Software People Stories

Joins us in listening to Paul Arieckal from Global Automation and Sivaguru from PM Power consulting as they have conversations around Paul's experiences in - 

Learning the rigour of software development as computing resources were scarce

Considering constraints at the time of design

Making assumptions while designing applications: timetracker story

Relevance of top down design in the age of cloud and microservices

Trimming the footprint of an application from 2 GB to less than 200 MB

Drawing inspiration for software from gardening

What learning to play the violin taught him about writing software

The importance of a test-first approach, in gardening or coding

What is easier to debug? A crash or a functional bug?

If you want to know what Paul compares debugging to - to get a high, listen carefully!

Importance of not getting lost on the frills and focus on the core

How can one avoid a burnout in the supposedly stressful field of software

Paul is the Director, Engineering at Global Automation India Pvt. Ltd. 

He has been with Global Automation for over 24 years and in the current role for 4 years. He is responsible for leading the software product development efforts starting with product conceptualization to delivering to market, through the phases of prototyping, requirements and specifications, test-marketing, software coding, testing, build and release. He is also responsible for managing the computing and networking infrastructure through deployment of state-of-the-art tools and technologies, providing a scalable and secured development environment for Global’s team. Prior to the current role, he was managing the development of a diverse set of software products, a hardware/software appliance implementing ndmp protocol for deployment in data centers for improved backup efficiency, an enterprise JAVA based private equity portfolio management application.

His other interests include integrating iOT devices for affordable domestic home automation systems, and irrigation systems that utilize minimal water for water starved urban homes.

Paul can be reached via https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-arieckal-085b6620/

Vasu and Chitra, colleagues at PM Power Consulting are in a free wheeling conversation as Vasu shares myriad nuggets on -

-  Starting his career in Tata Steel

- Generating PLOP reports for management review (its in the podcast!)

- Developing products at Wipro; from idea to product; building a cost effective project management product.

- Secrets of MS Project & software development

- Experiences from product development & finding ways to gain customer insights

- How he stayed at companies for long tenures

- How he got into coaching & what it means to be a good observer

- Making coaching successful

- Being genuine when helping and communicating with people

In this episode, Mosesraj R, CIO & Head of Delivery Excellence at Brillio and Chitra from PM Power are in conversation as Moses shares stories on

- Where his career began

- Fundamental principles working across manufacturing and IT

- Understanding the meaning of value to deliver the right solutions & build successful products

- Managing customer expectations

- Balancing the roles of CIO & delivery excellence head

- Some tips to enable digital transformation

- A back to the future retrospective

Moses is the CIO and head of excellence at Brillio.   He led the cloud transformation of the enterprise.  Over his 20 years of career, he has led multiple change management initiatives to drive better delivery to customers.  His interests are storytelling, imagining products that break barriers and motivating people by helping them see life as a whole.  Moses won India Top 25 CIO awards in 2016 in ICMG Architecture event and has been invited to many organizations / events to share his views.

Moses has 20+ years of Work Experience and is a B.E (Mechanical) from Government College of Engineering, Salem and M.S (Software Systems) from BITS, Pilani 

Moses has given a some interesting talks at various forums:

Questions that make you a better manager (@PMI - PM Footprints) – Introduces three questions as challenges to managers, when answered will help in becoming a better manager

Lessons from Modern Coaches for Project Managers (@PM+ conference) – A study of modern sports coaches as to what managers can learn from them

Customer Centric engineering team (@Harman) – Introduces the Need & Value paradigm, on how engineering teams can build value consistently

Story Telling for Agile Coaches (@Prowareness) – Introduced coaches to the art of story telling with examples. Demystifies story telling that anyone can become a story teller

Bridging Eagles Eye and Worm’s View (@HMBP Conference) – A talk delivered in HMBP (High Maturity Best Practices) conference about roll down to goals to team level measurements

In this candid conversation Neeraja Ganesh, Head for JobsForHer foundation and Chitra Gurjar from PM Power Consulting, talk about Neeraja's experiences through her journey. She shares -

Learning from whatever came her way as a means of growing and sustaining herself

Discovering the power of asking

Personal transformation from an introvert to being a confident communicator

Process implementation to suit different functions

Being uncomfortable with comfort in a role & using her strengths to play different roles

Passion about growing people in their career, specially women

Stepping out of a work & home only life to network & gain new perspectives after a long corporate career

Lessons for women wanting to get back to work after a break

Neeraja Ganesh is the Head of the JobsForHer Foundation which has been setup to bridge gender gaps in India.Neeraja has over 25 years of experience in the IT industry having worked for a variety of companies like Cap Gemini, ANZ and others.She is a designated career mentor on many mentorship portals. She was awarded at a TEDx Women event organised by the Dayananda Sagar Institutions for her 25 years of achievements in the corporate world. In her pursuit to share her experiences and learnings with the ecosystem around her, she delivers talks on a variety of topics which serve as inspiration and learning for others. She has also recently been bitten by the writer’s bug and has written a few articles, again with the intention of helping everyone learn from her experiences.

She actively engages with industry bodies and other organisations who work on Women Empowerment initiatives. She is an active member of the Women Empowerment Committee of BCIC(Bangalore Chamber of Industry and Commerce).One of her favourite topics which has had rave reviews everytime she has delivered talks on it has been on “Networking”. She brings in her professional experiences to every aspect of the topic which makes the audience relate, understand and immediately learn and start implementing the tips given by her.

She can be reached via 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/neeraja-ganesh/

https://www.facebook.com/neeraja.ganesh.1

https://twitter.com/neeraja_ganesh

Anecdotes from heterogenous experiences. In this conversation Milind and Chitra, colleagues at PM Power Consulting are in a conversation as Milind shares his experiences on -

- Curiosity and liking for computers, with an aptitude for software & a natural ability to write code. 

- A love for deep learning.

- Writing a pascal compiler, assemblers & deep insights into systems software

- Interoperability between proprietorial systems & other heterogeneous environment challenges.

- Customer management by knowing people as they are, being transparent, being together as a team & doing a release at scale

-  Sensing signals while working with different cultures

- Transitioning through roles in sales & mkt, business development &product  engineering.

- The journey into coaching and  helping people understand the values and principles of agile.

- A deep passion for Sanskrit.

In this episode Veena Samartha, CEO of VeCrear Technologies is in a free flowing conversation with Chitra from PM Power consulting. She shares her experiences with

- Developing technology from india with convergence of wireless tech & IoT

- Having an inquisitive nature & experimenting v/s aquiring knowledge

- Experiences building fault tolerant systems

- Journey to entrepreneurship

- Developing other capabilities to run a company

- Facing dilemmas of market forces v/s delivery capabilities and the importance of having a clear vision

- Tips on motivating employees in a small company

- Willing one's self into a natural flow

- Ad-hoc learning & power of networking to keeping abreast with current trends

- Some future thoughts on staying positive with joy & serenity amidst change

Veena Samartha the Executive Director and CEO of the Bangalore based IoT venture, VeCrear Technologies. Harnessing her technology experience in the areas of mission critical software, embedded systems , servers and file system domains through decades of work experience in companies like Wipro & HP, Veena endeavors to create a niche for innovative technologies from India in the global landscape.

LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/veenasamartha/)

The Software Lifecycle Stories, brought to you by PM Power Consulting, has come quite some way since the first episode was published. This is a special episode dedicated for our listeners from us saying, "Thank you for tuning into our show!"

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In this episode of the Software Lifecycle Stories, PM Power colleagues, Sivaguru and A Narasimhan, also known as AN, explore several facets of AN's experiences that include - 

* How he launched a startup with some friends

* Innovative features by trapping OS interrupts

* Importance of process orientation, even for small teams

* Getting into techno marketing

* Instilling or having a sense of ownership intrinsically

* The need to adapt one’s coaching style or delivery based on the geography or culture of the participants

* Can anyone become a coach ?

* How to connect with individuals, when you are a coach

* Helping individuals to open up, to improve teaming effectiveness

* Some of AN's favourite games & activities

* His interest in philosophy

* How pairing in a team can significantly improve quality and productivity

Designing for the future, fulfilling today’s needs

Welcome to this episode of the Software Lifecycle Stories. Sivaguru from PM Power Consulting is in conversation with Vandana Abraham, Head of Design at Atlassian, India. In this conversation she shares her perspectives on 

* The difference between design and art

* Aptitudes to be a designer

* Bridging engineers and designers with empathy

* Building experiences for a global audience 

* Some ideas that were far ahead of their time

* Designing for the future 

* Career breaks and flexibility for women

Note:This episode was recorded prior to Women's day (8th March 2019). It is covered through a dialogue in the episode.

Vandana Abraham has over 20 years’ providing leadership in product strategy development, and experience design for mobile consumer applications & business platforms. She has set up and led design studios for product and service design and studied Textile Design at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad, India. 

She currently heads design at Atlassian India.

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