Software People Stories

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 podcasts@pm-powerconsulting.com , 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/