In this first part of the conversation with an IT industry veteran, Satyendra Kumar, he shares

• Coming from a humble background and doing his initial education in a village
• Getting into Delhi University based on his good academic performance
• Having to take up a job, to meet some family needs
• How he chose a job in a defence agency and rising to a senior level
• Leaving his job and getting into consulting and quality
• Setting up the Tata Business Excellence Model for the group
• Working with different business units in different domains
• Switching to an IT organization before joining and spending 14 years at Infosys
• Continuing to work with different organizations post retirement from Infosys
• How learning came naturally to him, particularly in very new, challenging and different environments
• How he gains confidence about being able to do anything, amidst uncertainty
• The experience based on a major decision to switch from the comforts of a government jab, to a small apartment in a distant suburb
• How he thinks scale in conceiving and implementing organization wide initiatives, while making sure he has enough bandwidth to plan for the future and growing his team to 700
• His experience of recruiting people from non IT organizations
• How to get comfortable with delegation, with trust in the team
• His experience of creating an awareness and acceptance of processes among technical teams
• The tendency in quality professionals to become more of audit persons than having a direct connect with the senior leadership, to help them steer the business
• Why there should be shared goals for improvement between the quality function and the business units

In the next part, Kumar shares the answer to the question on his experience and perspectives related to Agile approaches and many more interesting points. Do not miss that..

Independent Advisor and Consultant to several large and medium scale institutions and enterprises since 2013. Was the Global Head and Senior Vice President– Productivity & Quality, Technology Tools & Software Reuse at Infosys Limited ( 2000 – 2013). Worked as Vice President at IMR Global, USA between 1998 and 2000. Worked as Deputy Chief Executive for Tata Quality Management Services – Tata Group between 1996 and 1998. Has consulted for over 50 national and multi-national clients in areas of Business Excellence, Operational Efficiencies, Customer Satisfaction Management, Business Continuity Management, Project and Program Management, and Quality Management. Had been Board member ( QuEST USA) , On the Panel of Judges - Wisconsin State Award ( USA) , Administrative Reforms Committee of Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore and Chief Technical Advisor to the Confederation of Indian Industry – Institute of Quality.

Has been a recipient of IEEE-Software Engineering Institute ( Carnegie Mellon University) International award (2011) and honoured with the “ Life Time Achievement Award for Quality and Business Excellence “ by a IT Industry association