Abstracting needs, creating solutions with V Thyagarajan

In this episode, Thyagarajan, known as Raja - a Senior Management Executive and Chief Operating Officer with nearly 4 decades of experience in the IT industry involving International and multi-cultural environments, shares his story including points related to:

How his uncle and brother were influential in getting into software after doing an MS in managementBeing part of a team that started a company, and being an entrepreneur without knowing itBeing a pioneer in the Indian IT industry, by having an approach of creating tools to improve development productivity or products to solve customer problemsInnovating techniques to create solutions, long before others, when there were no standards to do some thingsChallenges of running a company that offered professional services as well as productsTransitioning from a developer to more managerial rolesSome of the lessons learned in being an entrepreneurApplying technology based thinking to create generic solutionsTesting in a development environment versus running in a production environment and related lessons learntBalancing and prioritizing requests from various users and having a process to build the solution in an evolutionary mannerThe ways in which software development has changed over the yearsWhat it takes for someone to shift from a service / project mindset to a product mindset

Raja is a Senior Management Executive and Chief Operating Officer with nearly 4 decades of experience in the IT industry involving International and multi-cultural environments.

His experience includes:

Managing operations of an IT company, with its offshore center in India and marketing/sales offices in the US, that has over 200 employees.

Handling IT projects and product development hands-on combined with heading the operations, ensures understanding of the operations in Toto.

All round leadership experience of managing all aspects of the business - S&M, Technology, Delivery, HR and Finance.

Innovatively creating products and services and delivering through hands on leadership