In this conversation, Krishna Prasad – aka KP – a coach at PM Power Consulting, shares many of his personal experiences with Chitra. Among other things, he talks of:
- Graduating as a mechanical engineer, with Masters and PhD in software
- Working with Mercedes, Tata, Terex, Delphi
- Own journey of various roles in the Software industry, experiencing and contributing to various aspects of SDLC
- His origin story: typical middle class family, aspiring kids to be engineers or doctors; though liked the doctor profession, did not want much of biology and defaulted to engineering
- Wanted to get into sales [and marketing], appeared glamorous, though at heart he was an R&D person
- Tried sales and did not enjoy it; but realized that even if you are in development, you need to go to customers, to make the customers feel happy
- Though in automotive, true software started in avionics; he became a true software developer in Aeronautical Development Agency, developing military standard software
- Joining Daimler, was again forced, that he is happy about now, into software
- Aha! Moment – developing software from India, that goes into international products
- We need to get empathy to feel like a driver, difficult for a youngster to just imagine this
- Always good to think how someone would actually use the software
- While a lot of knowledge has been built about, say, braking systems, today, the systems have grown complex and need to work with multiple other systems
- Only the nature of rigour has changed to more agile ways of working
- Used to get a few thousand pages of document of requirements, we used to take a few months to get back on how it can be implemented
- Everyone has now realized that we cannot afford to write so much of initial documentation
- Rigour is still there, with incremental development – nature of development has changed; everything now is ‘continuish’ Systems getting complex, regulatory requirements are also increasing
- We have to bake in compliance; no longer a bolt-on
- Feels model based development will have a significant impact and many freshers are not prepared for that
- Career advice: develop T shaped skills..
- With multiple skills being deep and not just one Question to ask yourself: with your T shaped skills, how can you continuously contribute
- The benefit of lateral movement across different roles in an organization
- Internalizing the concept of Ikigai – balance passion, mission and profession; magic happens when all these intersect
- Secret for rallying teams around a leader’s vision: People should know that the leaders are making the right choices
- What worked for him: Have seen a couple of transformation journeys – they were only partly successful; start with high aspiration and expectation; most often – may turn out the aspirations were unrealistic No matter what, this transformation journey is important There cannot be just one end point – it is a journey – with great learning for leaders and teams
- Prospects in IT: fantastic area to get in; so broad, you can pick up any area and make a positive impact using technology We have to be really aware that when we enter this technology area; there is a half life of skills; this is reducing dramatically
- Explore ways of getting into technology areas that will keep you ahead for 3-5 years
- Constant need for learning – new skills, honing skills, learn something different Now we have unlimited access to resources, to learn every day Robin Sharma – 5 AM club – daily learning; learn anything, every day
