Software People Stories

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...

In this episode, Sivaguru and Vishweshwar Hegde from PM Power, are in conversation to discover interesting facets of Vishu’s journey through his career. Vishu shares several interesting nuggets that range across – • How he maps his learnings from his passion for trekking, to work life and big differences one can make by being a pathfinder or a herder. • Yoga, meditation and managing outside by mastering inside • Knowledge era paradigms • How to influence others to achieve outcomes in terms of quality • Having meaningful professional conversations with hardware professionals • Facilitative leadership and influencing styles

In this episode tune into conversations between Sivaguru from PM Power Consulting & Sandeep Dasgupta, Vice President R&D - Gaming Systems at Scientific Games.  In this conversation Sandeep talks about some of his world views that have shaped his work style as well as professional practices. Among other points, they cover * The change in mindset needed when moving from a number crunching oriented language like FORTRAN to object orientation  * How Sandeep learnt the differences in perspective between a techie and a business user, when working with data  * How his experience led him to formulate the idea of natural software engineering  * His views on Agile practices His views on Edge AI  Sandeep is a passionate technologist with varied and deep experience in Product Development, Technical and Solution Architecture, Emerging technologies, Engineering methodology and process, Agile methodologies, Innovation and IP Development.  He played various interesting roles in Engineering and Technology, ranging from building India's first online Stock Exchange, designing and developing Platform-Independent products in the early 90s, architecting and developing "Zero Latency Enterprise" products at the HP Advanced Technology Labs, being Lead Architect for one of the world's top-selling retail banking products, heading engineering for Industry-leading Online Real-timeTrading Products to designing best-of-breed frameworks for Agile Engineering.  Sandeep has an excellent track record of leadership in Product Development, Platform Development, R&D, Custom Application Development, Technical and Solutions Architecture, Systems Design, Performance Engineering and Product Engineering Process.  Read some of his blogs at  [Theories I am developing](Theories I am developing - http://www.naturalsoftwareengineering.com My thoughts on technology - http://sandeep-dasgupta-technology.blogspot.in/) [My Thoughts on Technology](http://sandeep-dasgupta-technology.blogspot.in/)

In this episode, I would like to share with you two incidents that helped me refine my own understanding of user needs and experience. From two different projects at different times, how I learnt:  * That the purpose of a developer is to solve others’ problems [and not just look for the next personal challenge to solve]  * Distinguishing user needs and wants  * The power of conversations with users  * The need and importance of empathy for the user ways of working and work environment, when designing solutions  * The power of iterative development, with frequent user experience based feedback