Krishnan Srinivasan

I Krishnan Srinivasan a.k.a Krish, have come a long way in the industry ranging from code dev in early days to product management, account management, Business development, learning & dev, Business Process re-engineering and transformation to name a few of the roles and responsibilities held.

This apart I have learnt from experiences my colleagues (lateral hires) carried into the organization and tried to implement it in the non-IT (appdev) segments of the organization.

I had the opportunity to work with, embrace, hire many scrum accredited professionals and apply it in both IT space and non-IT services space to good effect.

I started my career in 1984-85 in the IT Industry (then called Electronic Hardware) in India in sales. Quickly moved up and over to Systems Management and product development. This stint gave me insights to many facets of the industry which ultimately led me to don many leadership roles in the coming years in retail, IT Services, Biotech and back to Technology.

Traversing though many management transformations, step changes in thinking and practices, I can look back to state that the recent years AGILE practises adoption have given me, personally, and my organization far reaching impactful results.

Firstly, it releases so much time, otherwise wasted in many practices of yester years, the effect of which manifests as stressful situations – compromise to complete in time thereby leading to inferior quality and customer satisfaction.

All these years traditional model, went through all common traditional problems like delayed feedback, quality issues, responding to changes during last phase gate, cost and schedule commitments etc.

It was a long and painful process where we always had to wait for the process to complete and then do the work. Clearly it was more a process centric sequenced model.

I got exposed to AGILE in 2007, working as the head of a large Global program with the Largest Indian IT company. Thanks to some lateral hire who exposed and created appreciation and awareness of the Agile framework and its upside.

Gradually I was able to understand the different roles and at the same time was able to appreciate that change is not easy and the team needs to embrace it.

It came as a breath of fresh air as it was then, when I was able to appreciate the value of iterative and incremental delivery. It helped in delivering a completely integrated one look one feel “Answers Desktop” system for a Market Research Major operating as 43 companies in different geographies.

The daily Stand up meet, the Retrospective were very helpful in getting Knowledge transfer through the transition team and get to BAU in very short time for complex Business processes.

We then adopted velocity by measuring days to go BAU from start of KT for each transition, captured it through SIPOC tool and replicated the across all functions and processes. The key to successful transition was I facilitated direct team conversation with users / client stakeholders.

This involved transitioning from independent individually created and run legacy applications to a large distributed platform service.

The journey through this project gave me a sense and understanding that adoption of Agile is not one-way traffic.

The leadership needs to contribute and participate, provide support and gain the trust of one and all. Cross functional teams play a very key role in Agile transformation and as a team member I realized that self-collaboration and accountability are key to make the whole journey sustainable.

To sustain with fast paced technologically changing world, adoption and adaption is paramount. Scrum brings powerful techniques with flexibility to adapt and bridges the gap. This is evidenced in the current implementation of Scrum practices in IT Service Management – Preventive Maintenance team. I am seeing quick all-round results from delivery to SLA compliance to reduction of Outstanding Payment Days.

For my bit, I am ensuring that I get as many people in my Business team live through the experience I have lived.

As I write, I am using many parts of the framework to other than Appdev environment of IT and are seeing immediate and refreshing results. The standup meets of the PM team and the retrospectives at end of each weekly sprint has greatly helped measure achievement and capture learning for a better next time.