Software People Stories

In the second part of the podcast episode, Gayatri Kalyanaraman is in conversation with Karl Scotland, Agile Transformation Services Practice Manager at TEKsystems Global Services and a master facilitator, shares his career journey

• Karl shares his journey of how he became a master facilitator and that started when  he was experiencing tremendous resistance with Scrum. (Karl moved to using Kanban and lean concepts :) )
• Later when he was designing for larger change, Karl came across using  X-matrix - with an agile transformation flavor embedded
• Karl talks about his realisation that one should not think about just to implement scrum/kanban 
• Agility needs to be baked is created my own sense of self discovery - Achieving flow 
• And the next step was to start looking for evidence to look for and think about strategy as always about tough choices
• Something similar to Agile manifesto - A even over B
• Karl shares his views on Tool selection and it should not define process. Usage of tool should stay at the tactical side 
• Choice of tool should always be to help us capture flow data and understand blockers on 
• Interesting story on the balancing the speaking and consulting engagement 
• Shares the passion on building community events 

Karl can be reached at https://www.linkedin.com/in/kjscotland/ 

Karl helps businesses become Learning Organisations. Karl has held several engineering and management positions in Neural technologies, BBC, Cisco, Yahoo and Rally software. 

Over the last 20 years Karl has been an advocate of Lean and Agile approaches to achieve this, working with companies including the BBC, Yahoo!, EMC Consulting, Rally Software, Cisco, SDL, Legal & General and Alegis. During this time, he has been a pioneer of using Kanban Systems and Strategy Deployment for product development, a founding member of both the Lean Systems Society and Limited WIP Society, as well as being active in the community and a regular conference speaker. Karl is a co-founder of the Lean Agile in Brighton.

In the first part of the podcast episode, Gayatri Kalyanaraman is in conversation with Karl Scotland, Agile Transformation Services Practice Manager at TEKsystems Global Services and a master facilitator, shares his career journey

• Started his education with a passion with music and quickly found that he was enjoying the software part of the music over creative music
• Karl has held several engineering and management positions in Neural technologies, BBC, Cisco, Yahoo and Rally software
• Later on he moved to become a consultant in helping organizations transform themselves to writing clean code, good practices and happier people
• Karl shares his thesis on why technology roles have become extremely complex - while we started writing C++ code, there were relatively less requirements and hence the need to change became less relevant. But as software and technology become ubiquitous, the roles also needed to be wider and deeper
• Karl talks about curiosity and learning and how he has built it within himself. He talks about the story where the subject matter experts  
• Approach from the perspective of what does organizations need to do to become change initiators themselves
• Karl shares his model of Agenda Shift hypothesis
• Karl loves the perspective of ‘Cynics will become your biggest supporters’ - as they want to share the obstacles that’s preventing them from making it happen
• Hypothesis driven change creates a sense of ownership on their obstacle

Karl can be reached at https://www.linkedin.com/in/kjscotland/ 

Karl helps businesses become Learning Organisations. Karl has held several engineering and management positions in Neural technologies, BBC, Cisco, Yahoo and Rally software. 

Over the last 20 years Karl has been an advocate of Lean and Agile approaches to achieve this, working with companies including the BBC, Yahoo!, EMC Consulting, Rally Software, Cisco, SDL, Legal & General and Alegis. During this time, he has been a pioneer of using Kanban Systems and Strategy Deployment for product development, a founding member of both the Lean Systems Society and Limited WIP Society, as well as being active in the community and a regular conference speaker. Karl is a co-founder of the Lean Agile in Brighton. 

In this podcast episode, Gayatri Kalyanaraman is in conversation with Vikrant Viniak, Senior Managing Director of Accenture and a prolific speaker on Technology at the frontier, shares his career journey

• Started as a mechanical engineer in the areas of supply chain. After taking his management degree in Chicago he chose to become a consultant
• Shares his reasons for reinventing himself every 3-5 years and starts the root cause for it
• Talks about personal board of directors creating mentors around and why one need to reach their own potential
• Talks about pushing himself physically, mentally and professionally by continuous improvement on oneself
• Vikrant shares the art of building Reseliance by creating a beautiful 15 min ‘me’ time over a period of time
• Vikant shares his belief that he likes to listen from each and every person he comes in contact with. This helps in learning and unlearning in a more seamless way
• Also he’s found his passion in physical fitness 
• His Ethos, As written by Robert Frost - The woods are lovely, dark, and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep. 
• Vikrant shares his stories in taking and receiving feedback and it has also helped to become more genuine 
• Vikrant shares how he has applied rapid changes that are happening and expectation of business leaders on where technology is heading. He shares how he keeps up with the rapid pace of learning
• Vikrant shares his key wisdom around being kind to yourself, learning and constantly learn to unlearn

Vikrant V is a Senior Managing Director in Accenture for the last 16+ years. In his current role as Senior Managing Director at Accenture Strategy, he has worked in Telecom, Media and Technology Industry. He’s a dynamic business leader who is passionate about challenging myself to solve complex problems using creative thinking; bold and iconoclastic action; and data-driven analysis and decision making. He enables his clients with their most strategic imperatives including Digital Transformation, Driving Growth through Digital Operating Models, Everything As a Service (EaaS) transformations, ESG, and Strategic Partnerships.

An avid runner and fitness enthusiast who loves people and technology. In his professional and personal life, he has committed to going the extra mile in supporting, mentoring and coaching people to achieve their goals. I like to push my physical and intellectual boundaries.

Vikrant started his career as a software engineer in Wipro and moved to become a supply chain consultant. After completing his management graduation in Quinlan School of Business, Loyola university in Chicago, he became a consultant. He has a degree in Mechanical Engineering in NIT Trichy, India.   

Vikrant can be contacted here - https://www.linkedin.com/in/vikrantviniak/ or 

Follow in twitter - https://twitter.com/vviniak?lang=en 

In the second part of the podcast episode, Gayatri Kalyanaraman is in conversation with Dave Farley, Independent Software Developer and Consultant, Founder and Director of Continuous Delivery Ltd.

• Dave shares his perspective on the new fads that are constantly coming in and what he’s rooting himself into the basics
• Critical to focus on Fundamentals - exercise on learning, ensure that you have modular and building blocks, get feedback constantly, separation of concerns
• Having these basic models in place will be always durable  
• Dave shares secret in balancing the content creation and software consulting as well as community building
• He also shares the reason why he started the conference speaking - recruit people! 
• Dave believes in being generous in sharing ideas and creating collective and learning from colleagues
• Dave shares some of the key inflection points in his career from being consultant to LMAX product and starting his own consulting as well as his recent experience of building a YouTube channel
• Dave shares identify areas that gives one joy and identify areas of influencing. Whats your professional duty and taking pride in what you do

Guest Introduction

Dave Farley is a pioneer of Continuous Delivery, thought-leader and expert practitioner in CD, Devops, TDD and software development in general.

Dave has been a programmer, software engineer and systems architect for many years, from the early days of modern computing, taking those fundamental principles of how computers and software work, and shaping ground-breaking, innovative approaches that have changed how we approach modern software development. Dave has challenged conventional thinking and led teams to build world class software.

Dave is co-author of the - Continuous Delivery, and a popular conference speaker on Software Engineering. He built one of the world’s fastest financial exchanges, is a pioneer of BDD, an author of the Reactive Manifesto, and a winner of the Duke award for open source software with the LMAX Disruptor.

Dave is passionate about helping development teams around the world improve the design, quality and reliability of their software, by sharing his expertise through his consultancy, YouTube channel, and training courses.

Dave can be contacted here -  https://www.linkedin.com/in/dave-farley-a67927/ 

Published works - ​​ https://continuousdelivery.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/The-Deployment-Pipeline-by-Dave-Farley-2007.pdf

https://www.amazon.com/Continuous-Delivery-Pipelines-Better-Software/dp/B096TTQHYM 

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCfqyGl3nq_V0bo64CjZh8g

In the first part of the podcast episode, Gayatri Kalyanaraman is in conversation with Dave Farley, Independent Software Developer and Consultant, Founder and Director of Continuous Delivery Ltd.

• Dave started his career as a visual designer even before user experience became center stage 
• He later became a systems engineer in designing large complex software
• Dave shares his experience in working with stalwarts in ThoughtWorks building software in an agile fashion and the kind of innovations that the team were doing in developing terms that have became common place now
• Dave shares his experience in architecting LMAX as the Financial exchange in a truly continuous delivery
• He says that it's impossible to break compliance in a continuous delivery environment and makes a clear business case for financial sector to rapidly adopt the modern software practices
• Started experimenting the idea of Extreme programming with colleague Jez with a single chapter and extended the notion of continuous delivery
• He’s inspired by Feymann’s theory that, If you can synthesize an idea in a way a child can understand, your solution is half done
• Dave shares his 10X teams and not necessarily 10X developers
• He further shares the story of overlapping developing teams in lean manufacturing and how transformation of people in taking accountability 
• Dave talks about software practices by decade and he’s enjoying being part of the journey.

Dave Farley is a pioneer of Continuous Delivery, thought-leader and expert practitioner in CD, Devops, TDD and software development in general.Dave has been a programmer, software engineer and systems architect for many years, from the early days of modern computing, taking those fundamental principles of how computers and software work, and shaping ground-breaking, innovative approaches that have changed how we approach modern software development. Dave has challenged conventional thinking and led teams to build world class software.

Dave is co-author of the - Continuous Delivery, and a popular conference speaker on Software Engineering. He built one of the world’s fastest financial exchanges, is a pioneer of BDD, an author of the Reactive Manifesto, and a winner of the Duke award for open source software with the LMAX Disruptor.

Dave is passionate about helping development teams around the world improve the design, quality and reliability of their software, by sharing his expertise through his consultancy, YouTube channel, and training courses.

Dave can be contacted here -  https://www.linkedin.com/in/dave-farley-a67927/ 

Published works - ​​ https://continuousdelivery.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/The-Deployment-Pipeline-by-Dave-Farley-2007.pdf

https://www.amazon.com/Continuous-Delivery-Pipelines-Better-Software/dp/B096TTQHYM 

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCfqyGl3nq_V0bo64CjZh8g

In this episode, Shiv continues his conversation with a colleague in PM Power, Venu Subrmania Iyer.

In the previous episode, he asked Venu if testing should always be independent or it can be embedded in the development process itself

He shared his answer to that question and more

• From earlier models of independent testing centers, testing is being shifted left [particularly in Agile approaches], but there is a need for both approaches
• How he got exposed to Agile approaches, by starting with organizational transformational initiatives
• How management support and culture are critical for any transformation project
• What he considers as critical for success in agile transformation projects
• How his perception and appreciation for Agile approaches changed from the days of being a tester to getting into a transformation initiative
• On applying Agile based on the context and determining the best options
• The importance of having shared or collaborative goals for team success
• His thoughts on what skills are needed to be an effective tester
• His tips for persons considering a career in testing

Venu has been in the embedded technology space for 24 years, working on cutting-edge R&D in the areas of Consumer Electronics, Display Systems, Semiconductor & Automotive domains. Starting his career as a Hardware Engineer in Philips,later switched to Software Testing due to his passion for finding software defects. He was 1st independent software testing engineer in Bosch Car Multimedia, Bangalore and later played several leadership roles in testing, Project Management and Quality assurance.

Prior to joining PM Power consulting, I was Director, Delivery and test in Harman for Automotive Digital cockpit and Telematics software solutions. I have played leadership role for delivery management, software testing and supplier delivery management.

More about Venu : https://pm-powerconsulting.com/experts/venu/

In this episode, Shiv is in conversation with a colleague in PM Power, Venu Subrmania Iyer. Venu, who started his career as a systems engineer, shares

• Starting with hardware, software and testing
• Born in Kerala and grew up in Alleppey and grew up in Kottayam
• Studied Electrical Engineering
• Passion for engineering was inspired by an uncle and it was a difficult journey due to personal situations
• How he goes about in identifying solutions
• His passion was in electrical engineering, designing various elements in power engineering
• Wanting to get into some public sector enterprises, but getting into a multinational - as a customer service engineer to service TV systems and DVD, Audio systems
• Locating problems and isolating them based on simple documentation, using systematic approaches
• Using only 2 tools: multimeter and CRO [cathode ray oscilloscope]
• How he was able to adapt to a problem resolution approach from a designer-inventor aspiration [from R&D to service mindset]
• The pressure of solving issues while customers were watching over your shoulder and doing all it takes, including visiting a consumer court
• Moving to the software domain - as a hardware engineer and working with test engineers, taking an interest and choosing to get into systems testing
• Setting a personal goal to get into software and system testing
• Attending training from ISTQB and getting a formal certification
• Moving to an automotive company as the first independent test engineer
• Growing his team to over 200 in about 10 years
• How he was able to pick up the technology and domain aspects and the importance of having a team with complementary skills
• His approach to personal scaling by investing in developing others
• His thoughts on creating the awareness of testing in developers
• Injecting defects into software under test, to train testers
• Transitioning to managerial roles and then to a display manufacturing company
• Taking up a delivery role, to get experience on the right side of the V model
• The answer to a question on : His view on whether testing should always be independent or it can be embedded in the development process itself in the next episode

Venu has been in the embedded technology space for 24 years, working on cutting-edge R&D in the areas of Consumer Electronics, Display Systems, Semiconductor & Automotive domains. Starting his career as a Hardware Engineer in Philips,later switched to Software Testing due to his passion for finding software defects. He was 1st independent software testing engineer in Bosch Car Multimedia, Bangalore and later played several leadership roles in testing, Project Management and Quality assurance.

Prior to joining PM Power consulting, I was Director, Delivery and test in Harman for Automotive Digital cockpit and Telematics software solutions. I have played leadership role for delivery management, software testing and supplier delivery management.

More about Venu : https://pm-powerconsulting.com/experts/venu/

In this episode, I continue my conversation with our guest Robert Cooke, founder of 3forge, a provider of data virtualization and visualization technology. In this conversation, Robert shares 

• What was the startup bug that bit him.. The urge to reinvent how software is developed based on experience, after getting a feeling that 90% of the code written is quite similar across teams and organizations and how that can be a base for reuse
• Solve it once, solve it well, reuse it.
• His approach to abstracting many of the operations needed, for example, the user interface widgets and experience, to reduce the work needed to create and deploy solutions quickly
• The  story behind the name of his company 3forge -- started asForge financial framework and then evolved into 3forge
• His thoughts on processing data in real time v/s in batch or offline mode 
• His thoughts on defensive coding and a 2 minute intro to defensive coding
• How he manages his time and what stresses him

Robert Cooke is the Founder and Principal Architect at 3Forge, a New York-based provider of data virtualization and visualization technology. 3Forge has achieved significant growth over the years as a result of increasing demand for its award-winning, web-based browser AMI platform.

Robert’s accomplishments have spanned across electronic trading, middle and back office, regulatory reporting, compliance and risk management.

His LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robert-cooke-a7835b69/

In this episode, our guest is Robert Cooke, founder of 3forge, a provider of data virtualization and visualization technology solutions. In this conversation, Robert shares 

• His origin story of starting with computers when he was a kid in the 80s
• His liking to build things - in wood or lego
• Discovering that he could build a lot more without needing a lot more money, with computers
• Developing Video games, accounting software - helping manage things in college with software solutions
• His experience with writing code in 128k memory
• Working in silicon valley in 2000s, getting a job in an insurance company
• 4Vs of data: volume, velocity, variety and validity of data
• Last 15 years has been about solving problems with the 4Vs
• Being a self proclaimed software addict, sometimes upto 10-12 hours per day
• His early experience with writing software for his club, in his teens - when hardcoding was more natural
• Learning later that parameterization, lookup tables etc were more elegant and generic
• Starting his company in 2012
• Same software for all customers, with a single branch of code
• Anyone who takes the art form of writing code seriously, will get better with time
• His transition from being in individual contributor to delivering as a team
• The advantage of getting different insights from team members
• Naming, logical architecture decisions become important when working in teams
• The need for consistency across team members..but what is right or wrong
• Learning from the NEC - National Electrical Code - that  codifies the minimum requirements for safe electrical installations in a single, standardized source
• We do not have anything similar in software
• Very hard to get rid of code, but it can be a therapeutic process
• Insert or create is easy; update or modify is somewhat difficult and deleting is extremely hard
• About the urge to do Ctrl-A and delete.. And rewrite code from the scratch
• How he balances his engineering thinking and artist’s thinking [developing software as a work of art, as there are so many ways to solve a problem]
• Balancing maintainability, the efforts needed and how well the software performs
• He looks for people with strong math and logic background and problem solving, not necessarily experience in coding
• Hardest part on software development is debugging somebody else’s code

More on his entrepreneurial experience, tips on defensive coding and a whole lot more in the next episode

Robert Cooke is the Founder and Principal Architect at 3Forge, a New York-based provider of data virtualization and visualization technology. 3Forge has achieved significant growth over the years as a result of increasing demand for its award-winning, web-based browser AMI platform.

Robert’s accomplishments have spanned across electronic trading, middle and back office, regulatory reporting, compliance and risk management.

His LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robert-cooke-a7835b69/

In this podcast episode, Gayatri Kalyanaraman is in conversation with Sat (Sathyanarayanan) Vijayaraghavan, Founder and CEO at Adept Labz AKA "Ajira.Tech" and CASA Retail AI

• Sat started dabbling with computers at the age of 11 and started keenly interested in problem solving
• Sat also shares his interests in computers while also sharing his earlier thoughts of following his fathers business and gently moved towards software technology
• Joined Cognizant as one of the earlier employees and moved to back to US and showed early interest in the field of product development and consulting. 
• At this time (late 90s), Building a web page was a cutting edge and started building a product in work flow development. Sat shares his learnings of nuts and bolts of problem solving
• His next experience was with Diamond cluster consulting that sharpened his strategy consulting skills for about 5.5 years and built the first marketplace 
• Sat later talks about his decisions of location from India to US to across the globe and his love for problem solving
• Sat covers the initial set of vision that started in a Tea shop Mangalambika and conceptualized the company 
• Sat shares his stories of creating a brand new firm Ajira in 2016. He also shares the struggles and wiggles that he had to ride out of
• Sat has sold off his first venture and building the next set of ventures
• What is the impact that we are leaving behind in the workplace that we are in. Sat shares some profound ideas from his experience and links it to general happiness and financial freedom
• Differences between being a executive and Founder and risks and struggles of being an entrepreneur 
• Sat shares how as a start up first question to answer is there a person out there who will be ready to pay for it and ensure that you build fault tolerance from the get go.

Sathyanarayanan (SAT for his friends) did his bachelor engineering in Venkateshwara college in Chennai and post grad in Cincinnati college. Started working for Cognizant. Moved on the Diamond Cluster and later to Wpro. He became the General manager and the vertical head for Retail in ThoughtWorks.

Sat has about 23 years of overall IT management and delivery experience with 4 years in management (P&L responsibility, operations etc), 6 years in technology strategy and 9 years in global software sourcing; 8+ years in US working with ‘C’ level executives of Fortune 500 firms

He has been a Founder and CEO of Ajira, General Manager of Chennai at ThoughtWorks, Retail practice development at Wipro and created Retail practice at ThoughtWorks

Sat shares a passion for enterprise architecture having architected some of the largest online and trading platforms for Fortune 500 customers. He has also defined strategic enterprise architectures for several Fortune 100 customers

He is a true Thought leader with international publications in global retailing, customer experience, cross channel retailing, supply chain and eCommerce

Sat can be contacted at https://www.linkedin.com/in/satvijayaraghavan/