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Banu is one of the most organized persons I have ever worked with. She plays the role of Delivery Principal with the Techops Digital Platforms group with Thoughtworks. Women leadership series - In conversation with Banu Pavithra V 5 Mar 2022 Banu is one of the most organized persons I have ever worked with. She plays the role of Delivery Principal with the Techops Digital Platforms group with Thoughtworks. How would you introduce yourself? I would like to introduce myself as a passionate IT professional who also is a competent mother of a 9 year old son. There are other hats that I wear both in professional and personal life, but these two - IT professional & a mother stands out the most to me Can you tell me a bit about your career journey? When did you first get into a leadership role? I started my career as a Software Developer - Trainee in 2005 in NTT Data in Bangalore. I played different roles and had very career growth opportunities in my first company and within 5 years of my experience I had played the roles of Analyst, Designer, Onsite Coordinator,Team Lead, Tech Lead and a Assistant Project Manager. Then I moved on to Harman where I spent close to 8 years solidly playing the role of Project Manager across a wide range of projects and clients. In my recent experience with Thoughtworks for about 3 years I have a couple of hats - of a lead project manager, delivery principal and program manager. My leadership journey stems from my schooling time period itself, where I was the class pupil leader from my 6th Grade. What were the top challenges you faced during your journey and how did you overcome them? One of the key challenges that I faced early in my career was leading teams that had team members who were senior to me in their work experience. I tackled this challenge by working more closely with them and by understanding tech involved in depth. The second key challenge I would quote is being too hard on myself that I would attribute any failure to myself - This is because of trying to get done a lot of things myself without understanding that I have the strength of the team. Once I had this moment of realization of the team's backup and strength, I was able to get out of the challenge quite easily. What motivates you? Appreciation and recognition motivates me quite a bit. Just a small thank you note is good enough to keep me up and running for a few weeks! Do you have a role model in your life? Can you name a few people who you look up to? Come to think of it, I owe a lot of my success to my mom - She was a working woman and right from my childhood I have seen her juggle work and home and she is a pretty successful woman who was able to balance her work aspirations and the responsibilities at home quite well. I have had very low moments unable to manage work and life and everytime she has been my go to person who would constantly encourage me to get back up again. I have a solid mentor and guide at Thoughtworks, Sasikala Mahesh who is one of my key inspirations and role models. What does leadership mean to you? How would you describe your leadership style? Leadership is common sense for me. There is a prescribed format - it just is about how to grasp the context of the situation in hand and try to come up with a win-win situation for the parties involved wherever possible. Leadership is also a form of courage for me to assume accountability and responsibility for a value driven purpose. People say that I practice a people oriented non-conflicting leadership style, which I think suits my personality quite well. What would be your advice to young leaders? Hard work always brings in success. Discipline is key. My mantra [from Jim Rohn] for career progression and even personal progression has been the following in the last few years - “We must all suffer from one of two pains: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret. The difference is discipline weighs ounces while regret weighs tons.”

Vijayalakshimi Kandasamy (Viji) comes with 19 years of IT experience and leads one of the most important project within internal IT. Viji is very passionate about solving problems and has a keen interest towards Project and People management. She loves to be close to nature and spend her spare time trying to maintain a small farmland. Emerging leadership series - In conversation with Vijayalakshimi Kandasamy 25 Jan 2023 Vijayalakshimi Kandasamy (Viji) comes with 19 years of IT experience and leads one of the most important project within internal IT. Viji is very passionate about solving problems and has a keen interest towards Project and People management. She loves to be close to nature and spend her spare time trying to maintain a small farmland. How would you introduce yourself? I am a Lead consultant at Thoughtworks with over 19 years of IT experience . I consider myself fortunate for being exposed to a variety of projects in different domains with many organizations. I am always passionate about solving problems with a keen interest towards Project and People management. This interest also led me to pursue MBA while parallelly working as a developer. On the personal front, I am a mother of two tweens. I love to be close to nature and spend my spare time trying to maintain a small farmland. Can you tell me a bit about your career journey? What inspired you to take on the leadership role? I started my journey as a Java/ J2EE developer in a small sized product company. Being in a small sized company one can’t restrict to a specific role and that helped me to explore and extend my knowledge on the end to end software lifecycle. As the product I worked on was acquired by a large software firm I moved to this firm as part of the acquisition. This opened doors for me to work more closely with clients and understand their perspective. I have spent considerable time in the automotive domain and also with DevOps in trying to set up CI / CD pipeline for toolchain and in automation to bring down lead time for release. During my journey , I always ensured to take up the opportunities that came my way and challenge my limits. Before Thoughtworks, I spent more than a decade with Bosch which helped me to shape my management skills. Being empowered , accountable and driving strategic initiatives to deliver results were some key factors that inspired me to take up leadership roles. What were the top challenges you faced during your journey and how did you overcome them? Collaborating with different teams to achieve a common goal is one of the challenges I could recollect . As a means to overcome , an alignment on the priorities, the benefits of the common goal and responsibility of each team involved will bring everyone on the same page. Following this, establishing a mechanism to uncover and track dependencies certainly helped in successfully delivering the results. Keeping the teams focus and delivering results while navigating through ambiguity and uncertain times is definitely a key challenge faced. Being transparent about the situation , constant communication with teams, working on solutions given the current clarity and openness to evolve as the situation improves were some actions we implemented to sail through the rough patch. What motivates you everyday? It is good to be surrounded by people who constantly motivate you however I feel the best is to be intrinsically motivated. The impact created due to our work and the value we add to the organization motivates me. Also I am greatly motivated while I am able to mentor people and make them realize their complete potential. Do you have a role model in your life? Can you name a few people who you look up to? I do not deny the fact that some training and leadership programs help play your role efficiently , but more than any other means I imbibe a lot of skills from the people I collaborate with on a daily basis. While I had opportunities to work with a lot of inspiring leaders , I still cherish working with my first mentor after moving to IT. He inspired the team by his way of approaching a complex problem , modularizing it and then connecting the dots. We were as freshers quite awestruck by his way of solving problems. Another great leader I look up to, empowers his team to be autonomous and stands by them during difficult times. My Mother has been a great inspiration in my Journey ,a Doctor by profession she has always been empathetic and I Am greatly astonished by the positive impact she has created on many people. What does leadership mean to you? How would you describe your leadership style? Leadership is just not a designation or role offered to you, it is a mindset where you assume responsibility and be accountable for the results. I do not stick to a specific leadership style always ,it is scenario based and a mix of multiple leadership styles. Although mostly inclined as a Democratic leader in some cases I also tend to be autocratic where specific guidelines have to be set and to keep the team focused on near term time critical goals. In a few other scenarios in my experience, where there was a strategic restructuring of teams based on product revamp I acted as a transformational leader in adapting quickly to change and supporting the teams to eventually sustain. It is not that I consciously shift between different leadership styles but this comes out naturally in a given situation. Only later when I reflect , will I be able to differentiate the approach taken and the correlation with the leadership styles. What would be your advice to other leaders? I believe there is no substitute for hardwork and commitment. As leaders, creating an unbiased environment that encourages open feedback is essential.While it is quite common to spend significant effort firefighting on the current priorities , setting up time to strategically plan the long term objectives of the Project will not only help the Business but also reassure the team of the opportunities ahead.

Abdul is a passionate techie with good interpersonal skills who understands business and tech equally well. He is of a firm belief that strategy without execution is hallucination. Emerging leadership series - In conversation with Abdul Jeelani 1 Feb 2023 Abdul is a passionate techie with good interpersonal skills who understands business and tech equally well. He is of a firm belief that strategy without execution is hallucination. How would you introduce yourself? I am a passionate techie with good interpersonal skills who understands business and tech equally well. I am a firm believer that strategy without execution is hallucination. My strength is in the execution, While I employ different methods of execution cutting the unwanted and getting the job done worked out very well. Can you tell me a bit about your career journey? What inspired you to take on the leadership role? I started back in 2008 as an Assistant Software Engineer and in fact I got to play a leadership role right from my first opportunity. During the crisis of 2008 my campus offer was canceled so I joined a service Org as a trainee and then after 6 months I became a trainer there. With a couple of months into training, an opportunity arose where a local client needed to build a MLM website, but the Org did not want to take it up as they only welcome US and UK clients. For me it's a clean chance to prove so I went to the MD and said I will take it up and do it and for the team I can work with other 2 trainers. This negotiation went for like 1.5 hours, I narrated 50 different ways how I can make this happen to sell the idea, and finally we came to an agreement that If I deliver this website as promised then I will be promoted as an Engineer and can move on to client projects. And that is how I started my Dev / Leadership Journey as a Tech Lead from Day 1. Then I moved on to begin a startup but it did not go well. Then I joined a product company where I lead a product (that is sold and a big revenue stream even today!)After a short stint in the next company as a Senior Software Engineer I joined my previous Org a Product company as a System Analyst and moved on to the System Architect role in a few months. This is when I realized the importance of business, domain knowledge and started learning Domain Driven Design etc. This is the moment where I took the leadership role more seriously and led the team to convert a 25 year old legacy enterprise system to a then Modern system in 5 years. I am a leader because I am a people person and want to solve real world problems with pragmatic evolving solutions. What were the top challenges you faced during your journey and how did you overcome them? Thoughtworks is the first Corporate for me. After the first couple of years in /tw during my leadership journey I found the decision making was totally different. I required multiple rounds of conversations with too many people to convince. The way out I figured is to first know who has the stakes and just get their buy in and rest is informed. While this had its pros and cons It worked well for me. The next big challenge is working with a diverse team especially from different cultures. The solution for that is to accept first that there are multiple ways to get things done, and find a common ground for win-win. There were a couple of health issues I faced and I had the right leaders along with me which helped me overcome them in the workplace. What motivates you everyday? Of course My kids, I wanted to provide the best I can to them, that is the driver. Apart from that whenever I see a problem / issue that is a motivation you have an opportunity to make someone happy 🙂 Do you have a role model in your life? Can you name a few people who you look up to? Yes, The role models do change as you mature, And in recent years I look up to Khabib Nurmagomedov , MMA fighter, the journey he went through, His humility and how he carries himself and so on. One quote that I love from him is "When difficult decisions appear in my life, there are difficult questions to answer… I consult loved ones." What does leadership mean to you? How would you describe your leadership style? For me Leadership is taking people together towards the vision without losing interest and ensuring people around you are happy. For that the first step is to identify the right people for the right job. ⅓ of the problem is solved once you understand the problem better and clearly, ⅓ is solved once you have the right people, the remaining ⅓ is about execution. It is really really hard to fail in the last phase if we get the first two phases right. What would be your advice to other leaders? Put people first. You can be an Elon Musk or Nelson Mandela. Make the decisions, It is okay to fail trying rather delaying forever Always stay relevant - When we feel don't it's the time to retire !

Many years ago I always used to think that innovation is ... < Back Learning innovation ! – Part I – Innovation by Subtraction Many years ago I always used to think that innovation is ... Many years ago I always used to think that innovation is something that can never be taught on the job and I thought it must come from within individual to break the mould and find out better ways of doing the job. I never thought that you can actually teach someone to think innovative and come up with innovative ideas, implement the innovation concepts and practice innovation techniques. How wrong I was to think that! I have been part of the Innovation Sessions in my organization and the experience there has been nothing short of great. Not only these sessions have given me a direction to think different on innovation, but also to learn more on various innovation techniques and processes. With this post, I would starting a new article series Learning Innovation based on my own learning and my thoughts on the same. I hope this first post will give you few leads to help yourself learn more on innovation techniques and processes so you can also try them in your organization, Innovation by Subtraction Innovation by Subtraction is a bit uncommon process but might yield surprising results. To use the IbS process for doing an innovation in a process, we are expected to make a list of components of the process. The list should contain the MUST have components of the process. Now, as a part of the IbS, you are expected to brainstorm on how the process would still function without each of the components. We are expected to innovate the potential value or benefits would be without the components. However, the most important part of the solution must be the fact that the solution should not compromise the business value or benefits coming out the process. It should sound like a workable business idea ! The examples we discussed within our session were very interesting and the ideas that came out were even better. Have a look at the following example which might give you an idea on how radical can your thinking get when you remove the most essential part (you thought) from your process, service, product. Product / process - Mobile phone Most essential part of your product / process to remove - Battery charging Innovative Solutions when you remove the most essential part Can the phone use solar energy? Can the phone use bio cells? Can the phone breath? Self sustaining power? IbS has been a catalyst for many great innovations over the year. Most notably of them were, Phone call with IVR (Interactive Voice Recording) The most important thing when you deal transactions on phone, are of course the people. You need someone to listen to you and act on your instructions or help you in dealing issues. Now when you apply the IbS rule to this process of a phone call and remove the most important part of the process, the listener (person) and replace with an automated solution, what remains is an innovative solution of IVR. Business benefits – Significant reduction of costs, reduction in errors, more customer satisfaction in general. Client server technology The most important part of the computer functionality was the business processing and the subsequent hardware that is consumed by desktop PCs do support the business processing. When you remove both 1. an ability to compute itself and 2. CPU unit, what remains is an innovative solution of Client server technology. The server controls the business processing and has significant CPU power while the clients are more of dumb terminals with only monitor & keyboard as significant hardware. You can still perform full tasks and can add more terminals with less costs. Business benefits – Significant reduction of costs, space & consistent performance Touchscreen Did you ever think of any computing device until last few years with no keyboard to interact with? Calculators, mobile phones, notebooks, desktops were all having dedicated keyboards for users to interact with them. You now take out the most important part of the device interaction i.e. keyboard and the innovative solution is to have a touch screen interface. Touchscreen technology has been touted as one of the most popular device interaction technology now a days with more and more devices giving option of touch screens. Business benefits – Style factor, bigger screen areas, better interaction techniques So, think on you can use the IbS technique for finding out innovative ideas and solutions for your processes, services. #Innovation #productivity #Softwareengineering #techniques Previous Next

Sujana is a natural leader. She enjoys helping others learn new things and realise their full potential. She also thinks that's a great way to learn and realize her own potential. Being a mother of two, staying on top of her game has been one of her top challenges with its own highs & lows. Sujana considers Jesus Christ as her role model continues to learn everyday from the way He leads with humility, love and integrity. Emerging leadership series - In conversation with Sujana Arul Selvi Alaguraj 1 Feb 2023 Sujana is a natural leader. She enjoys helping others learn new things and realise their full potential. She also thinks that's a great way to learn and realize her own potential. Being a mother of two, staying on top of her game has been one of her top challenges with its own highs & lows. Sujana considers Jesus Christ as her role model continues to learn everyday from the way He leads with humility, love and integrity. How would you introduce yourself? I consider myself a natural leader. I enjoy helping others learn new things and realise their full potential and that’s one great way I learn a lot and realise my potential. I am driven by purpose and passionate about the principles and values I hold near and dear Can you tell me a bit about your career journey? What inspired you to take on the leadership role? I started my career as a developer and then moved on to playing different roles from being a business analyst to VP delivery, product owner to Head of Products. To be honest, I’ve never sought after a leadership role, but I am passionate about my core craft and rendering it with commitment inspires people and helps me evolve as a leader during each phase. What were the top challenges you faced during your journey and how did you overcome them? Being a mother of two, staying in the game has been one of my top challenges with its own highs and lows. But the legacy I want to leave behind for my children, family and society continues to motivate me to stay on. What motivates you everyday? By doing things right or at least making an earnest attempt, you get an inch closer to fulfilling your life’s purpose. Do you have a role model in your life? Can you name a few people who you look up to? Yes I do. Jesus Christ is my role model in life. I continue to learn everyday from the way He leads with humility, love & integrity. What does leadership mean to you? How would you describe your leadership style? Leadership to me is all about helping people and organisations realise their full potential and build them up. I would describe my leadership style as a mix of charismatic & transformative leadership What would be your advice to other leaders? Identify your style of leadership that is very unique to you. It doesn’t really have to be one of those styles the books define. As long as it inspires and develops people motivating them for a greater cause you are on the right path towards becoming a successful leader.

< Back Exclusive Interview with Swapnil Deshpande, Chief Digital Officer, Thoughtworks Here is an exclusive interview with Swapnil Deshpande, Chief Digital Officer, Thoughtworks India, who enlightens the readers about how the company is determined to provide a business transformation with its own digital platform and transformation strategies. Digital transformation is becoming popular among companies and industries to modify traditional processes into smart and digital business processes and customer experience. It is the integration of digital technologies such as AI, ML, data analytics, IoT, cloud computing, and many more in different areas of a business. It is thriving in the tech-driven market, especially after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. 1. Kindly brief us about the company, its specialization, and the services that your company offers. ThoughtWorks, founded in 1993, provides premium, end-to-end digital strategy, design, and engineering services to enable companies across the globe to successfully and rapidly navigate their digital transformation journeys. It connects strategy to execution, using cross-functional teams of strategists, designers, software engineers, data scientists, and other specialists to deliver value to clients at scale. Four global service lines provide specialized capabilities and thought leadership to drive digital transformation: Enterprise modernization, platforms, and cloud : The company modernizes complex operations, platforms, development, and delivery practices to rapidly unleash business value Customer experience, product, and design : The team accelerates value creation through extraordinary digital products and customer experiences powered by integrated technology and design. Data and AI : The company enables data-driven intelligent products and business insights with pragmatic data strategies, governance, engineering, predictive AI, automation, and ML capabilities. Digital transformation and operations : The team augments other services by providing organizations with executable digital strategies, frictionless operating models, and transformation services that increase clients’ agility, resilience, and ability to compete for business and retain talent. Since its inception, ThoughtWorks has been pioneers in trends, such as agile software development, continuous integration, continuous delivery, microservices, evolutionary architecture, and data mesh that now underpin many modern digital businesses. 2. How is your company helping customers deliver relevant business outcomes through the adoption of the company’s technology innovations? Consumer expectations and next-generation technologies are constantly evolving, requiring companies to re-evaluate their business models and undergo end-to-end digital transformations. This trend has only accelerated due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This is why digital transformation services spending is expected to more than double to US$1 trillion by 2025, according to MarketsandMarkets. The post-pandemic world has seen a huge acceleration in the transformation work that companies are doing to go digital in their services and offerings to their customers. With companies facing ongoing digital disruption, many lack the capabilities and talent necessary to keep pace with the accelerating rate of technological change. ThoughtWorks has been a thought leader at the forefront of technology innovation for the past 28 years. It leverages the vast experience to improve clients’ ability to respond to change, utilize data assets to unlock new sources of value, and create resilient technology platforms that move with business strategies and rapidly design, deliver and evolve exceptional digital products, and experiences at scale. With the globally diversified business and clients across all major verticals and geographies, its global distributed agile delivery model operates where clients are and helps them solve their biggest problems. The talent pool of over 9,000 employees working across 17 countries on five continents helps the company achieve the scale to help customers. Further, the unique, diverse, and cultivating culture, with a reputation for technical excellence and thought leadership, enables the team to attract and retain what they believe is the best talent in the industry. 3. How does your company’s strategy facilitate the transformation of an enterprise? Organizations are getting challenged to transform to adapt and grow in the face of continuous disruption. Innovation, including business model innovation, is almost inevitable for most businesses. Businesses that are digitally capable (modern digital businesses) have an advantage over traditional businesses as they can adapt, evolve, and continuously innovate to compete in the market. At ThoughtWorks, it connects deep strategic understanding with unrivaled software and platform expertise to enable fast, effective organizational transformation. It makes customers’ businesses ready for an unpredictable world. The company helps customers create a holistic vision for transformation and help them navigate their own digital path by building on the experience of working across multiple business and technology domains as well as across different geographies and work cultures worldwide. Using the Digital Fluency Model , the team understands customer aspirations, readiness, and capabilities and works with them to create a pragmatic roadmap that enables them to deliver value faster. Some of the services that the company offers to customers to help them with their transformations are delivery and organization transformation; digital platforms and cloud modernization; technology strategy and executive advisory services; data mesh, data platform, and advanced analytics; idea to market, product management transformation; customer experience strategy, product design, and delivery, as well as value-driven portfolio management 4. What are some of the challenges faced by the developer community today? In the post-pandemic world, the digital transformation pace has changed and there are ever-increasing demands on the IT community, particularly on developers to deliver the value/transformation faster. With the ever-increasing movement of applications to the cloud and the use of various SaaS products throughout the lifecycle of the development, the developers face major challenges to streamline their development process. Throughout the lifecycle of software development, there are multiple tasks that the developers need to do, which are far beyond the actual development work. For example, requesting code repositories, cloud infrastructure, CI/CD pipelines are some of the things that the development teams must do even before they start writing the first line of the code. Unless the process is very clear and automated, these things do take time and introduce delays. As the development progresses, the people in the team may change. The onboarding of the new people and offboarding of the people from the team can also lead to friction. Every new person in the team must be given a certain level of access to multiple systems involved in the development process, and every outgoing person’s access must be taken away to ensure the appropriate access control. Unless the process is simplified (or automated), there are chances that the wrong onboarding or offboarding may lead to security non-compliance. Developing new applications often involves integrating with other existing applications. The integration is done via API route or via event streaming. One of the biggest frictions the development teams face in the journey of integration is the discoverability and getting secure access to the available core assets (APIs, events) for integration. It could take many days to find out what is available, how to get access to the right APIs or events unless a well-established API marketplace to discover and gain access to core digital assets is present. In large enterprises, often there is a ‘ticketing system that is used for communicating between different teams. The organizational processes require each development team to create a ‘ticket’ for anything and everything that is required of the other team. Sometimes, there is a lot of back and forth on the tickets between the teams until they get to the required answer. This introduces a lot of friction and communication delays in the process. In addition to some of the above frictions, it’s also important for the development teams to focus on the delivery metrics to understand their development workflow and how their team is working to deliver intended outcomes. Four key metrics (4KM) is one such industry-recognized metric that helps the development team understand how efficiently they are building and deploying the software. However, many teams find it difficult to automate and build the metrics like 4KM that talk about their delivery efficiency, and many of the process gaps, issues go unnoticed. So, to summarize, the challenges that the development teams and developers face during their development cycle are that of two types: 1. Development process friction: Some of which include onboarding, offboarding of the team members, discoverability of core assets, and tracking delivery metrics. 2. Operational process friction: Some of which include the setting up of the infrastructure (or iteration 0), working with multiple teams to collaborate, managing and responding to tickets, and getting access to core assets. These challenges introduce delays and slow down the development process, introduce frictions, and could potentially leave the development teams unhappy and frustrated, even while doing small and simple things. 5. What was the idea behind building NEO and making it available to ThoughtWorks developers? At ThoughtWorks, the developers are the biggest and the most important internal community. The company has been investing in building a world-class internal development platform for the last few years and considered the time to take the next step and reimagine the digital platform, this time, keeping the top internal stakeholders at the core of thinking— ThoughtWorks developers. Reimagining the internal developer platform, through the lens of the developer, pushed ThoughtWorks IT to rethink the approach and helped the team move from ‘what do developers need’ to ‘what do developers need and how can the company make it available to them in an easy and intuitive manner. The developers build apps or products all the time. Apart from building important solutions for customers, it also has a thriving internal application development community. People build software for learning new things and develop new capabilities in this company. For example, in addressing a business need, ThoughtWorks developers may build an application supporting a sales team to expand into a new area, geography efforts. After doing research and talking to many developers, the team realized that the process to kickstart a new idea or project often was not easy for people to follow. It was often an inconsistent and fragmented experience. They had to fill up multiple forms, talk to many teams separately and the overall experience left developers frustrated. It used to take almost ten days for people to get hold of the basic infrastructure to start coding, seven days to get access to relevant APIs, and security approvals to name just a few. The time for building even a simple application and taking it to production was between two to five months. The team had to do something to address this. So, after observing, speaking with, and interacting with 200+ ThoughtWorkers across 30+ offices in more than 15 countries who develop applications, the team started reimagining the whole internal developer platform experience. This time the team kept the developer and their experience of building products at the center of the thinking. The idea behind NEO was to make it easy for the internal development teams to build better products, faster while saving time, costs and improving the overall security of the applications being developed. NEO enables developers to build ideas that matter, liberates the data and core assets that are held within global IT systems, and accelerates innovation within ThoughtWorks. It speeds up the entire delivery and development cycle. 6. Is this platform only available to Thoughtworks developers or is it also available to other developers also? At this time, NEO is only available to ThoughtWorks employees and the contractors who support the building of the internal applications. NEO is used to build experimental applications, innovations, and business-centric applications. NEO is the internal manifestation of ThoughtWorks Digital Platform Strategy and it helps in developing better products and faster. As part of “ThoughtWorks on ThoughtWorks”, the team is sharing the insights and lessons learned with the experience of developing NEO to build a great experience for developers. The aim of the company is that customers can envisage leveraging this idea for their own digital platforms to create the same for their developers. Recently, Thoughtworks also announced partnering with Spotify to deliver better developer effectiveness with Backstage and helped TELUS, one of the customers, deliver the Backstage developer portal for improving the developer experience for their 8,000 engineers. This shows how the industry is now recognizing the ‘developer experience’ as one of the important aspects of the digital platform strategy. 7. How does ThoughtWorks aim to leverage this concept of developer experience for the developer community? NEO already has significantly changed the way developers build products within ThoughtWorks. It has unified and streamlined the developer experience around the internal developer platform. It has reduced the time to provision infrastructure by over 90%, introduced easy discoverability of the core assets, significantly reduced the friction in managing teams and infrastructure for the team, and introduced a new default start place for developers to go to for all their needs. With some of the best developer talent in the world working with the company, the team can continue to rely on the developer community to provide honest and relevant feedback on improving the developer experience with NEO. The major benefits ThoughtWorks has achieved from NEO are: Bringing all developer resources and apps together from multiple different teams (20+ teams) of the organization into a single place for streamlined management By automating processes and integrating cloud operations with NEO, ThoughtWorkshas significantly reduced time to infra provisioning by 90%. Reducing from as many as 7+ days to less than one day. ThoughtWorks is building new internal products and services faster, reducing the time from more than five months for a new application to less than a few weeks, savingThoughtWorks both time and money Integration with Google cloud platform, Github, CircleCI, Okta, and among others has become a lot simpler and more secure due to NEO automated provisioning Self-serve capability to create and manage the teams (across multiple infrastructure providers) helps with secure and seamless access to resources Easy discoverability of API or events with NEO helps developers discover, access, and use the core assets for delivering better and interconnected products and services Centralized metadata management capability helped to manage common organizational content (such as locations). This has reduced the time to change our systems for common content from multiple weeks to less than a day. 4KM reports built on NEO helps teams understand the delivery performance, potential issues and take necessary actions to speed up the delivery cycles Centralized application catalog helps the developers discover interesting applications and contribute to them Easy discoverability of data assets has helped operational leaders to understand what operational & data insights are available on the data platform and how to get access to them Now, here is how the company plans to leverage the concept of developer experience for the developer community: Use it for better, faster internal product development: By introducing the concept of the developer experience product like NEO, the team continues to push the boundaries of how it builds the internal product. Faster and better development means it will be able to respond to new business requirements faster than ever. With customers: In my opinion, NEO is an example of the ‘digital platform done well’. It reduces the friction from the delivery process, makes the core assets and other platform services discoverable and easily accessible, and accelerates innovation and experimentation within the organization. Sharing internal learnings with customers helps to save our customers from going through the problems that this company has gone through as an organization. With the industry: Creating an extraordinary impact on the technology industry through culture and technology excellence is the core part of the purpose of ThoughtWorks (WHY as the team calls it). It’s all about working with each other to push the industry forward and help companies and communities do the right things. The team believes that the learning and the way that has been approaching the internal developer platform concept through the lens of developer experience helps to put a new and unique point of view that could benefit a larger community. After all, happier developers result in better products, better work environments, and generally stay good for the companies and communities. 8. Would you also like to give some more details about how NEO is being used at ThoughtWorks? How has it been progressing? The thinking around NEO started back in Q2-CY2020 and its journey has progressed through multiple iterations to where it is today. The Alpha version of NEO went live for a very limited set of users (up to 40 invited folks) around November 2020. The Alpha plus version went live in January 2021 and has expanded to more early adopters to get more feedback. The beta launch happened earlier this year in July 2021 and the full product launch started August 2021 onwards across different countries. Since its Alpha launch, the developers globally have been actively and progressively been using NEO for their application development needs. Here are some of the statistics: 2000+ ThoughtWorkers (developers) across various countries have visited and interacted with NEO 450+ active developers in 300+ teams have used NEO for their application development needs 285+ applications available and discoverable in the NEO application catalog 60+ APIs and 200+ events available and discoverable through NEO 12+ active products using 4KM for delivery performance With more and more features being added, it is believed that NEO will continue to play an influencing role within ThoughtWorks for the internal product development process. 9. How do you see the company and the industry in the future ahead? A few key industry trends are driving spending for digital transformation: Expansion of computing boundaries: Rapid development of platforms, cloud, and internet of things are pushing the technology industry to new heights. This is made possible by the expanding boundaries of computing pushing the edges of what is possible for enterprises. The rapid advancement of AI- and ML-based tools: As artificial intelligence and machine learning gain more industry adoption, they enhance productivity and drive digital transformation by making predictions to assist humans in making decisions, and in some cases, by automating decision-making and tasks completely. The benefits of rapid advancement in AI- and ML-based tools can be applied across the entire value chain of business processes, from manufacturing and maintenance to marketing and customer service. Enhanced consumer experiences: The pervasiveness of technology has enhanced modern consumer experiences with the integration of digital and physical worlds, such as augmented reality, virtual reality, and mixed reality. Consumers are not just demanding availability and accessibility— they expect experiences to be personalized and interactions to be seamless and rich. Enterprises are moving quickly to deliver an omnichannel experience across platforms with evolving interfaces that blend speech, touch, and visuals. Accelerating towards sustainability: Consumers increasingly factor sustainability into their decision-making when choosing a brand or supplier. This requires businesses to examine the environmental impact of their products and operations, including their carbon footprint, and to adopt more sustainable strategies and technologies, such as green cloud optimization. The growing impact of hostile tech and increased focus on information privacy: The increased complexity of technology presents a heightened risk of cyberattacks, computer malware, viruses, social engineering, employee misuse as well as data and security breaches. Privacy is also a key priority for consumers, with an increased focus on data sharing and growing awareness of the impact of AI and algorithmic bias. Previous Next

Innovation is almost non-negotiable for every company today. Its important aspect that ... < Back Innovation techniques – for the brilliant ideas in you Innovation is almost non-negotiable for every company today. Its important aspect that ... Innovation is almost non-negotiable for every company today. Its important aspect that every company should consider, if they want to sustain and thrive in this competitive market. And hinking of innovation, one of the most important aspect of innovation is the “Idea Generation”. Unless ideas are generated, innovation can not fly. There are quite a few idea generation techniques that would help generate large number of ideas to find new solutions and different ways of achieving the purpose. Here in this article, we are going to have a look at three common techniques of idea generation. Brainstorming / Brain writing For the brainstorming or brain writing session, we need to gather a group of participants who are familiar with the challenge statement. Create a challenge statement and the attribute list and make them visible to the team. For the purpose of brain storming, it is recommended that the group of participants is typically less than 7 people. If you have more than 7 people in the room, then you should go for Brain writing technique. Ideas should be put up spontaneously verbally during brainstorming session and written on a piece of paper during brain writing session. During the brain writing session, after each idea is written on a piece of paper, it is recommended to crumple the paper and throw in the middle and pick up someone else’s crumpled paper to write next idea. Ensure that some rules such as non-criticism of any idea, welcoming unusual ideas and encouraging other participants to build on other’s ideas should strictly adhered to. Encourage ‘quantity’ of ideas. For the purpose of idea generation, quality follows quantity. Overall ideas should be rated based on the benefits it can give and easiness of achieving them. All the ideas should be properly documented for future reference. Scamper SCAMPER is a checklist of lateral thought technique that can expand one’s creativity. SCAMPER is a acronym of the following words, Substitute – Try and see what can be substituted in the current situation in order to improve upon the scenario. Ask the questions on what can be substituted, how, when, why ? Combine – Try to enhance the synergy by combining, merging, attaching, adding and uniting separate attributes together for the issue. This might give a different solution altogether. Adapt – Try and make adjustments to certain aspects and attributes of a product or process Modify/Magnify/Minify – Try and change the size, quantity or quality of the attributes. Try to make things later or smaller, faster or slower and see what difference it can make to the situation. Put to other use – Try and change the place or purpose for which an object or a process is currently being used. Eliminate – Try and remove, omit or get rid of a quantity, part or whole object from the situation and see how it happens. Rearrange/Reduce/Reverse – Try and place attributes against each other, pit them opposite or contrary to, turn around; to change order or adjust, different plan, layout or scheme. Think like a child Whilst, I understand that changing the perspective from an adult to the child itself can be challenging but believe me it can be a fun. In order to try and generate ideas using this technique, make your mind set similar to that of a child by thinking of a children you know and you can anticipate the reaction of. Try and see the situation through their eyes and feel what they would like about the situation, what they would be proud of, what they would dislike, feel funny or useful about and note down the reactions. Consider the simple example of a muddy puddle. When we adults see it, we try and step over or step around it. We imagine muddy shoes, dirty clothes and filthy carpets at home if we step into the puddle. However, if you ask the same to kids, they would call it fun and imagine to build bridges and dams to cross it !! #generation #idea #mind #mindset #Innovation #techniques Previous Next

Kavitha is Head of Design with Digital Platforms & one of the best in visual design. Women leadership series - In conversation with Kavitha Thyagarajan 5 Mar 2022 Kavitha is Head of Design with Digital Platforms & one of the best in visual design. How would you introduce yourself? I am a multidisciplinary designer, enjoying my current role as Head of Design for TechOps Digital platforms, where I am surrounded and inspired by the most talented techies everyday. In my past life, I worked as an Architect and landscape designer. I believe in Mies van der Rohe’s motto “Less is more” and my work often reflects the same. Can you tell me a bit about your career journey? When did you first get into a leadership role? I have extensive experience in designing digital applications for consumers and enterprise solutions. I manage an interdisciplinary team of designers and developers and deliver value across cross-functional, multiple stakeholder, and distributed environments working in a globally distributed team. I have helped organizations set up a User experience design team and UX practice and have led and mentored design teams. My first role as a leader was when I was managing a bunch of designers and developers working across different products and services. This was my safe and comfortable zone and I never felt that I was doing anything different. What were the top challenges you faced during your journey and how did you overcome them? When you are leading a team that caters to different business functions that have its own priorities, it’s always a constant struggle to manage these priorities and at the same time delivering value. Initially this was a bit of struggle, but setting clear expectations with the global stakeholders, keeping them informed and making decisions along with them, helped me bridge the gap. I would always have an open and honest conversation with my stakeholders and would truly be invested in solving their problems. This gained me their trust and built a long term relationship with them. A leader must also know to navigate ambiguity and give a sense of direction to the team when they look up to you. I always believed that I needed to have answers for all the questions which would stress me out. I slowly realized that it was ok to accept that you don't have an answer yet and be transparent about it. This created a special bond and mutual respect for each other with my clients and team. What motivates you? I am a dreamer and constantly get inspired by numerous people around me. I love to experiment and I thrive on creativity. Mundane and routine bores me and hence I always find something that lets my creative juice flow. Do you have a role model in your life? Can you name a few people who you look up to? There are so many amazing people around me who I admire and follow. Couple of folks I get my inspiration from are John Maeda from the Tech and design leadership angle, Dan Norman - the design guru, Irene Au - for her amazing design leadership role where she has built and led design teams for some of the top companies. What does leadership mean to you? How would you describe your leadership style? Leadership to me means leading by example and setting up a safe and fun environment for everyone to thrive. Investing in people's growth and achievement is a great asset to have as a leader. Being open, honest, transparent, approachable and having empathy for others has helped me grow as a leader. At the same time, it is important to have a clear vision and strategy, direction, staying calm and focussed during adversity. What would be your advice to young leaders? When you take up the role as a leader for the first time, don’t get overwhelmed with everything around you. Take it slowly but stay connected with the key people on the team. Empowering others to make decisions, sharing responsibilities and communicating constantly with your clients and team is crucial. Active listening is an asset that every leader should have. Things will soon fall in place when you have empathy for everyone. Another important aspect is to focus on your own personal development. Make sure that you allocate some time in a week specifically for this. This will help you grow as a leader you always aspired to be. Last but not least, make sure you have fun.

Sakthivel Viswanathan is a Technology Principal with Thoughtworks and co-leads the IDP (Internal Developer Platform) Program. With more than a decade of experience, his strong focus has been to bridge the gap between technology and business objectives and to make the jobs of the business leaders easier. Emerging leadership series - In conversation with Sakthivel Viswanathan 9 Feb 2023 Sakthivel Viswanathan is a Technology Principal with Thoughtworks and co-leads the IDP (Internal Developer Platform) Program. With more than a decade of experience, his strong focus has been to bridge the gap between technology and business objectives and to make the jobs of the business leaders easier. How would you introduce yourself? “Hello there!” I am Sakthivel. Working as an application developer in /thoughtworks. In recent months, playing the role of Technology Principal for Digital Platform products. Having a decade long experience in programming and leading the technology side of delivery. In recent years, my strong focus has been on bridging the gap between the technology and business objectives with the goal to support and make the jobs of business leaders easier. I spend most of my time in my leadership role and I continue to find a balance in keeping myself updated with the evolving technology world in the areas that are of interest to me. Can you tell me a bit about your career journey? What inspired you to take on the leadership role? I still feel and remember the enthusiasm, challenges and late nights during the initial days of my programming career. With the days passing, It was personally evident that my interpersonal and career skills grew with varied opportunities and stints. I remember taking on the leadership role during my days in Cognizant for the first time, when I was expected to influence a client with programming expertise with the intention of forming an offshore team with three members. It was a wonderful opportunity to understand the leadership role and I was prepared and ready to take on the unknown and came out well with tons of learnings. The single most important turning point in my career was the experience I gained by putting myself on the spot and to take on the challenges through the journey. It was the best thing that I did for myself and it helped both professionally and personally. What were the top challenges you faced during your journey and how did you overcome them? From my personal experience, the challenges I faced during my journey include managing my time and reducing the cognitive load for operating effectively. I have come a long way from the time it was incredibly difficult to manage my time and I continue to reflect and adapt based on the needs. Some of the key strategies that I follow to be effective in my role is to have a focused time and to start the day with must do items. Ensuring to reflect on the progress at the end of day and course correcting if necessary. This helps to consciously plan the next day better. To manage the cognitive load, I tend to avoid switching contexts too much. While it is important to respond to pressing items, it is equally important to plan for a dedicated time for activities such as these. In my opinion, there is no one rule that fits all but opportunities to experiment and learn from individual experience. I am personally a big fan of doing “One thing at a time” which gives a sense of self satisfaction in accomplishing goals instead of trying to complete “Way too many things at a time”. What motivates you everyday? Nature is a great source of inspiration and motivation for me. Tiny events such as birds chirping, morning sun shine, clear blue skies and cool breeze, gives me a positive vibe which takes the day forward. Do you have a role model in your life? Can you name a few people who you look up to? My parents are my role models. Their dedication and tireless effort to shape my future is the single most thing I admire whole-heartedly. The other personality that I admire most is my spouse. She has been my guiding light and the person I look to during some critical times in the recent years. Apart from them, Late Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam inspired and continues to inspire me. His humbleness, devotion to his profession, dedication and the heights he has reached through hard work is something that is cherished by millions of people, I am proud to say that I am one in the million. I recommend reading his autobiography “Wings of fire”. What does leadership mean to you? How would you describe your leadership style? To me leadership is all about commitment. It is vital for leaders to be committed to a goal. A leader, who demonstrates strong commitment towards a goal can easily nurture confidence and trust among others. No one is perfect and I am no exception. I strongly believe in commitment and I always try my best to be as committed as possible. The other important leadership style that I follow is active listening. A leader listening to his subordinates and juniors demonstrates that he or she is willing to value their ideas and perspectives. This increases trust, innovation and fosters a positive work environment. An environment where people are ready to talk about anything related to their work is an outcome of a leader who values opinions however small they are. What would be your advice to other leaders? Being an effective leader is a continuous learning journey, a general advice that I have for my fellow leaders is to continue the learning process irrespective of the position you are now in. Continuous learning helps us to sharpen our skills and be more effective. Be open minded to accept constructive criticism and feedback. Being humble and understanding the criticism helps us to adapt and course correct in challenging situations and environments. Always embrace failure as you celebrate success.

Jinjun Huang comes with 14+ years of experience in IT and has been with @thoughtworks since 2018. He joined us as a Tech Lead and then switched to become a Product Manager in 2020. Jinjun looks up to his father in law as a role model. Jinjun has learnt key lessons of responsibility, hardwork, and optimism from him. Emerging leadership series - In conversation with Jinjun Huang 30 Jan 2023 Jinjun Huang comes with 14+ years of experience in IT and has been with @thoughtworks since 2018. He joined us as a Tech Lead and then switched to become a Product Manager in 2020. Jinjun looks up to his father in law as a role model. Jinjun has learnt key lessons of responsibility, hardwork, and optimism from him. How would you introduce yourself? Hi everyone, nice to meet you. My name is Jinjun Huang. I am from Wuhan, China. I am a product manager of the Digital Platforms team in Thoughtworks. I have 2 kids, an 11-year old daughter and a 5-year old son. In my spare time, I like to take them for a trip by car, playing basketball and computer games as well. Can you tell me a bit about your career journey? What inspired you to take on the leadership role? I graduated from Harbin Institute of Technology in 2008 with my bachelor degree in the major of Computer Science. Then I worked as a software engineer for over 10 years in multiple companies. I joined Thoughtworks in 2018 as a Tech Lead, then switched to a product manager in 2020. At the beginning, it was very natural for me to take the role as a technical lead because I was more senior than the other team members. But after taking the technical lead role, I found it challenging to leverage the team to achieve the team target instead of working individually and finishing my own development task. I started to enjoy my leadership role when I found my leadership can amplify the team's performance. What were the top challenges you faced during your journey and how did you overcome them? The top challenge for me was the mindset change. I used to think about a product from a pure technical perspective. But when I found technology was not the only determinant to make the product successful, I started to learn what business success means from different perspectives. My MBA courses helped me a lot during this progress. I learnt a lot from some failed business cases, even some of them were amazing from a technical perspective. What motivates you everyday? I am motivated by the sense of accomplishment of my daily work. My clients and target users’ daily life can get easier with the products and support of my team. My organizational leaders are confident that my team is working on the correct things and in the correct way. My teammates enjoy their daily work and feel their hard work is meaningful to the organization and the whole world. Do you have a role model in your life? Can you name a few people who you look up to? I look up to my father-in-law as my role model in my life. My father-in-law is a farmer. He raised 4 nephews and nieces after his elder brother passed away, even though he had 3 kids already. He works really hard to feed the big family. He keeps studying as a great wireman. He can handle all kinds of difficult conversations in his daily life with his great emotional intelligence. I learnt a lot from him including responsibility , hardwork and optimism . All of them helped me a lot during my career journey. I look up to Dewang Cao, a Chinese entrepreneur, the founder of Fuyao Group. He is a very successful businessman, a very famous charitarian. At the same time, in his biography he admits some personal mistakes, including some very sensitive parts. I learnt what courage and introspection means from him. I look up to Shijian Chu, a Chinese businessman. He brought his first cigarette company to top1 of Asia, and then was thrown in jail for some reasons when he was 71 years old. When he got out of jail when he was 74 years old, he started his new undertaking and became the King of Orange in China when he was 84 years old. I learnt what gritty means from him. What does leadership mean to you? How would you describe your leadership style? Leadership seems like a catalyst to me, which can enable the whole team to achieve something they didn’t look forward to. I think all of my team members are really talented. What I need to do is accelerate the chemical reactions happening in the team, enable all of them to be a better team player, a more professional employee, a better person. I’d like to build my leadership style as a visionary and coach. On one hand, I think it is really important to be a visionary as a leader. When the whole team can be united with the same vision, and all of the team members think it meaningful for themselves, for their clients and end users and even for the whole world, they can make great decisions by themselves to achieve it. And they can benefit a lot during the process. On the other hand, leaders need to stand with their coworkers daily. Leaders need to coach the team members not only to do the correct things, but also do the correct things in the correct way. With the coach they can be cultivated to handle more complicated scenarios by themselves in the future. Only in this way, the team can grow organically in the business style of a professional service company. What would be your advice to other leaders? Pay special attention to be a visionary. Be confident of the subjective initiatives of the team members. Believe they can make great things happen when they believe what you believe. At the same time, help them in the operation level in the coach way. Day by day, they will grow naturally until they surprise you. Chinese version 你会如何介绍自己？ 大家好，我叫黄进军，来自中国武汉，是 Thoughtworks 的数字平台团队的一名产品经理。 我有2个孩子，一个11岁的女儿和一个5岁的儿子。 闲暇时，我喜欢带他们出去自驾游，偶尔也会跟他们一起打篮球，玩switch游戏。 你能告诉我一些你的职业生涯吗？ 是什么促使您担任领导职务？ 我2008年毕业于哈尔滨工业大学计算机专业，获学士学位。此后在多家公司担任软件工程师超过10年。在2018年，我作为技术主管加入Thoughtworks，然后在2020年转职成为产品经理。 一开始，因为我比其他团队成员都更资深，所以担任技术负责人是一个很自然的事情。但是在担任技术负责人之后，我发现带领一个团队来实现团队目标远比单打独斗地完成开发任务要困难得多。 当我发现我的领导能力可以提升团队的整体绩效之后，我开始喜欢上了我的新角色。 你在旅途中遇到的最大挑战是什么？你是如何克服这些挑战的？ 对我来说最大的挑战是心态的改变。 我曾经习惯于从纯技术的角度来思考一个产品。但当我发现技术并不是使产品成功的唯一决定因素时，我开始从不同的角度了解商业成功意味着什么。在这个过程中，我的 MBA 课程对我帮助很大。 我从一些失败的商业案例中学到了很多，其中一些如果从技术角度来看甚至是非常先进和超前的。 你每天的动力是什么？ 激励我的每天的工作所带来的成就感。可以把它们分为三个层面： 第一，借助我们团队的产品和支持，我的客户和目标用户的日常生活会变得更加轻松。 第二，我的组织领导者相信我的团队正在以正确的方式做正确的事情。 第三，我的队友享受他们的日常工作，并觉得他们的辛勤工作对组织和整个世界都有意义。 你的生活中有榜样吗？ 你能说出几个你敬仰的人吗？ 我的岳父是我生活中的榜样。 我的岳父是一个普通的农民。 他的哥哥去世后他养大了4个侄子和侄女，尽管他自己已经有了3个孩子。 他非常努力地工作来养活这个大家庭。他一直在学习并成为一名出色的电工。 凭借高超的情商，他可以应付日常生活中各种棘手的谈话。 我从他身上学到了很多，包括责任感、勤奋和乐观。 它们在我的职业生涯中对我帮助很大。 我敬仰中国企业家、福耀集团创始人曹德旺。 他是一个非常成功的商人，一个非常有名的慈善家。 同时，在他的传记中他也承认了一些个人错误，包括一些非常敏感的部分。我从他身上学到了什么是勇气和自省。 我敬仰中国商人褚世建。 他将自己的第一家卷烟公司成功的经营成跻身亚洲第一，却在71岁高龄时因故入狱。74岁出狱后又开始二次创业，直到84岁成为中国橙王。我从他那里学到了什么是坚韧不拔。 领导对你意味着什么？ 您如何描述您的领导风格？ 对我来说，领导力就像是一种催化剂，它可以让整个团队达成他们不曾预想的成就。 我认为我团队里的所有成员都非常有才华。我所需要做的只是加速团队中发生的化学反应，让他们都成为更好的团队成员、更专业的职场人、更好的人。 我想建立的领导风格是成为有远见的人和教练。 一方面，我认为作为领导者，成为一个有远见的人真的很重要。 当整个团队能够以同一个愿景团结在一起，并且所有团队成员都认为这对他们自己、对他们的客户和最终用户乃至整个世界都有意义时，他们就可以自己做出伟大的决定并实现它。 他们自身在此过程中也会受益匪浅。 另一方面，领导者需要每天与同事站在一起。 领导者不仅要指导团队成员做正确的事，还要用正确的方法做正确的事。 有了教练，他们可以培养自己在未来处理更复杂场景时的能力。 只有这样，团队才能在专业服务公司的经营模式中有机成长。 你对其他领导人有什么建议？ 成为一个有远见的人。 相信团队成员的主观能动性。当他们相信您所相信的愿景时，他们可以成就伟大的事情。 同时成为一个好的教练，在操作层面帮助他们。日复一日，他们会自然生长，直到让您大吃一惊。

Gyanesh started his IT career as a developer more than two decades ago but soon transitioned into the security domain out of curiosity. He is someone who does not like to say "no" and help whoever comes to him with a problem. Gyanesh derives satisfaction on solving problems and feeling of responsibility and trust motivates him. Emerging leadership series - In conversation with Gyanesh Ojha 16 Feb 2023 Gyanesh started his IT career as a developer more than two decades ago but soon transitioned into the security domain out of curiosity. He is someone who does not like to say "no" and help whoever comes to him with a problem. Gyanesh derives satisfaction on solving problems and feeling of responsibility and trust motivates him. How would you introduce yourself? I am Gyanesh Ojha. Some people miss the “y” in my name and call me Ganesh. I know it's difficult to pronounce names but I’d prefer people pronounce my name correctly 🙂 . I am from India but am currently living in Singapore with my wife and daughter. I work at Thoughtworks and am currently responsible for South East Asia (SEA) InfoSec. I am passionate about Information Security and spend time sharing my knowledge with others to make them InfoSec savvy. I have been continuously honing my Infosec skills for over two decades now. Can you tell me a bit about your career journey? What inspired you to take on the leadership role? I started my IT career as a developer more than two decades ago but soon transitioned into the security domain out of curiosity. Early in my career, my focus area was application security, vulnerability assessment, penetration testing and audit. Those were my consulting days when we used to test government websites, private organization’s applications and used to audit banks and private organizations against IT security standards. Gradually I moved towards compliance and internal information security management. My mentor, Dr Deoraj Bhanu Murthy inspired me to think out of the box to solve real world problems and in the process made me take on the leadership role. What were the top challenges you faced during your journey and how did you overcome them? I am a person who doesn’t like to say “no” and the reason is simple. I want to help whoever comes to me with a problem. When I worked as an individual contributor, this would result in a constant backlog that I found difficult to clear. But when I started to lead a team, I had to decide where my focus should be and prioritize my tasks. So, I started to filter and focus on high priorities looking at my team’s bandwidth and, in the process, I learnt to say “no”. Though it is still not that easy for me, I have made quite a good progress. What motivates you every day? The satisfaction I derive on solving a problem, no matter how big or small; the joy I feel on seeing a colleague being more infosec aware and the responsibility my seniors trust me with, motivates me every day. In my personal life, the support and unconditional love of my family push me to outperform in every aspect of life. Do you have a role model in your life? Can you name a few people who you look up to? I look at the positive side of all the individuals I have connected with so far, both in my professional and personal life. But Dr Deoraj Bhanu Murthy is the one I truly Iook up to. I feel blessed to have had the chance of working with him early in my career. What does leadership mean to you? How would you describe your leadership style? Guiding team members in the right direction, taking ownership and responsibility of the team’s work and making the team believe in themselves is leadership according to me. Simon Sinek says, “Leaders are the ones who are willing to give up something of their own for us.” This pretty much sums up my style of leadership because I believe true leaders don’t think their team works for them, instead they work for their team. What would be your advice to other leaders? There is no perfect leadership style. So don’t stick to just one style of leadership. You might have to change your style to better suit a situation. So, be open to change and bring out the best in you without compromising on the values. Also remember that being a manager is not the same as being a leader

In the always-on, digital economy change happens fast. Any business that .. < Back Building innovation engine In the always-on, digital economy change happens fast. Any business that .. [ This article was originally published on Thoughtworks's Insights. You can see the original articles here . ] Don’t wait for tomorrow In the always-on, digital economy change happens fast. Any business that rests on its laurels can expect to become obsolete. In an ultra-competitive market, you have only a small window to spot opportunities and exploit them before your competitors. That’s because no matter how fast your market is evolving, technology is evolving faster. Tech-led, innovative disruptors are everywhere. Just look at long-established markets like global commodity trading. Within three months of launching, VAKT ($), the blockchain-based energy trading platform had signed up more than two-thirds of companies responsible for all deals in North Sea crude oil trading. This pace of change is unprecedented. And the consequences are clear: Unless your organization is geared up to innovate, you’ll always be playing catch-up. Many established organizations are comfortable not being at the bleeding edge. And that’s understandable: in febrile times, taking time to come up with a measured response can seem the pragmatic thing to do. In fact, pragmatism shouldn’t be conflated with inaction. If you really want to understand the best course for your business, you need to understand it from a cost perspective. How much will exploring disruption and investing in innovation cost? What value can you derive from exploiting opportunities? What is the cost of missed opportunity? What will you have to spend to get back in the game? And in many cases, that means you need to take action now. As Forrester Research principal analyst James Staten notes : “Driving change is far better and less fearful than waiting for others to disrupt you and having to painfully respond and adapt.” Introducing the ‘innovate to impact’ framework Concepts such as innovation can become overused, with everyone adopting slightly different ideas about what they mean. In this context, I’d define innovation as: Creating something new, that generates a tangible value to the intended audience. The most salient points here are “new” and “tangible value”. If it’s not new, and if it’s not bringing tangible value, it’s not innovation. It’s worth noting at this point that one-off innovation isn’t really much use. Take pic sharing trailblazer Snap. Its clever use of AR tech briefly made SnapChat the must-have app for any social media-loving teen, paving the way for an IPO that valued the company at over $30 billion. But its innovations were easy for competitors, such as Facebook-owned Instagram to copy — over the months following the IPO, Snap’s market cap dropped by more than $20 billion. Snap has only subsequently been able to recover lost ground through embracing the ideas of continuous innovation. To those that see innovation through the lens of eureka moments — where advances are only made after flashes of inspiration and brilliance — continuous innovation can appear anachronistic. It’s like capturing lightning in a bottle. This isn’t a view I subscribe to, but it’s one I’ve often encountered; therefore, before we start thinking about a roadmap for innovation, it’s worth considering some of the major obstacles you’ll need to overcome before any innovation program can get off the ground. Barriers to innovation Ask any business leader you encounter and they’ll say being more innovative is highly desirable. But for innovation to be something more than a pipe dream, you need to be realistic about the challenges you’re likely to face. While there could be many reasons why innovation programs fail to take off within the organization, the most common barriers I have encountered are: Fear of failure In a world of performance reviews and targets, nobody wants to be associated with failure. When people are in fear for their livelihood they can become risk averse. What’s more, innovation means change — and change can be scary. Being ready to innovate often demands a huge cultural shift, where experimentation is embraced. And if things don’t work, what’s important is what you’ve learnt from the experience; not who’s to blame. Too busy on BAU You’re probably used to hearing from your teams how busy they are. But when all your efforts are expended on keeping the lights on, your ability to innovate suffers. And since people are busy, they often feel that they’re adding value — perhaps without questioning whether they could add more. The importance any organization attaches to innovation has profound cultural implications. It’s all very well making grand gestures, such as setting aside regular time for blue sky thinking; but if those sessions are the first thing to be cut when cost savings need to be made, don’t be surprised if your staff question your commitment to innovation. Lack of diversity As author Simone Bhan Ahuja notes, lack of diversity within innovation teams can hamstring your efforts from the outset : “You’ll know you have the wrong team when everything is running along smoothly but the team’s output doesn’t look much different from business as usual.” If you’re looking for new approaches and ideas, you’re going to need diversity of thought — people with different skill sets, people that come at problems from different angles. Key skills for the group may include: product strategy; product development; entrepreneurship; domain expertise; experience design; research and analysis; and ideation and creation. Typical approaches to innovation? Given the importance attached to innovation, it’s little wonder that so many people in the organization want to lead it. And while it doesn’t pay to be too prescriptive — each organization is unique and needs to find an approach that fits — here are some common approaches, along with their pros and cons. As we’ve seen earlier, this collaborative approach will need team members with a diverse set of skills. And it also has the greatest opportunity to succeed when it involves the tech function. That’s because today’s greatest innovations are dependent on tech; the complexities and processes needed to deliver innovation reliably depend on tech expertise. But collaboration also needs checks and balances: who is the one deciding on whether to focus on building something or enabling innovation? When should you focus on products and when is it more important to energize the team through events such as hackathons? Ultimately, you’ll also want to consider how you plan to support sustained innovation over the long term. This isn’t something you can achieve overnight. Planning for continuous innovation is a journey — and one, if done right, that will become a strategic differentiator against the competition for years to come. We call this journey the Impact to Innovation framework. This Innovate to Impact framework gives you a roadmap to create internal incubator teams, that become the engine of your innovation. The framework also sets out how to grow the impact inside and outside of your organization through scaling different stages of maturity. As the model suggests, for innovation to become a strategic differentiator, you cannot just stay at the experimentation level: you need to show the impact of innovation and have a plan to grow that. It can be useful to think about this journey at the outset: Stage four becomes your blue ocean ; you have to think about how innovation can become a strategic differentiator for your business and work backwards from there to identify what steps to take now. In subsequent articles ( Part Two, Part Three and Part Four), we’ll explore this maturity model in more detail, enabling you to understand where you are today and how to reach your desired end-state. Previous Next