Software People Stories

Welcome to another episode of the Software Lifecycle Stories. In this episode, Sivaguru and Anantha Natarajan (who prefers to be called Anand), colleagues from PM Power Consulting, speak about several topics including: * Is software development ‘engineering’?  * Trusting one’s feelings * Treating IT as an enabler for business * Creating functionally satisfying solutions to make a difference for the users * Lessons from building something ahead of time * Becoming and Being a coach - when better comes before good! * Detaching oneself in delicate coaching situations * Designing mistake-proof solutions * One tip for developing empathy * Benefits of mindfulness * Playing Bridge and developing software

In this conversation, Annie Abraham - head of Financing IT and Group Wide Process for Danske IT and Support services in Bangalore - shares her thoughts and experiences with Sivaguru from PM Power on - * Transformation & Modernization projects * Applying Agile approaches in a large program * Women and agile / if agile ways of working is women friendly * Finding one’s own rhythm to balance responsibilities at work and home * Tips for those starting out on their careers Annie Abraham has over 22 years’ experience in IT industry leading high value and complex projects and is a sought after leader to drive critical delivery assignments to success. She brings expertise in Legacy modernization and transformation with the ability to coach and set up successful scrums teams and deliver to true outcomes. Annie has successfully seeded and executed several strategic organization wide programs to achieve process optimization, cost and effort savings by setting up competency groups like Agile, estimation, Account governance and application enhancement frameworks. She is a strong people manager with the ability to hire right talent, build, motivate and nurture multiple high-performing teams. Annie currently heads Financing IT and Group Wide Process for Danske IT and Support services in Bangalore, India, a subsidiary of Danske Bank. Prior to this, she worked with Unisys India, HCL Technologies and Deustche Software. Annie via [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/in/annie-abraham-a33a3513)

A Journey from Programming to Coaching In this episode, Savitha in conversation with Chitra from PM Power consulting, shares her views on - working with chaos and pressure while discovering one's strengths over coffee - Why boredom is a good thing  - Learnings from working across captive, product & services companies with freedom to explore various roles - Using coaching as a means of strength to connect with people - The power of freeing your mind - Alternating focus between work & life

Tune into tips from a techie turned transformational teacher ! Sivaguru from PM Power is very happy to share his conversation with Suresh Ramaswamy, a successful serial entrepreneur, who started with roles in IT and then pivoted to helping others discover themselves as a transformational teacher. When this conversation started, we were expecting a highly technical discussion from a VLSI architect, but what it ended up being was -- literally mind blowing! At PM Power, we have always combined the hard and soft aspects - including mindful approaches for deriving the maximum impact from the journeys of delivery excellence . This conversation touches on some of the mindfulness aspects that can make an entrepreneur or an individual contributor successful. In this conversation, Suresh shares his perspectives on  * Personal development and transformation * Keys for entrepreneurial success, including looking at entrepreneurship as going beyond an escape from corporate stress * Operating in an environment of Uncertainty and risk in a startup * The importance of having a balanced and impactful intent * Identifying core objectives for your startup * Letting go - to learn, manage stress etc * The need to be inclusive * Personal and professional relationships And a peek into his latest book, "Just be" which is about moving through and living life under an infinite guidance. Suresh Ramaswamy is the award-winning author of the personal transformation bestseller Just Be, Transform Your Life and Live as Infinity. As a transformational teacher and visionary entrepreneur, he is passionate about igniting and catalyzing the transformation of humanity. With his background as an electrical engineer and technology executive, he brings an inspired yet pragmatic approach to elevating consciousness on our planet. Held in high regard by people around the world, Suresh’s light-filled presence and guidance awakens them to their innermost essence.  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/just.be.book/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sureshramaswamy.author/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/sureshauthor https://SureshRamaswamy.org

In this episode, our podcast guest, Roopa Dharmapuri shares her perspectives on the interconnectedness of life & work among other views with Chitra Gurjar from PM Power Consulting, through * Her journey from development, to testing and product management.   * Anchoring engagement at work and in life through curiosity and learning . * Stepping into customer shoes. * The importance of establishing trust and transparency while building and delivering products.  * Being influenced by various company cultures & nurturing collaboration. * Mentoring career women and how to have an aspiration to come back Roopa Dharmapuri is a Senior technology professional with 17+ years of global experience delivering software products to market. Her domain expertise spans Enterprise Security, Strong Authentication, Identity & Access Management, Enterprise Mobility Management, Application Lifecycle Management & CRM Solutions. Roopa has held various leadership roles in Engineering and Product Management at various companies and is currently a Senior Member of Technical Staff at Acalvio Technologies. LinkedIn Profile:http://linkedin.com/in/roopa-dharmapuri-1a7b03  Twitter: @rdharmapuri

Continuing on our theme of conversations with women in IT, in this episode, Vandana Malaiya, whose career has seen roles in hardware, embedded systems, setting up team and organization level processes and setting up a venture and to a social venture and some senior leadership roles in the corporate environment,in conversation with Sivaguru,shares her perspectives on -The need to and opportunities to keep on learning -Adopting standards and consistent adherence for outcomes -How economic and governmental ecosystems can help or hinder startup aspirations -Balancing career and family aspirations with support from her husband -Physical and emotional challenges for women after 50 -Supporting girls and women become successful -Some typical challenges faced by all startups -Need for men also to develop empathy Vandana Malaiya is an IT professional with over 30 years of experience in the industry. She has worked with companies IBM, Verifone, DCM Data Systems and her own start-up EximSoft. She now works with the social sector primarily in the area of education of girl child and women empowerment. She is passionate about advancement of women at the work place and has worked extensively on programs for women leadership. She continues to keep her connect with the IT industry through consulting and mentoring. She is a BE(Hons) in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from BITS Pilani and an Executive MBA from IIM Bangalore. She has worked in India and US. She loves travel and all forms of art. She can be reached via - [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/vandanamalaiya); [Twitter](http://@vandanamalaiya) and her [Blog Page](http://vandanamalaiya.com/)

In this episode, a freewheeling panel discussion among four accomplished women from Global Automation Inc., Bengaluru covers, among other things: - their own individual experiences in IT, in creating or consuming solutions  - balancing demands at work and outside  - support systems for women at work and home - empathy for customers and how that helps in evolving products - the importance of continual learning - creating and nurturing a healthy work environment - peer support and recognition

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.