Software People Stories

A candid conversation between Madhavi Ravanan, SI Delivery Head at Nokia and Chitra Gurjar from PM Power Consulting, covered several topics from Madhavi's experiences on

Luck by chance entry to NIT Trichy to get her degree in engineering

Early development days for telecom software learning standards, switches and conducting experiments

Role diversity and how she took on business development

Developing technical practice as a means of incubating ideas, finding adjacencies and becoming a trusted advisor to customers

How to keep new engineers challenged & focused

Developing customer intimacy for effective stakeholder management

Changing times of engineers then and now

Re-learning and internalizing dev ops

Importance of constant learning & re-inventing ones self

Madhavi is a technology professional with a couple of decades of industry experience. She is an alumna of NIT-Trichy, from class of ‘98. 

She started her career as a software engineer, developed software for a variety of telecom and networking gear, led product engineering teams, took a stab at business development, account management and technology practice development before moving into the current role. In her current role, she heads the telco cloud integration delivery unit in Nokia Software’s core services organisation. 

She is passionate about technology as an enabler, thrilled with the pace of disruptions in the industry, enjoys new ways of working and likes doing some crystal-gazing. She is an avid reader and occasionally puts her pen to paper. 

Tune-in to this podcast to hear her look back on the path she has taken, her views on what’s happening in the industry, what may lie ahead, how to stay future-ready and more.

In this episode, we bring you what "pay it forward" means to some software people, currently associated with PM Power Consulting. 

Sivaguru: Being grateful for the nudge from a neighbor and the in person tutoring and guidance to see me as an engineer, without expecting anything in return, and how teaching is a way of sharing your own experience

Chitra: being spotted by a coach to get inducted into basketball, being tutored and mentored by a professor in college and one way she pays it forward is to teach children play basketball and draws a lot of energy from their happiness.

Sivakumar: the selflessness of caregivers for elder care that he was touched by and an idea to institutionalize paying it forward

Anand (Anantha Natarajan) talks about the emotional kindness that he received and paying that forward and sharing words of appreciation pretty much every day, as a habit

Gayatri, remininesces on her grandfather’s words.. About the wellness of everyone in the world and, how volunteering has been her way of paying it forward in different areas and her wish for more social enterprises to address very serious issues such as environment

Vishu narrates how he realized that what interests him most is doing good for the world and has a very nice story to illustrate the theory of abundance, some of the initiatives he is associated with

Gopal talks of random acts of kindness that he has received and experienced in his life and how extending a helping hand makes his day and is very empowering and his passion to share as an act of paying forward

Paramu can relate this to practices in ancient Greece or Indian societies, the difference between gratitude and indebtedness 

JV says that it is a wonderful concept and one feels very good and the world is a livable place only because many people pay it forward and JV wants to pay many things forward, starting with what he received from his father

How can you pay it forward? Do what you are passionate about, to see success in other people. 

And, of course, you can share your story on this podcast, Software People Stories.

Do write to us at [email protected] , and share your story.

In this episode, PM Power colleagues Gayathri and Chitra are in conversation as Gayathri shares narratives about

Learning in the face of continuous change

Owning your career and sustaining like marathon runners

How business is getting re-invented and 4 dimensions of business agility

Purpose driven learning & how organizations can unshackle themselves

Alignment of purpose and business agility

Of cruise ships and yachts 

Experiences, outcomes & results and how these impact an organizational culture

Her narrative on preparing and undertaking a physically and mentally demanding journey with a team of 10.

Message on uncovering the learner within one’s self.

In this episode Ramkumar, VP Technology from MiQ Digital is in conversation with Sivaguru from PM Power Consulting. Ram shares his views on -

How he got into software to have greater flexibility in terms of companies to choose from

How he understood that every software, every company provides great opportunities to do great work

Qualities he looks for, when hiring

What does empathy for users mean to backend teams?

Contextual choice of Agile or Waterfall

How to effectively organize teams that produce microsservices and consume microservices

Testing during an architectural transition of a software platform

Evolving safety nets for development practices as an organization grows

The importance of being adaptable in one’s career progression

Handling stress at work

The future of a software career

Ramkumar has over 2 decades of experience working in US and in India. He has worked in different domains such as ERP, Oracle Core Database development, E-commerce, Big data. Currently, he heads the technology team at MIQ which is a leading independent marketing intelligence company.

His Linkedin Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ramkumar-venkatesan/

We welcome back a fellow PM Powerian, Vishu Hegde in conversation with Chitra where Vishu shares a flow of thoughts on 

Connecting with organization vision with 2-steps removed

Building a temple and laying bricks

Principles of flow and identifying bottlenecks using flow metrics

Understanding flow of work by visualization, metrics, work-in-progress & throughput

Starting with mindset and structure to enable organizations to see a "flow"

How companies can move from IT agility to business agility

Systems thinking paradigms and dys-functions

Building a leadership canvas, Engaging leaders in a VUCA world

Transitioning s-curves & examining points of discontunuity

Navigating stuck points in life and work - the middle challenges

4 dimensions of S-Curves, a teaser.

Making the leap with guidance and coaching

In this conversation, Sivaguru from PM Power Consulting talks to Sukumar, Co-Founder of Tiny Magiq, where Sukumar shares his stories about:

His friend who inspired him to get into software

How, on his first day at a client’s place, he did something totally unconnected - as he thought - to software

His first lesson at work - attitude!

What one can learn from working on a maintenance project

How his first role with a sales responsibility was so stressful, tending to a breakdown

Mustering the courage to seek guidance to change the vicious cycle to a virtuous cycle

His personal transition to handle uncertainties in his CXO Roles

What he learnt from a war veteran on doing pilot projects

Taking an integrative approach to knowledge management and process to deliver knowledge just in time

How the blogging experiment opened up cross Business Unit exchanges

Some techniques he used to foster innovation across a large organization

Inspirations from the paper ‘Ronald Coase Penguins’ by ‘Yochai Benkler’ on socio psychological rewards

Why his company is called ‘tiny magiq’

Applying tiny changes in his own life - as in push ups

His perspective on the future for a career in IT

Sukumar has 31 years of experience in the IT services industry. He runs a Digital transformation & Behaviour transformation enabler startup called Tiny Magiq with 4 co-founders since Feb 2015. He left Cognizant in April 2014, after nearly 19 years, where he served as Senior Vice President, Global Chief Information Officer & Global Head of Innovation.  Sukumar in his 8 year stint as a CXO in Cognizant led award-winning transformation programs in IT, Innovation Culture and Delivery Management.

Sukumar is an avid blogger/twitterer, a fitness enthusiast and a travel bug. He researches the Indus Valley Civilization in his spare time. Sukumar received lifetime recognition for his work in IT through the 2014 Computerworld Premier 100 IT Leaders program. Sukumar is rated by Huffington Post as one of the Top 100 Social CIOs in 2014 & 2013.

His social media handles:

linkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rajagopalsukumar/

Twitter: @rsukumar

Facebook: https://facebook.com/Sukumar

Website:  https://tinymagiq.com

In this conversation, Paramu shares his experiences on writing books with Sivaguru. Listen to this chat between 2 colleagues at PM Power Consulting covering Paramu's views on :

Where ideas come from, or where he gets his inspiration on topics to write about

Specific triggers for this two published books so far [and the third - a technical book - he is working on now]

On writing sequels and if they are expected by the readers as more of the same

Book writing being a team sport

The challenge of understanding reader expectations, for the first or even the second book

About pivoting the idea or narration across evolving versions of the manuscript

Inserting ‘hooks’ to keep the readers engaged

The next 2 books he is working on, now

On why he wants to continue writing technical books

Are software development ‘methodologies’ myths?

A sneak peek into the upcoming technical book, on Agile practices

The five principles related to Agility in an organizational context

A sampler fable of the hare and the rabbit race

Many stories play out in our lives. Listen to a lively chat between Sivaguru from PM Power Consulting and Yogesh Gupta, President and CEO of Progress Software, talking about -

How he got into IIT

How a joystick that got him into programming

His early interest in AI

Embedded code to Enterprise code

Building a distributed relational database

Building on something that he already knew, to get into completely new areas, such as marketing

His thoughts on ‘AI in everything’

How technology can be considered additive

Integrating multiple products to create value for the users

Looking at acquisitions also based on clear use cases

Some of the cultural challenges in integrating different products [and teams] and mutual respect - for values, culture, background etc

The importance of explaining the why to everyone, to get them on board

His approach of teaming young professionals with much more seniors, soon after he took charge and the benefits

His thoughts on the open source model and the nativescript project

What he hears as one of the top expectations from his customers

His advice to aspiring IT professionals, based on his own experience

And finally, his experience in the transition from a techie to a leader

A technologist at heart, Yogesh Gupta is passionate about how technology can make life simpler—both for businesses and individuals. Since joining Progress in October 2016 as its President and Chief Executive Officer, he has strengthened the company’s market position, improved customer relationships, launched new products, acquired three companies and significantly improved operating margins and cash flow. Progress has also refreshed its Board of Directors, increasing the diversity of the Board with four new independent members to build a strong new leadership team that can drive further success.

 

Prior to joining Progress, Yogesh was President and Chief Executive Officer at Kaseya, Inc., a private equity-backed software company providing IT management software solutions to managed service providers. Before Kaseya, he served as the President and Chief Executive Officer of FatWire Software, a VC-backed marketing automation software company. He led FatWire through the great recession and doubled its revenue over four years, leading to a successful exit to Oracle. A 30-year software industry veteran, Yogesh held several corporate officer roles at CA Inc., including the role of Chief Technology Officer for five years and Chief Strategy Officer and head of M&A for two years.

 

A recognized expert in emerging technologies and industry trends as well as a published author, Yogesh holds a patent in the field of neural networks. He earned a master’s degree in computer science from the University of Wisconsin and a bachelor’s degree in electronics engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. He also serves on the boards of Beth Israel Lahey Health System (BILHS) and Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council (MassTLC).

Episode: 4 decades in 2 phases

Sub title: Consultant to Implementer

In this conversation Sivaguru from PM Power Consulting is in conversation with his old friend Neelu (PK Neelakantan). Listen to their conversation as Neelu talks about:

Two significant phases of his career

Playing software development and business development roles

A major personal decision to move base from India to the US

An urge to do something on his own

About losing the job at the time of the dot com bust

About an environment where programmers were younger than the programs they were working on

Some challenges in managing knowledge workers

Literally jumping into a data lake!

Assigning a monetary value for software, for a buyer

Some challenges in concluding a sale of a platform product

What you tell demanding users

Resisting the urge to do it yourself and letting team members learn by doing

Handling things beyond your control

Managerial style of doing together and inspiring

Earning the team’s trust by adding value in all interactions

And not being able to please everyone all the time

Neelu has about four decades of experience in software development having worked with organizations in India and the United States in different capacities. He lives in San Diego where he works at the San Diego Community College District as their Application Development Manager overseeing the student administration systems.

We invite listeners of the Software People Stories podcast to join us and celebrate International Podcasting Day, on the 28th of September 2019, hosted by Hubhopper in Bangalore. We would love to meet you. 

Please register yourselves here (https://podcasts.hubhopper.com/o2podcollective-international-podcast-day?fbclid=IwAR312Zbr8VdPHI0p4eJurzzkoROGiQMSpPk9tmpRV_3MMMDxf2CLRLVg_IA) quickly and block your dates. See you there!

In this episode Jayaprakash JP, coach and consultant talks to Chitra from PM Power consulting about 

- Being an engineer at heart & how his career began in the software industry, working in product & services organizations

- Continuous rediscovery, love for learning, and curiosity

- Building enterprise health applications

- Experiencing different work cultures between services & product organizations

- Co-discovering & co-developing customer needs in a VUCA environment with inclusivity & collaboration

- Being agile in daily life, experiments and learning

- Becoming an entrepreneur 

- Why leaders should have an entrepreneural spirit

- A message for coaches, enablers and people enabling transformations in organizations

- Enabling inspiration in children.

Jayaprakash Puttaswamy (aka 'JP') is passionate about coaching people and enabling co-creation of game changing possibilities!

What he loves most about coaching is the opportunity it provides, to do a deep inquiry about self and to impact other human beings' lives through co-creation and growing together.

With a “Bachelor of Engineering” degree in Computer Science, JP has about 16+ years of overall experience in IT industry and is a Leader in modern Software Engineering.

He is practicing agile since 2003 (with Scrum, XP & Kanban), JP has trained over 2000 people in 40+ organizations. In the last 8 years, JP has coached about 900 people in 7 large-scale transformation engagements. JP has worked with Pete Behrens, driving agile transformation and co-facilitating Leadership Agility workshops in GE HealthCare and McKinsey & Company. His recent coaching was to drive enterprise-level agile/lean & DevOps transformation at Target and and Siemens.

He can be reached via https://www.linkedin.com/in/jputtaswamy/ 

Here are some of his talks

Continuous Product Discovery and Business Agility (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBH2KAYKtqM)

Live Coaching Demo & Practice Workshop (https://youtu.be/L56fPhmNmJI)

Dealing with, and coaching senior Management and Leadership (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gF-rjdfGq4)

Product Discovery to Delivery – Connecting practices end-to-end (https://youtu.be/ql6NhlyKLz8)