I had a chance to catch up with an old friend this weekend whose retirement party I unfortunately couldn’t attend . He was a senior partner in a law firm . He told me a story which I want to share here . This happened some 35 years or so ago when he was just…
The DIY movement in IT – what does it take to succeed ?
A few days ago, my friend Frank Scavo wrote about the pendulum starting to swing from commercial software to custom built software . Today morning, I listened to his podcast with another common friend Den Howlett . I would highly encourage you to read Frank’s blog and listen to the podcast. The movement to DIY…
Book Review : Tim Cook, The Genius Who Took Apple to the Next Level
I bought this book on Amazon Prime to read on a plane ride last week to Austin, and the round trip was all the time I needed to finish it, that too at a leisurely pace. I loved Walter Isaacson’s take on Steve Jobs when it came out and expected a similar in-depth treatment on…
Scaled Agile does not cure the lack of engineering maturity
Scaled Agile has the status of a religion in many tech shops I know. Like with religions – its followers express unquestioned faith, intolerance for other ideas (Waterfall is the devil, EVERYONE should be trained in SAFe), and its praises will drown its criticisms (its not a problem of the framework – you are just…
Salesforce buying Tableau – Quick thoughts
I am on vacation and woke up late and the first thing I saw on my phone is this news that Salesforce is buying Tableau . I – and many others – have predicted for a long time that Tableau would get acquired but several years passed by without that happening . And now that…
Voice channel and humans still trump the digital channel in airline customer service !
First the back story My mother in law flew from Kochi to Phoenix last week . Her original route was COK-AUH-LAX on Etihad and then LAX-PHX in American . It’s her favorite routing since the airports are familiar to her, and she can finish customs and immigration in AUH and her bags will hence come…
Some thoughts on evaluating job opportunities
I woke up at 4AM PST today to watch the first innings of Eng vs Pak in the cricket World cup. And at 5AM , I saw an email pop up from someone I mentor – who wanted some help in thinking through whether he should stay in his current job, or move to a…
My wish list for the Modi Government in India….again
I am an eternal optimist. I published my wish list for the first Modi government when they took office 5 years ago . As you can see for yourself, none of those things happened in any significant manner. And yet, here I am with a new list – and I will append the original wish…
2019 Election Results In India – Quick Thoughts
I woke up this morning and saw that the BJP led NDA has won another five year term . Before my attention turns to the upcoming World Cup Cricket, I thought I will share a few thoughts Picture from https://gulfnews.com/world/asia/india/india-election-live-results-2019-bjp-claims-victory-congress-accepts-defeat-1.1558527353661 What separated BJP and INC ? Granted it is difficult to dislodge incumbents since they…
LOVE is the secret ingredient of leading turnarounds
Late on Wednesday night, I got an email that essentially said we moved from #5 to #1 on a certain important metric . This was a big goal for our team, and we were all working hard for it. So I shared the news with my leadership team right away . Thursday morning, one of…
