Cloud/SaaS focus is more about the second ‘S’ in SaaS that stand for ‘Service’ over first ‘S’ – Software. It is the ‘Service’ aspect that differentiate SaaS with traditional Software product approaches – particularly in the enterprise space. There are various ways to architect and deliver Software across various different computing Platforms – traditional and/or Cloud.

So what define a ‘Service’ mindset. Here are some aspect that make a Service different from traditional product: 

• Know how customer are using the product automatically. Through software can you proactively advise customers for effective use of the solution addressing their problem
• Continuously deliver new commercial value to customers that customers actually consume
• Software is super easy to install, setup, update, upgrade and done without much human intervention.
• All your customers are keeping current and on the same version of software (release/update)
• Intuitive customer experience that delight users every time they use the software
• End users get easily trained on new feature/functionalities as part of the new enhancement rollout
• Deliver stellar quality of software that enable high SLA (six 9s) and software always on. Reliable, Redundant, Scalable and Secured

Just ask how your product/organization can achieve these – regardless of the underlying architecture or platform. It is more about what matter to customers over purity of computing platform or architecture. And we will find real issues can be solved various ways across different computing platform.

I am starting a new chapter in my professional life. I will be joining CA Technologies as Sr. Vice President of Business Unit Executive this coming Monday. Some of you may already know CA Technologies as it has been in the Technology business for some time now. CA specializes in IT solutions that help customers manage and secure their complex IT environments. If you are a big business – financial institution, government or any other sector that has IT department – chances are you are using CA technologies in the IT organization

This is an exciting time for businesses like CA. CA already has a strong foothold in the IT environments that do large-scale business critical transactions across huge set of data. CA Customers have been relying on its proven solutions for decades as they perform millions of mission critical transactions everyday in a secure and reliable way. We know it as we rely on our financial institution to ensure every transaction happen in a secured and reliable way. And these institutions are doing millions of these transactions everyday across a large dataset that is accessible via multitude of devices.

Technology landscape continue to change and we are now witnessing significant business transformation happening in the enterprise world due to technologies like BigData/Social/Cloud/Mobile/etc. All this leading to data centers getting modernized and hybrid infrastructure getting in place. Datacenters are becoming the platform of business growth that foster agile innovation, build renewed customer intimacy expected of the social world while improving on organization collaboration/productivity without loosing on security and reliability. So net-net this is an exciting time to be in the technology business and I am excited to be joining CA to become part of this industry transformation.

I deeply appreciate all of your support and cherish our relationship. THANK YOU for giving me such a good journey.

]]> https://aloktyagi.wordpress.com/2013/10/18/new-chapter/feed/ 0 1084 alok https://aloktyagi.wordpress.com/2013/10/11/why-agile/ https://aloktyagi.wordpress.com/2013/10/11/why-agile/#respond Fri, 11 Oct 2013 19:36:52 +0000 http://aloktyagi.wordpress.com/?p=1069 Continue reading Why Agile]]>

Product organizations are going through significant transformation. Business/commercial expectations of the Product organizations are changing; customer (buyer) behaviors are changing; how software gets priced; distributed and implemented is changing; People/employee expectation within an organization is changing; etc. All of this has led to the Product organizations transforming their inner-working and organizing things differently.

As someone who has been introducing Lean/Agile at large, distributed, global organization and preaching, evangelizing Agile for several years now – I have found organizations that have adopted Agile find themselves well situated to be able to transform successfully. Over the years, I have seen my fair share of successes and challenges in its adoption across several large R&D organizations globally. Good news is that Agile is now well understood and accepted as a practice. It is more common now for me to meet Agile converts then Agile detractors so-as-to-speak. It help promoting Agile discussion now then what it was several years back.

These days, it is more common where someone will engage me on “How” to achieve agile. It is a healthy sign as an organization should continue to retrospect/improve or implement Agile practice. I also encourage organization to engage right agile coach to provide refresher on lean/agile practices. However, for the agile transformation to be successful in an organization – it is vital that people are remaining true to “Why” an organization is pursuing Agile as it help with the “How” of agile.

Here are some of the key transformation happening in the product organizations to pursue Agile:

1. Customer Experience: Know thy market/customers extremely well and build innovations that will succeed in the marketplace. Can’t emphasize enough around this point otherwise much of R&D $s end up delivering stuff that no one wants or don’t delight customers. Key here is to focus on the right few that matter by being grounded on sound customer-connected approach in an agile way.

2. Continuous Delivery: Increasing the pace of delivery as focus shift from longer and bulkier delivery cycle to shorter (& continuous) delivery cycle of the right things that customer want (enabled by automation). Learn by delivering software sooner and adjust based on customer feedback early in the cycle.

3. From Product Development to Service Delivery organization: As businesses move from Perpetual to Subscription – it is not just about developing/shipping a feature. Customers should be able to successfully consume those features at the pace of delivery and continue to remain delighted as a paid subscriber.

4. Adaptable organization: Pace of industry transformation hasn’t been any faster and organization ability to keep up with the change and transform adopting new skills/methods. Either an organization fight the change and worry about when the next shoe will drop or become an organization that understand the continuous nature of change and lead/participate keeping things relevant by driving changes.

5. Continuous improvement: Agile organization culture where teams are empowered (decision-making at appropriate level) that hold itself accountable and has a culture of continuous improvement.

It is equally important to also understand what Agile is NOT about as there are common myths that I hear based on individual interpretation of “How” agile.

1. Agile is NOT about sliding schedule where things get done when they get done. Sense of urgency around schedule remains. Predictability around delivery of things and Planning is still how organizations, customers, businesses plan and works.

2. Agile is NOT about developing and delivering code quickly over Quality. There has never been much higher premium on the Quality and Customer experience in our industry than ever before. In a Subscription and social media connected “word of mouth” world where loyalty is hard earned – it is easily destroyed by a poor quality incident.

3. Agile is NOT about less importance to people managers over team collaboration. People/Talent development is critical to succeed in the current competitive environment to develop a world-class organization. It is very complementary to agile team inner-working.

Interested to hear others perspective on their Agile journey.

I have been trying to reduce my weight for several years now without much success. This has been one of the most difficult personal goal for me to accomplish during the last several years. Like with countless other folks around the world – my goal will often start with a new year resolution that usually lose its steam somewhere in the 2nd or 3rd month. Loosing weight/getting fit is the most common new year resolution that people find it hard to keep. Like a yearly ritual, earlier this year – I committed myself (again) to the cause. This time though I saw the success that had eluded me all those years. Finally, I was able to shave off 5 inches from my waist line and weight 35 lbs lighter to get on the right height/weight category. To top it off – I have been maintaining it now for several months.

Here are my reflection on why I succeeded this time around as compare to various past not-so-successful attempts. They are not that much different from how one would approach accomplishing goal in professional environment:

1. Learn from the past: Set up realistic goal that can be accomplished.

Failures of the past turned out to be (as always) not all lost cause. They provided an insight into what was not working and what was working. They also provided me healthy dose of realism, at the onset, to ensure the level of commitment that is needed to accomplish the goal. So I knew getting in (like everything else that need to be accomplished in life) that it will not come easy and it will take time (months) to accomplish it. It helped me develop patience – not to walk away early and helped me develop a multi-prong approach that included diet; exercise; and discipline.

2. Discipline: Change old habits to develop new behaviors.

Probably the hardest part as an individual is to change your own long-standing behavior. And to develop new long-lasting habits it is important to develop discipline around those new behaviors you want to learn. I am a foodie kind of guy and I love drinks in social setting. It is hard to say no to a good food and probably harder to say no when drinks are offered. It is much hard to say no when your loved ones and great friends are on the other side offering you that extra food or drink that you love with that innocent look on their face.

However to reduce weight – one has to develop a healthy discipline around what you eat and how much you eat. At the end of the day – loosing (and maintaining) weight is a math problem around how many net calories you intake in a day. For normal people like me – Calories are easy to eat but it take quite an effort to burn those extra calories. Drinks are equally culprit in adding up your daily calorie count. So this time around – I learned to say no (smilingly); or just walk away; or pace myself to a slower speed than everyone else in a social setting that allowed me not to have any extra intake where people persist feed for one more round.

Also, being regular at exercise is important to develop good metabolism and physical strength while loosing weight. You don’t want to lose weight by starving that make you physically weak or feeling tired all the time.  As I have always enjoyed sports and have been playing some sport regularly all my life – this came natural to me to keep up with a sport/exercise routine that I enjoy.

3. Measure what need improvement:

I believe in measuring what matters. Thus far though I avoided applying it towards losing weight/getting fit. Thanks to the mobile revolution now there are several good apps for it. So I downloaded couple of smart apps on my iPhone that I started using it on daily basis (actually several times a day) to count every meal that I ate; as well as calories I burn due to exercises or playing some sports. These Apps were of tremendous help in keeping tab of how much calories I was eating every day.

More importantly Apps helped me made a calorie literate person and closed the knowing-doing gap. This may be a known science that people already practice – however relating food size portion towards how much calories I was eating towards my daily goal was not well understood by me. Also, I started weighing myself regularly at the same time during a week. It not only helps understand the progress – it also become an early alert system to course correct (particularly during the holiday seasons) when you start to gain weight. Key here turned out to measuring regularly – which is now part of my regular routine.

4. Adapt to the changing environment: 

Other challenge for me was to adapt to my traveling nature of job that usually comes with various dinner/drink late evening sessions as part of every day life. So how to keep healthy balance while at home versus while traveling became part of the discipline to develop. I tried not kill myself to keep up with the same food/hours/etc. I went with the flow and adapted to find the right food/drink necessary to maintain the overall goal. Eat salad during lunch hours if you know dinner is going to be heavy. Also, I focused more on the portion size than what kind of food I was eating. It generally worked well for me. I switched to drinking more water over other soft drinks. It is more likely that you will see me carrying water bottle in my hand during those evening sessions when everyone is queued up for free drinks. Or I will be pacing my wine much slower while others are gulping it down.

5. Celebrate successes: Have fun along the way

Knowing loosing/maintaining weight will be a long haul process and I was not ready to live like hermit by avoiding all food/drinks that I enjoy. So I focused more on portion size (based on type of food/calorie) that allowed me to eat everything. Also I celebrated small successes along the way with mouth savoring food or drinks – preferably with low-calorie option, if available. It made the long journey fun and provided me the necessary encouragement to keep going rather than fall prey to the temptation when you deprive yourself too hard of all good things one can enjoy.

6. Develop operating rhythm in personal life: You are what you regularly do.

Being fit is a life style choice that don’t happen instantly. One has to develop healthy life rhythm to make it part of your daily behavior. Overtime, these rhythm become second nature and necessary to maintain what you worked so hard to achieve.

If your answer is yes – then pat yourself on the back and keep doing what you are doing keeping up with the learning and preparedness to ride the change curve. You may find yourself as someone who get sought after in the industry to lead/participate and shape the future. Good chances are you may also be creating some of these opportunities.

However, if the answer is no – you may want to start thinking what you should do to be prepared. We all know change happen regardless and time don’t wait for anyone. Sometime the challenge is how to get started and one struggle thinking through what need to be done. My advise is to find friends who are successfully keeping up with the change to understand what they do to remain prepared. You should spend more time with them and learn a lot through hand holding;  seeing how others are approaching the change can be the inertia one need to get started. It is the effect of having a good peer network that supports and draws you out. Just make sure you approach it with a positive attitude and be committed to put in the hard work it requires. Also, pay attention to what need unlearning as well as at times past behavior/practices need to be let go before learning/relearning new approaches. So cherish the past, learn from the past but don’t let the past hold us back.

Finally as the saying goes – luck is when preparation meet opportunity. So invest in yourself and be prepared to make the most of the opportunity knocking on our door step. You sure don’t want to miss the excitement that is shaping in front of us to put our fingerprints on it!

From a company board and business order of priority perspective the answer would be shareholder because a company exist on its ability to attract shareholders to invest in their business. So shareholders should come first.

Another point of view remains that at the end of the day it is about customers. A customer is the one who pays both employees and shareholders. And a business that can lead to happy and loyal customers due to its focus on customers – drive the growth of the business. A growing business – lead to happy employees and happy shareholders. So you could say Customers come first.

Another point of view remains that a company need employees first who are motivated to use their skill and knowledge in creating happy (and repeat) customer experience that earn value on behalf of the shareholder. In that context – taking care of employees is more important that lead to happy customers and increase in shareholder value.

Bottom line all 3 stakeholders in a company are interrelated. And in a healthy business these should be aligned.  Taking care of employees and having a good people strategy is key to the success of customers; having happy and loyal customers is key for a growing business; and having a growing business is a key for shareholders to seek return they expect on their investment; and having a company that attract investment is key in having financially strong company that can provide safe future to its employees.

What do you say?

I enjoy meeting people who are self-aware. I look for the opportunity to work with them wherever possible. Working with them usually turns out to be a great experience where I end up gaining more and learning something from the interaction. Self-awareness means knowing your strengths, weaknesses, knowing what you want to become, what drives you, what you care about, etc.  It is a sense of who you are and a vision of the person you want to become. Usually self-aware people tend to make the most by playing to their personal strengths and compensate their weakness by working with people whose strengths are complementary to them. They are comfortable in their own skin; try to live their own life rather than mimic and be someone else.

To develop self-awareness though one should be willing to hold a mirror and seek an honest picture. As easier as it sound – it is hard to develop self-awareness. It helps to be surrounded by lot of trusting family and friends who are candid and able to provide you with an honest feedback. There are few other ways people can assess their personality traits; their strengths and weakness such as by using Myers-Briggs; DISC; StrengthFinders; 360 reviews, etc. What is vital though is be true to yourself and more we become aware of ourself – we gain acknowledgement of our own “quirks” better.

People who are self-aware usually stand out as they know themselves really well and play the role that suit them. It make them generally candid, competent and confident. Learning to become self-aware is a good starting point to grow individual leadership skill and increase your span of influence.

On the mentoring front – I have been very fortunate to work with some of the best and bright minds in the industry who imparted their wisdom when I needed them. Some took me under their wings when I faced rough weather. Some mentored me knowingly while others helped me unknowingly. Some have now become life long friends. I found my mentors came from all walks of my professional life – people who I worked with internally in a company or outside a company; people who I reported to or bright people who worked for me shaped my thinking. Bottom line – I just don’t know how else I would have accomplished much without them. Hence – my personal experience on the mentoring front has been very rewarding and positive despite what I occasionally hear on how hard it is to find good mentors.

For budding aspirants – my advise remain to seek out good mentors. If it is hard to find good human mentor(s) then seek out good books. Right books can be decent alternative. However, before you seek out mentors – do ensure you approach them with an open mind; willing to listen; learn and act differently. Nothing turns off mentors and future relationship than mentees attitude. Mentoring is like tough love where you want to hear feedback that is hard for others to share with you. In many cases you will hear something that you have to change and not people/things around you.

On the Change front – I am driven by Change and in some regard I have been a change agent all my professional life. I usually jump with both my feet when I see Change approaching and then I work extremely hard to make Change successful. Looking back – my professional career is defined by those moments of Change – where instead of hesitation I ran towards it and make the Change a successful transition point for me. I subscribe to the notion as one of my friend used to say…”Change is just a change. It is what we make out of it”.  My attitude towards Change truly helped create opportunities for me that otherwise may not be there for me. I must admit though it did not come easy. However, I enjoy this kind of change as I see it as a personal growth. I have found that Change keeps me sharp and brings the best out of me as I am driven by constant learning, growing and improving.

Change do not come easy. It is hard work and seek commitment. I have found to make the most out of Change – one has to be open and flexible to try things differently or do different things. It helps to have the ability to grasp and learn things quickly as well as keeping an open mind to unlearn past habits/things while committing to relearn new habits/things without getting too frustrated. Also, given we live in a competitive world where lots of things Change regardless due to the factors out of your control – I have found having foresight to see the type of Change coming and making/leading the Change on your own while time is on your side is more fulfilling. It is empowering and satisfying to see the Change happen through you rather than seeing the Change happen to you.

We all have personally experienced, heard or seen examples where an individual or team accomplish goals that otherwise was seen hard to accomplish. It is the kind of stories that surprise people involved. You know about it when you experience it. And I am sure we all have our fair share of similar stories either in our personal life or professional life where we accomplish something that we thought was less probable. We revisit those glorious moment/period from time to time to cherish and renew our confidence on what we can accomplish.

So what set such moment/experience aside from the other ones? I believe it is how we get our head in the game and tackle our self-doubt. Doubting ourselves as we undertake a daunting journey is part of the commitment making process. And how we tackle those doubts leading up to making personal commitment towards accomplishing those goal differentiate the outcome – from winning or missing the mark. 

Commitments are personal by nature and we have to go through our own intellectual and emotional journey as we commit ourselves to a cause. However once committed it propel us to take action. It gets the creative juices flowing opening up new paths on daily basis. It allows the right stuff to happen, breed determination and rally individual and team towards an unrelenting pursuit of that elusive goal/outcome. Once committed it also frees the mind from doubts and instead focus all energy towards progress and discovering creative approaches that can lead us to the goal. I have found time and again – a committed individual or team – is able to discover right path/approach necessary to accomplish the daunting goal that may have looked so hard to accomplish at the onset. 

So want to play to win and accomplish seemingly daunting goals then let’s start with tackling our own doubts. Getting truly committed help accomplish those daunting goals and liberate mind from worries filled with self-fulfilling failure scenarios.

Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes; but no plans. -Peter F. Drucker