Steering Clear of the Digital Transformation Debacle

When a Digital Transformation Project ends up “successfully” but customer feels like he did not achieve what he actually needed, it is nothing less than a debacle, considering the time, money and the effort involved in the implementation of the same.

This is one of the top 5 reasons listed as barriers to success in Digital Transformation journey in recently commissioned Wipro Digital Transformation Survey 2019.

In this article, I explore what enterprises can do to avoid getting into this zone. Read on and share your views. Would love to have a conversation on this…

How Exaggerated Constraints can help bring disruptive innovation?

In building products we often come across constraints. Whether it is technical constraint, a business constraint, a statutory constraint or financial constraint, it impedes our activity. It is often these constraints that leads to innovation. When the vision is sacrosanct, and achieving the goal is the only option, innovation appears, disguised as constraints. When the vision is sacrosanct, and achieving the goal is the …

The making of a sustainable business model

If you ever come to Bangalore, there’s very little chance that you will miss out on the “Darshini”s. Ao what’s a “Darshini”, you may ask –  “A Darshini is a simple restaurant offering: fast service, clean and high quality food at low prices, limited free space, and four/three tables with no seats and no waiters. In Darshinis, the operating principle is one of make-to-order, …

One exercise every agile team must do

Back in 2007, one Friday afternoon, my manager called me in to his office, just as I was about to call it a week. He had just returned from a certification course that he was participating for a week. He wanted my team to embrace Scrum and run the pilot in our team. Initially, I did put up a strong resistance to this. But …

Getting the Best People, Getting the Best out of People

In January this year, probably for the first time in my life I watched 3 movies in a theater in 4 days –  Friday, Saturday and Monday! In all 3 movies as the end credits scrolled, one common thing that occurred to me was that so many people contribute to the success of a movie. While the number of contributors is definitely something to wonder …

Are you part of a professional community yet?

One of my uncle is a hardcore foodie. Once he overate this tasty snack of South India called “kodubale“. He developed severe gastritis and he had to be taken to a doctor. The doctor knew him and asked him in a very friendly way – “Mr. Rao, when you knew you were overeating, you could have popped an antacid tablet and things would not have been …

Why should you volunteer your skills to a start up?

Last weekend I met two of my friends, who are entrepreneurs and have their own start-ups. Each of them was in corporate jobs for over 10 years and has taken this leap in the last 2-3 years. We had good chat about their life as an entrepreneur, their journey from corporate world to being a founder of a technology start up and challenges that an entrepreneur will face. During these discussions …