Software People Stories

In this conversation, Chitra from PM Power & Swetha Sivaram, Sr. Manager at IBM, talk about her journey in the world of technology as Swetha shares her experiences on - * Choice of computer science engineering * Perceptions at work * Transitions from a telecom engineer to app developer to systems engineering * Humanistic insights from work experience * Sharing experiences by and for women in technology Swetha Sivaram is a Senior Engineering Manager at IBM India. She has over 17 years of experience in the software industry spanning the domains of telecom, application development and most recently, systems engineering. She has led various engineering teams and with her expertise in transformation management, agile development and goal-oriented execution skills, has helped teams challenge status quo and achieve their potential. Swetha is passionate about helping women in tech careers achieve their full potential and is actively involved in several efforts both within IBM as well as externally. Swetha has a Bachelors degree in Computer Engineering from BITS Pilani and among other things, enjoys solving large puzzles (read 5ft*4ft).

In this conversation with Sivaguru, Gayatri from PM Power Consulting - also known as G3 - shares her experiences and experiments on a wide range of topics including -Cultural aspects of managing large application portfolio transitions -Personal transition from maker to a coach, to help teams transform to agility -The concept of work-life balance -Her personal experiments with an appraisal system at home

In this conversation with Sivaguru, Anupama shares her experience related to:  -Efficient algorithms  -Skills an architect needs  -Differences in architecting small and large applications  -Tips for women who need to or want to take a break This episode covers 2 broad aspects of software architecture - 1\. Evolution of architecting a software system, from over 15 years ago to today, and the evolution of a software architect's role.  Starts at 5:13 2\. Differences in architecture for small v/s large organizations & dilemmas architects face when things are ambiguous.  Starts at 28:45 Anupama, has been developing software, for the last 25 years and has built applications across different domains - manufacturing, customer service, storage, e-commerce, health tech. She has dabbled with multiple technologies and languages, starting from C/C++, Microsoft MFC and MS SQL Server and then moving on to Java / JEE, MySQL and Postgres and AWS platforms. Most recently she was responsible for the architecture and delivery of Hospital Management System, a part of the health tech product suite. In this role, she has scaled the product architecture from the small hospitals segment to a medium-large hospitals. She has played a key role in seamlessly evolving the architecture from a predominantly on-premise deployments to cloud-hosted / SaaS and hybrid deployments. She had designed and built data server / tape server products which helped enterprises backup terabytes of data, most efficiently, on a regular basis. She has led teams delivering custom and add-on services around these products, and also built medium to large scale e-commerce and web applications on Microsoft and JEE platforms. For a brief period in between, to be able to devote more time for her kids and family, she was freelancing as consultant architect with very early stage startups, setting up their product architecture and development frameworks. She actively engaged with a group of women all working out of home, to build and deliver end-to-end custom software for small startups.

In this conversation Chitra shares her experience with Sivaguru related to * What she learnt developing mission critical systems * How playing basketball helped her appreciate goal focused teamwork * Helping other women to make their voices heard

In this conversation with Sivaguru, Diwakar Menon talks about * The focus for testing effectiveness would be to address risks * Some stories of testing in projects adopting agile approaches * High functioning development organizations * What made him launch a startup And some more.. Diwakar Menon has over 30 years of work experience ranging from test consulting to delivery to pre-sales. He has been the head of service delivery for key customer contracts that encompass a variety of services from Software QA, Testing, Application Development, Application Management, Infrastructure Management and Business Support Services across a multiplicity of pillars like Telecom, Banking & Financial Industry, Government, and Health. He is the co-founder of Last Mile Consultants , a boutique test consulting organisation, that works with IT Service providers, product organisations, captives and startups and helps set up or improve their software testing function, focusing on test strategies, capabilities, test automation, or process transformations.   Diwakar possesses a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering from Mumbai University. Prior to founding Last Mile, Diwakar has worked in global organisations like Tech Mahindra, Perot Systems (now Dell), Deutsche Software, Tata Unisys (now TCS) and CMC Ltd.

Join a new host from PM Power Consulting Chitra, in conversation with Sivaguru to learn more about how he unravels his pursuit of - * Excellence in business around results through all-pervasive leadership  * Managing knowledge gained by doing, learning and adapting  * Disciplines to deliver software  * Sport and coaching for breakthrough performance  * Uncovering intuition, spontaneity, awakening senses and connecting with people using podcasting.

L Ravichandran, known to most as L Ravi, is the President and COO of Tech Mahindra. In his career of over 4 decades, he has seen and been part of the growth of the IT industry in India.  In this episode, Ravi talks of his experiences, views and what customers expect from IT in conversation with Sivaguru from PM Power Connsulting.  Listen on..  * The relevance of statistics and the evolution of data science * What we can learn from war thinking to plan software projects * How to get maximum benefits from agile approaches * Customer expectations of business outcomes

In this conversation, J Veeraraaghavan shares his experience and perspectives with Sivaguru on - * The mindset needed for developers and testers to play as a single team  * How use of right words can bring in significant changes  * What approaches are needed to build great products  * Leveraging personal values and beliefs for career success  * Future of software development and software factories

In this episode, we invite you to listen to Dorai Thodla, serial tech entrepreneur, in conversation with Sivaguru from PM Power. Dorai is the founder and CTO of Technology Strategies LLC, based in the United States. He is a mentor at KCG College of Technology Chennai. He is passionate about teaching students and mentors product startups. Dorai also gives talks on emerging technologies and their impact while consulting with companies on how to build tech communities. He believes in the paradigm of “building to learn” by encouraging teaching via “doing” so students see their learning transform into a product that extends around a complete stack. Dorai lives in Chennai and spends time in the Bay Area and Seattle outside of India. He is currently involved with the following initiatives : •[Build2Learn](http://www.build2learn.in/) • [InfoAssitants](http://infoassistants.com/)– a set of tools for collecting and analyzing information. Dorai can be reached via [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/doraithodla/) or [@dorait](https://twitter.com/dorait) Dorai shares his experience and perspectives on • Identifying opportunities and building micro products • Some creative applications of one of his products • Looking at effective ways to learn software development, by building under guidance • He also examines and offers solutions to questions on “how to make your product discoverable and useful”

In this conversation Paramu Kurumathur, Principal Consultant with PM Power Consulting shares his views and experiences, in conversation with Sivaguru, related to * His experiences with nimble practices to more formal waterfall approaches to agile. * The impact of technology on the way software is developed.  * How global architectures evolve.  * Contrasting character development in writing and feature development for software.  * Future for the CIO role and if it can be a career option  And some more...