Search.

External publications. The path towards technology transformation can be very long, says Swapnil Deshpande, Chief Digital Officer at ThoughtWorks This is an exclusive interview conducted by the Editor Team of CIO News with Swapnil Deshpande, Chief Digital Officer at ThoughtWorks. Read More .. How developers can become a lot more productive Swapnil Deshpande & Vivek Kant speak on developer effectiveness, with Times Jobs. Read More .. 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. Read More .. Futuristic Technology: How should companies prepare their workforce for such a future? Here is an exclusive conversation with Swapnil Deshpande, Published in Times Jobs. Read More ..

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.

Emerging leadership series - In conversation with Gayathri Sribharath 13 Feb 2023 Gayathri is the Global IT-Compliance Lead for /thoughtworks and an auditor with a strong focus on Information Technology audits. Professionally, she loves collaborating and accomplishing big things as a part of a team and her thinks current role in /thoughtworks allows her to do this daily. How would you introduce yourself? Hello! Thank you for taking a few minutes to read about my journey. I am the Global IT Compliance Lead for /thoughtworks. I am an auditor with a strong focus on Information Technology audits. I work closely with product and software development teams and help drive best practices in information security, SOX compliance, data security, access management, change management etc. In the current role, I act as the liaison between external auditors, business and technology teams and help organisations comply with the ever increasing and complex requirements of various security and risk standards. I have a keen interest on working with teams to solve Compliance issues using technology. Some of my professional degrees and certifications include Chartered accountancy, Certified Information systems auditing etc. Of late, I have developed interest in Data Privacy and GDPR. On the personal front, I am married to Sri Bharath - an ardent supporter of all that I do and my sounding board. I have a beautiful and talented daughter. I love to learn to cook different South Indian cuisines. I like to go on long solo drives in my car and a lover of the beach and sunsets. Can you tell me a bit about your career journey? What inspired you to take on the leadership role? Born and brought up in Coimbatore, a city that is famous for its visionaries and innovative ideas in business, there is always a thirst to learn and explore new things. It’s in our DNA and I think that has been a factor in the way my career journey has been shaped. My career journey is shaped by the mentors and great thinkers I had the chance to work with. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all those who helped shape my career and encouraged my thought process to be different. As any other intern, I started working on internal and tax audits. But the audit consultancy I worked for believed in me and gave opportunities to work in other specialisations like information security, IT audits etc. This helped me understand my strengths. After almost 5 years of working for the audit consultancy, I moved on to work for technology consulting companies and be a part of their internal audit and compliance teams that focus on IT audits. I have performed so many different types of audits like SSAE 16, SOX, ERP audits, etc. I have had opportunities to consult teams and audit them as well. This exposure and experience are what makes me confident in my leadership role. What were the top challenges you faced during your journey and how did you overcome them? One of the difficult challenges that I had to overcome was to learn how to network and navigate through an organization’s system. This skill is very important for anyone, more so in my role where I must work with so many stakeholders, internal and external. A very powerful leadership development program that I completed a few years ago in one of the organizations I worked for helped me identify my areas of weakness using a SWOT analysis. I took support from my mentors to arrive at a series of things to do improve my communication skills and confidence levels. This enabled me to easily converse with various types of stakeholders. I was able to create the visibility required for the role. A big portion of my success can be attributed now to the relationships I have built with my peers, colleagues and important stakeholders in my career journey. What motivates you everyday? Personally, my daughter, of course. I want her to see a strong mother who does smart-work and someone who is independent. Professionally, I love collaborating and accomplishing big things as a part of a team. My current role in /thoughtworks allows me to do this daily. Isn’t it wonderful to do something that has a meaningful impact on the organization? I travel often. I do some workcations too! This helps me stay not glued to my desk and be one with nature and that motivates me to do what I do best. Do you have a role model in your life? Can you name a few people who you look up to? I have many role models in my life. To being with it is my mother who I look up to first. She has overcome a lot of challenges to raise us and is a very strong woman who looks for solutions and leads the family to its success. And then all my mentors. I am naming a few here. CN Srivatsan & Gita Srivatsan, Meena Swaminathan, Uday Bikkasani, Leena Pandya, Nitin Raina, Sasikala Mahesh. What does leadership mean to you? How would you describe your leadership style? When people feel safe enough to raise their hands and say ‘I made a mistake’ or ‘I need some help’, that leader has succeeded to Put people first and create a congenial environment for them. That to me is a good leader. Leaders are the ones who see the world not as it is, but as it could be. They inspire others to follow them because they believe in something larger than themselves. And that "something" is not a destination or a goal, but a vision- something worth sacrificing for and fighting for. What would be your advice to other leaders? Believe in yourself first and then believe in the people that surround you. A good leader should be able to create more leaders. A good leader should prefer actions over authority. Listen to your heart and put people first. Rest all can wait. My favorite quote by Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev – Integrity, Insight and Inclusiveness are the three essential qualities of leadership.

< 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

Women leadership series - In conversation with Deepthi K 5 Mar 2022 Deepthi completed her MBA, started her career in IT in a pre-sales role, moved on to be Six-sigma consultant before joining Thoughtworks 2.5 yrs ago as a BA and currently playing the role of the Product Owner for the Data platforms team. How would you introduce yourself? Hello there ! My name is Deepthi and I play the role of a Product Owner for the Data Platform team at Thoughtworks. I am passionate about working on social change initiatives and I truly believe we all are empowered to make a positive impact on the world. At home, I am raising a little lioness aged 4 who inspires me to be a better person everyday. These are the attributes that I think of when it comes to my identity. Can you tell me a bit about your career journey? After completing my MBA in Lean Operations and Systems I joined the IT fraternity in a pre-sales role. I loved to experiment with new projects and roles even early in my career . From my pre-sales role I moved on to be a Six-Sigma consultant. Soon after, I picked up the role of a business analyst for one of the world's largest consumer retail companies…and that got me hooked. I started my journey with Thoughtworks around 2.5 years back as a business analyst and have recently taken up the role of a product owner for the data platform team. It has been an interesting journey in the Data space with incredible opportunities to learn and experiment. When did you first get into a leadership role? I think I have been informally introduced into the leadership role ever since I joined my first project as a BA. Though there were no explicit expectations set on me as a leader, I found myself getting curious and learning on the job. This helped to grow my competencies to fit the needs of the project without much of a push and pull. Overtime I got the opportunity to work as the lead BA for the team, a part time PM role and now a PO role. Now that I look back, I can see how big a role autonomous teams and cultivators play in an organization. What were the top challenges you faced during your journey and how did you overcome them? 'Imposter Syndrome' - Definitely. I had to take a career break in between for a couple of years and when I first joined back it was challenging to get into a creative problem solving mode without worrying about skewed outcomes and imagined hurdles. It took some time to gain confidence and what helped was - 1. focusing on the task at hand and thinking of it as an opportunity to exercise and learn new skills 2. Collecting feedback proactively 3. Measuring actual outcomes at each step. What motivates you? Many things - 1. Working with individuals who are passionate about their craft. 2. Learning new and interesting things at work 3. Being a part of a thriving community that fosters deep and candid communication. Do you have a role model in your life? Can you name a few people who you look up to? My dad has been a great role model and influence. He kept widening my horizons and made me realize my own hidden strengths. This has shaped the way I think and act and I try to evolve and emulate these traits with all the great people around me. When I joined Tw, I was amazed by how leaders shared their thoughts very candidly and productively, each one inspiring me in their own unique ways. The list is actually long but few whom I would like to mention are - Ruchika Bhargava (PM - Bahmni Project) , Sujitha Selvaraj- (Office Principal for Tw CBE) and Richa Trivedi ( my previous mentor). What does leadership mean to you? How would you describe your leadership style? For me a leader is someone who inspires you to elevate your thinking without a fear of failure. In short, that is the example that I would like to set for my team . What would be your advice to young leaders? Do not trivialize the impact that you as an individual can have on your project/ team/ goals. You can inspire people by setting an example of how things can be done. It doesn't matter how small you think the task is and whether anyone would notice it or not. The other important thing is you pull others up on their journey as you grow. Listen, be empathetic and you will find opportunities to leverage the strengths and solve problems more efficiently.

Women leadership series - In conversation with Anumeha Verma 5 Mar 2022 Anumeha is a Data Strategist & Product Manager with Thoughtworks and she says "Nothing gives me more joy than watching those around me grow and reach their dreams." How would you introduce yourself? I’m a generalist in both my personal and professional lives and don the hat that my personal or work family needs the most. Sometimes that’s a friend, other times a disciplinary parent, or a product manager or rebel leader. My creativity thrives in chaos and I love to use it for creating structure and organisation. Words are my first love and I’m an avid reader too. Can you tell me a bit about your career journey? When did you first get into a leadership role? My journey is similar to a lot of technologists in India. I studied Electronics & Comms engineering and landed an IT job. A few years later, I decided to go back to college and study HR and General Management. I was excited to join on the Digital Business side and thus joined Thoughtworks. I’ve been in Analysis and Product roles ever since, with a specialisation in Data & Analytics. My first leadership role happened a couple of years into my career, while working with Tata Consultancy Service (TCS). I remember it being a lot of fun and also quite stressful as I walked the tightrope from a manager to a leader. What were the top challenges you faced during your journey and how did you overcome them? This might be the longest answer I give you. For I love a good challenge :) There are a couple of challenges that are top of my mind. One was my inability to fail. As a leader, I felt it was my responsibility to keep succeeding so my team could look up to me. How could I fall in front of those that I lead? However, my mentor pointed out how that was stopping me from making the right decisions and more importantly, it was stopping my team from doing their best. Over time, I’ve learnt to look at failures as learning opportunities. For example, I learnt to test our hypothesis and take calculated risks before making a big, new investment. Another that I’d call out is the need for validation that some of us have. I’ve seen this in women more than I’d like, including myself. I’ve been hesitant to aim for the sky for I wonder if I‘ve got all the right skills. This excerpt sums it up nicely: A chief information officer at a large bank told us about her experience receiving support from sponsors. When she first became eligible for promotion, she believed that she could apply only if all her skills matched the stated job requirements. But her sponsors counseled her that the leaders in charge of promotions considered some skills essential but saw others as skills that candidates could develop on the job. (I’d recommend reading the full article here ) Having friends and mentors around me, who give me honest and constructive feedback, has been my biggest career support. In my endevour to be a lifelong learner, I also think about my work quite deeply and reflect on what’s happening in my space and others. What motivates you? To see my team grow. Nothing gives me more joy than watching those around me grow and reach their dreams. As a leader, I constantly strive to create both space and support for my team. Space for them to stretch themselves towards ambitious goals but also giving them support so they have the skills and resources to move forward. I draw a lot of positive energy from my work. I really love what I do and that keeps me tap-dancing to work everyday. Do you have a role model in your life? Can you name a few people who you look up to? There are so many! But I’ll name three women for now: My mum to start with. Her energy and excitement to learn new things never ceases to amaze me, even at her 60+ age. I’m also thankful for having a lot of women at work to look upto. To name a few, Joanna Parke, Chief Talent Officer at Thoughtworks, for being such a great, empathetic leader and encouraging others around her to voice their opinions and Sunita M, General Manager at Thoughtworks, for being that leader whose candour can put anyone at ease and how she keeps her cool in the most difficult of situations. What does leadership mean to you? How would you describe your leadership style? To me, leadership is an everyday job. There are the ones who lead from the front and save the day in a crisis. But, to me, leadership is getting out there with our team and face the everyday challenges together. What would be your advice to young leaders? Hustle > Fail > Learn > Grow. Repeat. Set ambitious goals. If some of these goals frighten you, it’s a good thing. That’s what tells you that you’re aiming high. Have trust in yourself and make your dreams come true.

Emerging leadership series - In conversation with Ganesh Kumar Balusamy 28 Jan 2023 Ganesh is a product manager of NEO with @thoughtworks. He considers his 14 yrs daughter as his role model and he proudly acknowledges she inspires him with her dedication, determination, firm decision making, and clarity of thoughts. How would you introduce yourself? My name is Ganesh Kumar (GK), and I work for the TechOps Digital Platforms team at /thoughtworks as a product manager. Having 16 years of professional background with a focus on analysis, product and delivery. Setting the right product strategy, leading the team with the right intent and goal, discovering the right problem by consulting with users and stakeholders, facilitating and identifying the right solution, testing and validating the identified solution, and delivering it as committed along with the team are all part of my day to day activities. Can you tell me a bit about your career journey? What inspired you to take on the leadership role? I started my career with PTG (@Ebix) as a sales executive to sell CRM softwares to financial analysts all over India. Fortunately, I got a chance to transition into the role of Business Analyst for the same cloud product. With the foundation of four years in my first job, I moved to BNY Mellon to automate the Anti Money Laundering manual processes. After working for BNY Mellon for one and half year, I moved to Exterro, a leading e-discovery software product company, where I worked to define, re-define, enhance digital workflows. Additionally, it provided an opportunity to lead and learn the qualities that make an effective leader. I joined Harman as a programme manager after gaining significant expertise as a business analyst in product companies. This was my first exposure to the service company and I worked with numerous clients across different domains. This gave me the confidence to be agile by nature, deliver as a team, and be domain agnostic. Joined /thoughtworks back in mid 2018 to learn and grow in product and digital platforms. The journey of learning is still continuing (my first company where I stayed for more than 4 years). People around me and my leaders motivated me to take initiative, trusted in my approach and inspired with their actions which takes me to the leadership role. What were the top challenges you faced during your journey and how did you overcome them? When I was put in an ambiguous scenario, I became nervous, but the revelation that it was OK not to know everything and the desire to quickly learn in those areas transformed my perspective on unknown areas. Even if I had solid conviction on certain topics, it was difficult for me to explain and persuade others. A detailed research, sufficient data points to support the issue, and assistance from the available support system enabled me to handle the criticism and communicate confidently. What motivates you everyday? An appreciation, a sense of accomplishment, when I make a positive change in the lives of others (however tiny), or a heartfelt greeting motivates me to run for the day. And, the little things I do for myself, and having my own ME time. Do you have a role model in your life? Can you name a few people who you look up to? Positive people around me always inspire me, and I admire them in various aspects. In my first job as a sales executive, I was good at prospecting, contacting, and offering, but I was not able to close the sales calls. Mr.Elango was my senior, and he went out of his way to help and protect me until I could close the calls on my own. Still, I remember his virtues in the manner he motivated and guided me in the beginning of my profession. When I first started working as a Business Analyst, Karina Shimomaebara was my first product manager. She taught me to be patient with my teammates and coworkers. She took an extra step to understand my personal side, hardships I was facing, and extended her help even beyond her limit. Many more people along with my professional life, now my 14 year daughter has recently been a role model for me. Her dedication, determination, firm decision making, and clarity of thought taught me what I had been missing out on all these days, and what I needed to focus on in my life. What does leadership mean to you? How would you describe your leadership style? In my school days, I was the least favorite student to most of my teachers, until I met my physics teacher in my 12th grade. For him, all students are equal irrespective of how attentive in his class, or how much you score in his subject, but he does his duty every day day in day out. When I scored 17% on his subject on the first exam, he extended his help to guide me along with some of my classmates who scored less. He identified where I am lagging behind and taught me every chapter in detail in the extra classes. With his guidance and extra care I scored 94% in my final exam. That made Physics my favorite subject. I see my Physics teacher as a great leader. I see good leaders around who are “good mentors” and “Impartial” and I am striving to emulate them. After a small setback in my communication with my clients, my leader in Thoughtworks said “Ganesh, I trust you.”. This was when I joined his team, and that was the first time a leader said he trusts me. I respect his confidence and the way he still stands by his words to this day. My fear of failure might have stuck with me, if I didn’t hear this from him. That tells me “Trust” and “Trustworthy” are needed to be a good leader. I believe that I am following it too. What would be your advice to other leaders? Don't wait for others to name you as a leader; believe that you are already a leader of someone or something. Humility may always help you develop as a leader. Be patient, actively listen to others, set a good example by doing the same, and be open to feedback. Furthermore, continue your passion, and do what interests you.

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 !

< Back Innovate to impact framework Every organization wants to innovate. Not everyone succeeds. .. [ This article was originally published on Thoughtworks's Insights. You can see the original articles here . ] Every organization wants to innovate. Not everyone succeeds. And often, the reason for failure is that organizations are trying to capture lightning in a bottle. Good luck with that. Instead, we prefer to plan for success. In this article, we’re going to dive into the practical details of our fluency model — the Innovate to Impact framework — looking at each stage of the journey and outlining the steps you need to take to proceed to the next level. The framework relies on a collaborative approach to innovation — avoiding the pitfalls of both the top-down and bottom-up approaches that so often end in frustration (see article one for a fuller description of the collaborative approach). But success demands more than just setting up a team and hoping for the best. Let’s look a little closer at how your journey towards sustainable innovation can map out. It starts with a vision: how you see ways to differentiate yourself from the competition. Stage 1: Experimenter (Build the capability & innovation engine) The first stage of your journey is all about building capability and the innovation engine that will help you with experimentation. Your innovation team needs to understand all key stakeholders; the roles team members will play; how to source ideas from people across the enterprise; and how to establish communication channels and build a process that will allow efficient execution of the experiments that you’re going to conduct. Experimentation, however, needs to be aligned to a purpose: that of getting you closer to your vision for strategic customer differentiation objective. Successful experimentation will help you scale through the steps of this framework, and smooth the path towards sustainable innovation. As part of the innovation engine, your team needs to get accustomed to the discipline of sourcing ideas; validating them; ensure the focus is aligned to business priorities; and evaluate experiments’ success in ways that are tangible to the business. This helps the team to be lean in their approach of building an innovation engine for experimentation. As part of this stage, the following are the aspects you need to consider: Purpose To build the capability and set foundations to carry out experiments in the most efficient manner. What you need to do? At this stage, you will need to: Identify the purpose of your innovation programme and set a long term charter for the programme Identify the key stakeholders and team members Build relations and alignment with leadership and understand strategic objectives of the organization Generate, validate and select a set of ideas and experiments in collaboration with people across organization Prioritize a set of ideas and run experiments using the rapid innovation framework Review your process to identify the most efficient and impactful way to build experiments Repeat the process for different types of experiments to fine-tune your innovation engine Expected outcome This phase is all about building an innovation capability that turn your ideas into products, prototypes or some tangible results (success or failure) in the most efficient manner. Once you’ve taken the above steps, its expected that you would have: Built the team that’s capable of running experiments in the most efficient manner Understood the communication pathways and decision points within your organization Proven your capability that you can turn ideas into products, prototypes or some tangible results (success or failures) within a definite period of time This should invite more attention for you innovation programme and possibly enable you to secure additional funding. Possible risks One of the biggest challenges for this early-stage Experimenter team is that the projects may fail, or at least not produce the anticipated results. Maybe more experiments fail than succeed. This can undoubtedly impact morale. So you should raise this possibility with the team at the outset. Because at this formative stage, successful projects aren’t the only goal: it’s essential that your team learns to adapt and quickly identify when projects aren’t delivering. They’ll learn far more from projects that go awry than those that are plain sailing. Innovation in practice Google X is a great example of how experimentation-oriented innovation labs can be set up. X is a diverse group of inventors and entrepreneurs who build and launch technologies that aim to improve the lives of millions, even billions, of people. Its goal? 10x impact on the world’s most intractable problems, not just 10% improvement. It approaches projects that have the aspiration and riskiness of research, and tries to tackle them with the speed and ambition of a startup. Some of its best known ideas include Project Loon (balloons to deliver internet in rural areas) and Project Wing (Drones for good deliveries). Stage 2: Value creator (Build enhanced credibility and strengthen leadership support by targeting internal value creation) Once you have a solid engine that enables you to turn your ideas into tangible results and has proven its worth through a series of experimentation, you should then turn your focus onto building impact within the organization. This can be done through targeted value generation using your engine. As a part of value creator, your focus should now be to partner with important business functions within the organization, identifying opportunities where impact of innovation can be highest and partner with the users or functions to deliver those innovations to them. The important difference between the experimenter phase and value creator phase is that in the latter, you identify specific areas (such as recruitment, staffing or operations) and work with the end users to establish a hypothesis of value and agree on it before starting to work on solving the problem and delivering an innovation. In this phase, your working team becomes bigger as you welcome the potential users and functional people into your team and focus on co-creation to deliver impactful innovation through your engine. Purpose The purpose of this phase is to strengthen the partnership with the organizational leadership by providing direct and tangible benefits to the important business functions through your innovation engine. What you need to do? To prepare successfully for this stage, you should: Identify and partner with an internal business function, which is strategically important for the organization (say staffing, recruiting, sales) Talk to the users and understand their problems, as well as opportunities in the area Ideate within the context to understand the possibilities for innovation Map idea to potential value /outcome and target specific idea for experimentation Create a working group with users and functional people that would work with your team to co-create the solution Use your experimentation engine to build the solution/product/prototype and targetedly deliver the value Measure the value delivered Expected outcome Because your innovation team is now working with a target group within the enterprise, you can expect the team to hone their ability to generate ideas that solve specific problems for that team. This can help build the culture of purpose-led innovation. Innovation is driven by customer value and market differentiation. It's sustained with strategic alignment and people participation. The innovation efforts through this phase should directly help your organization achieve part of its strategic goals or push your functions closer to achieving their strategic goals. In a nutshell, deliver impact for an important business function within your organization. Possible risks The choice of targeted teams within your organization will determine your success. That’s because this needs to be a close working relationship. If your stakeholders can’t make time for, you can’t deliver. This can be a challenge. As we saw in the first article, when business-as-usual is the priority, innovation suffers. You can’t afford to be seen as a distraction, rather than a strategic enabler. Innovation in practice In a commercial aircraft’s galley, space is at a premium. And with hundreds of passengers to please, every square centimeter is precious. So when looking at how to maximize use of this space, Delta Airlines’ innovation team, The Hanger, came up with an neat idea to reclaim nearly two carts’ worth of space: turning the coffee mug handles to face each other . Sometimes, valuable ideas don’t need to cost the earth. Stage 3: Business enabler (Build customer-focused innovation engine to support sales and new client solutions) Once you’ve proven yourself to be a value creator for the business, it’s time to take the next step and start thinking of directly contributing to the business growth. As you start thinking of growing the impact of your innovation program, it’s important that you start thinking of impacting the sales and demand efforts of your organization and to an extent, your organization’s clients. This phase, the Business enabler, specifically targets value creation for the revenue-earning departments or in some cases, directly for the clients. Using the work done for building the delivery engine and value creation for internal functions, you’d have built a repository of innovations that could possibly be ready to be showcased to your clients as a part of your proposal, or a sales pitch. In some cases, there may be a need to do a targeted prototyping or concept designing for clients based on certain pre-sales activities. Your innovation team can partner with the client account teams or sales and demand teams to proactively identify opportunities to showcase your innovations to clients or create new innovations that will assist sales efforts with existing and new clients. This is where the focus of the innovation shifts from delivering targeted value to an internal function to target supporting business development efforts of the organization through innovation. Purpose The purpose of this phase is to directly support the pre-sales, client account teams and business development efforts by targeting specific client or market opportunities to help win more business. What you need to do? To prepare successfully for this stage, you should: Partner with the market-facing or revenue-generating departments within your organization to understand the opportunities Understand about the existing clients and potential clients that your organization wants to target Collaborate with client account teams and sales teams to identify opportunities where innovation bring an impact on business development Identify opportunities to showcase your innovations to relevant clients (existing / potential) as a part of sales efforts Deliver new innovations that would be relevant / showcaseable to clients (existing / potential) that would open up new business opportunities Continue aligning with the business functions within the organization to deliver concepts / prototypes / innovations relevant to the market Expected outcome As part of this phase, your team is now working with the direct revenue-earning (or maybe winning) departments of the organization, you can expect the team to contribute to winning more business for the organization. This is especially true when it comes to existing revenue-generating streams. You can do this by supporting the sales efforts by delivering innovative example PoCs, concepts, prototypes aligned with the clients or market you are targeting. The innovations that you deliver should be targeted to help open up new conversations with existing clients for more work, innovative work and help convince new clients about your capability of delivering work. By running experiments that are targeted towards customers, clients and the business, you should get quicker way at market and opportunity assessment. It should become second nature for your teams to know about market conditions and identify where opportunities lie. Possible risks The stakes are rising. You may need larger investments for the experiments you’re running — and that’s often a business challenge. Especially because you are doing a pre-investment into delivering potential revenue earning innovations that may or may not necessarily guarantee new business. There’s a danger that customers may still be thinking about yesteryear’s ideas and may not be really prepared for your innovation to drive their growth. So in many cases there is a likelihood that you may present a shiny new innovation to them and they may think: “This looks great, but probably we need time to be ready for this kind of work.” Innovation in practice At US insurance group USSA, business enhancements are achieved by going to its customers directly. It runs new ideas past its customers via USAA Labs, where members are invited to evaluate and test new ideas and concepts. For instance, members might be asked to evaluate the firm’s process for handling natural disasters or maybe a guide for managing debt. Through its innovation process, it can run experiments that target specific value and get to production through a targeted innovation process, where it has proven customer needs. Stage 4: Strategic differentiator (Define your own blue ocean and find your sweet spot, led by innovation) Now that you have mastered building your innovation engine, understood how to create significant value for internal stakeholders and the organization, and also mastered the art of building innovations for clients and help strengthening existing revenue streams, it’s time to take a jump and take the next step. To grow significantly faster, you need to create your own blue oceans and deliver differentiated value to clients through your innovation engine. You need to create a value proposition such that it differentiates you positively against your competition and potentially, makes the competition irrelevant. This is the whole point of innovation and through this phase, you should aim to create a strategic differentiation for yourself against your competition. Purpose The purpose of this phase is to use innovation to build a strategic differentiator for yourself against your competition and position yourself positively in the market you operate. What you need to do? To prepare successfully for this stage, you should: Invest in R&D to understand and spot potential new market opportunities that would provide significant new value to your customers Use your market research skills to come up with new offerings, services or products for your existing customers, or to spot an entirely new customer segment Understand how this could differentiate yourself against your competition and provide you an advantage in the market Invest in building a strategic capability to support the delivery of the new offering, services or a product for your customer segment Successfully delivery value to customers and run a full cycle of acquisition, retention and growth with your customer (i.e., acquiring, retaining and growing the customer) Think about building a strategic partnership with your customers and help them to graduate through their own innovation journey You can think of being successful if you are able to help customers draw significant value in the markets they operate through your new innovative offering Expected outcome As a part of your strategic investment in innovation efforts, you need to create a new product, service offering or a value proposition for customers that’s innovative and positively differentiates you against your competition. This can be done by establishing a strategic innovation partnering with your customers and help them shape up their own innovation journey and help them deliver significant value to their customers. Possible risks The biggest risk in this is the lack of belief of leadership in investing into R&D to create true differentiation through innovation. It’s often seen that the leadership prefers to take low-risk approach to exploring new opportunities and it may mean that they’d miss out on creating a significant differentiator for organizations through this approach. This phase requires organizations to take a radical new approach and may impact culture, people and the way the business is done etc. and it needs strong and visionary leadership to take this step. Innovation in practice Airbnb is a great example of how innovation has enabled an entire new business to be set up; one that’s disrupted the hospitality industry globally. Its unique rental platform lets people list, find, and rent short-term lodging in 65,000 cities and more than 191 countries across the globe. Innovation has proven to be a big strategic differentiator for Airbnb and allows itself to create a blue ocean for itself against the competition within the hospitality industry. In n ext part of this series, we'll explore how this fluency model has been implemented in practice. Previous Next

< Back Why IT departments must reinvent themselves - Part I IT departments are on the verge of being irrelevant to businesses. .. IT departments are on the verge of being irrelevant to businesses. Increasingly, there is a need to reinvent themselves and align better with the business. The industry is at crossroads, where they need to choose between being merely seen as a cost center in the organization, and instead, take the lead to be an important and influential partner in the business. At Thoughtworks, we have been thinking a lot about the direction that the IT team needs to take. In the last 4-5 years, we have been continuously challenging ourselves and evolving along with our changing business. In this blog, I elaborate on the thought process behind this change in direction and focus and hope that it will get you thinking about the opportunities that exist for your IT departments. IT departments need to reinvent and re-purpose themselves Let’s think of some factors that impact the direction of IT teams so much and so often: The nature of the business is changing, at a rapid pace - With the technologies in the space of Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning taking center stage, companies need to look beyond traditional ways of doing business. Technology adoption for business is no longer an afterthought, but a driving force. As an operations partner of the business, IT departments need to keep an eye on the changing nature of the business and be proactive to change and evolve along with the business. IT departments have an opportunity to drive future of business - By being a partner, IT departments have an opportunity to disrupt business processes through technology led innovation. They can work with the business to identify customer needs, market trends and help in developing the right capabilities through experimentation and application of technology to their internal solutions. With technology innovation disrupting more and more businesses, IT teams can play an important part to shape the future of the organization. The same work doesn’t give same value year on year - Doing the same work year on year, with the same people and teams offers diminishing returns for companies. As operating costs and people costs increase each year, companies cannot afford to spend more money for the same outcome. There is an increasing need to use technology in business and IT operations to reduce costs and bring in more efficiencies. Having said that, we should also keep in mind the current situation of IT departments and business. Finances will keep getting tighter – Just as customers ask companies to deliver more year on year with same costs, the same expectation is on IT teams as well - to deliver more without a proportionate increase in costs. IT departments need to be clever in cost optimization as their budgets do not keep up the pace with the growth and complexity of the business. Value first – While people are the most important asset of organizations, the outcome is always measured in terms of the value they bring to the organization and their users. The same goes with costs and investments too, as they are always evaluated in terms of the value they generate. Considering these situations, it becomes important for internal IT departments to continuously move up the business value chain. Workspaces at Thoughtworks Let me tell you what happened with my team at Thoughtworks few years ago (earlier known as the Offices and Devices team). We realized that the regional business paradigm is shifting and we needed to gear ourselves to support the future of business. The expectations from the immediate stakeholders were changing and the traditional way of working as support teams in isolation was no longer good enough. We needed to foster the true spirit of leadership, partnership and collaboration within and beyond our teams. To get there, during the last few years we have: Reworked our vision to focus on the ‘future of work’ and ‘strong regional IT partnership’ Rebranded ourselves as ‘The Workspaces’ team that allows us to go beyond previously established scope of work Created smaller region-focused product teams by breaking down one big global team On-boarded experienced and business-focused product owners to lead the teams into regions Evolved the structure of the team to ensure that decisions are made at region level Established a framework for team capability development that aligns with the vision of our team and the regional business Put in place a stronger governance mechanism with the regional businesses While there is still some way to go, these steps have helped us start moving from being a ‘business support’ team to being true business partners. What is the future? The next challenge is for us to think on “ How to move up from being business relevant to become business influencers? ” While business support work such as help desk and customer support, laptop and office support, client project and infrastructure support is important, we can’t move ahead without changing our approach holistically and making the IT department integral to the business. The transition has not been an easy one, but this change in approach has helped us make giant strides in redefining the future of this department. In Part 2 of this blog, I will share my thoughts and ideas on how we can transform from here to become real business influencers. Previous Next

< Back Why IT departments must reinvent themselves - Part 3 In continuation from my previous blogs, here I write about the direction ... In continuation from my previous blogs, here I write about the direction we intended to take with Workspaces. In this part, I offer my thoughts on the perennial debate around what is BAU and what is innovation. I have recently been a part of several conversations that have led me to believe that confusion exists within a team like Workspaces where the majority of the work is BAU. I hosted a workshop on innovation at a team offsite sometime ago which was really useful in discovering what the team thought of innovation and some of the challenges and opportunities they perceived. Although the team has changed a lot since then, when I look at the notes from the workshop, I believe some of the perceptions about innovation remain same. How interesting! I have been recently interviewed on my thoughts on innovation and also took part in a global IT survey for innovation (hosted outside of Thoughtworks). It was a good time to reminisce on my thoughts on innovation. I present some of these thoughts to you: Innovation is a culture of thinking differently and challenging oneself to do things differently Failures in innovation is great learning and offers important lessons Successful innovations often result in reduction of time while doing the same work, reduces effort taken towards any task, saves cost or improves quality Innovation does not only mean building a product or an app or a software but also innovation in process, service or pretty much everything you see around Innovation doesn't only happen in the NASAs and ISROs of the world. It happens in smaller bits around you that will help you solve your daily problems and issues. We just need to build a curious mind and challenge status quo to think about innovation and ideas that can improve things for us and around us. With so much focus on innovation, does it mean the BAU is not appreciated? What about those of us who enjoy our work? Well, the answer to this is partly yes and partly no. Let me explain. Yes, because if we continue to do the same and routine work over and over again, the value of that depreciates over a period of time and we have to think of doing the same work differently or keep questioning why we are doing it. No, because there will always be some work that we will have to continue doing to keep the lights on. And let’s be honest, it’s a vicious circle. For things around you to change and become better, you need time and because you are so busy with day to day work, you just don’t have time to think or act or even suggest improvement. In my opinion, the change will not start unless we really want to change and think of getting out of doing ‘only’ routine stuff. In some ways, we have to push ourselves out of our comfort zone to think about and bring a change around us. Lots of us have ideas and most of them are really good. Talking about the idea in a social forum and within the team is the first step towards thinking about the change. Being accepting of someone else’s idea and contributing through discussions is another thing that helps us follow and think about the change. I also believe that the best ideas will come from people who are closest to the problems. The success of the idea will truly be dependent on how participative we can make it for everyone. I believe that with ‘Workspaces Global Ideas’, we have taken the first step to share our ideas.The showcases that we schedule have the potential to become one of the most important tech showcases within Thoughtworks, if we do them right. So, in summary, I feel that innovation will come from people around us, who are looking at the same things differently. BAU is important and so is innovation, but they are not mutually exclusive. You can not do one ignoring the other. For TechOps, 'innovation' means not accepting the way things are, especially if it can be better for our customers and ourselves. It could be an incremental improvement or a disruptive game-changer. Either way, innovation really should be our business as usual. We hope TechOps will increasingly incorporate a true learning culture where we are always observing and experimenting together. Previous Next

< Back Be LEAN .. this year! The LEAN framework originates from the manufacturing system developed by Toyota called Toyota Production System ... The LEAN framework originates from the manufacturing system developed by Toyota called Toyota Production System [TPS] that pursues the principle of optimum streamlining throughout the entire system through the thorough elimination of waste and aims to build quality in at the manufacturing process while recognizing the principle of [ongoing] cost reduction. It also includes all the accompanying technology & tools necessary to accomplish those aims. [Reference .. here ] The process that Toyota developed for Just-in-time production was called TPS until 1990. MIT researchers tossed the term LEAN in their 1990 book called “The Machine that Changed the World” to describe the principles of Toyota Production System. Thereafter, of course, the process was known to the world as LEAN Service Framework . In a nutshell, LEAN is an integrated system of principles, work practices & processes that empowers the operational users to drive the relentless pursuit of perfect customer value creation. Although LEAN was innovated and started in the manufacturing industry and especially at Toyota, it, over the years grown out of the manufacturing industry and into other verticals, not to mention the IT/BPO industry. LEAN underpins 5 principles in the framework as follows, Eliminate Waste – As per the LEAN principles, the waste could be due to the idle time spent by the employees waiting for work, or spending extra hours to exceed customer expectations (without customer asking for it), excessive testing etc., activities and all such activities that do not add add direct value to the customers. Eliminate Variability – This talks more about complexity of the work within the team. LEAN suggests eliminating the variability of work done by the employees so that activities & individual performances are streamlined to carry out typical activities. This also talks about the external work that comes within such as ticket trend, business requirements etc., and suggests to streamline. Eliminate Inflexibility – This suggest more about the resources capacity and the work segmentation and align the efforts and create skill pools so as to better utilize the knowledge, performance & work practices against repetitive / common tasks. Performance Management – LEAN suggests to compute the performance of the individuals as well as the team and making the results publish to the individuals / teams and discuss with them on a regular basis. LEAN recommends that regular performance discussions enhances the team morale, gives them goal to enhance performances etc., Involvement of workers – LEAN, more than a process is more of a philosophy and change in the thinking of the workforce and suggest to have the workforce participate and understand these principles so they themselves are aware of the waste being created around they can eliminate themselves. Many IT companies have implemented LEAN successfully. IBM has been doing the LEAN implementation for the customers since last 3+ years. Over the years, being LEAN organization has been a selling point for the IT vendors and equally the customers have been demanding. The benefits of LEAN include reduce waste, reduction of inventory costs, cross trained employees, reduced cycle time & obsolescence, high quality & reliability and may more. This, of course was a drop in the ocean of the knowledge of the LEAN framework, even for me. If you are interested in knowing more and reading more, suggesting the following reading Principles of LEAN Thinking Lean Manufacturing & Lean Software Development What is LEAN? Benefits of LEAN LEAN – The Machine that changed the world ! Previous Next