubhopper is India's leading podcast creation platform. Start your podcast with Hubhopper studio & get your voice heard across platforms like Spotify, Gaana, Google podcasts, Wynk Music and more. Click on the link in the episode description or visit www.hubhopperstudio.com

This episode features a conversation between PM Power colleagues Guruprasad and Chitra with Guru sharing his story that includesLove for programming and logicC programming and how an incident set the stage for his sw dev career Experiences as a developer and directly working with customersHis 3 lessons through a serious escalation Key takeaways when transitioning from an individual contributor to a managerWanting to stay technical and how agile led the way to managementHaving an excellent manager as a mentor and role model in his early management daysFinding his Ikegai through coaching and a series of ups and downsHis message for aspiring coaches & people in technologyThis podcast was created on Hubhopper studio. If you wish to start your own podcast for free, visit www.hubhopperstudio.com. Hubhopper is India's leading podcast creation platform. Start your podcast with Hubhopper studio & get your voice heard across platforms like Spotify, Gaana, Google podcasts, Wynk Music and more. Click on the link in the episode description or visit www.hubhopperstudio.com

In this episode PM Power colleagues, J Veeraraaghavan (JV) & Sivaguru are in conversation as JV shares his career journey during the mid-career days, when he moved from one leadership role to another includingGetting the right breaks through his careerManaging projects, taking up middle managerial roles and moving into executive managementGetting exposed to and experience in roadmap planning for productsCurbing the tendency to jump in and act when team members were facing challenges, rather than taking an approach of helping themWhat helped him get over this:Emotional intelligenceBeing aware of self and being empathetic and sensing how others feelHaving a technical backgroundIn addition, approachability and ability to guideOn dealing with managers, when he took on larger responsibilities How he overcame the sudden feeling that one had nothing to do, as a manager, while being responsible overallHis first experience in managing a program and what he learnt from not having prior experienceWhat he realized by inadvertently stepping into the shoes of the project manager and realizing the impact it had on the project managerHis thoughts on luck v/s hard work for a successful managerFour dimensions of success for a middle manager - Engineering excellence; Delivery oversight; Self leadership; Coaching skillsHow executive leadership can enable middle managers to go beyond performance reviewsEstablishing communities of practice to help middle managers His take on managing time This podcast was created on Hubhopper studio. If you wish to start your own podcast for free, visit www.hubhopperstudio.com. Hubhopper is India's leading podcast creation platform. Start your podcast with Hubhopper studio & get your voice heard across platforms like Spotify, Gaana, Google podcasts, Wynk Music and more. Click on the link in the episode description or visit www.hubhopperstudio.com

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/