Life's Learnings

After living in United States for seven and a half year, we decided to move back to our home country, India, with our two children. The decision was not easy. I can't believe it is already been 8 months since we moved back to India.

Why did we move back? Not to be philosophical or cynical about the whole thing, we moved back because we missed our family and friends, we missed the smell of earth when it rained, we missed the good Indian food, we missed the tea by the roadside tea-stall ( A small tea shop), we felt that the kids were missing all the fun that we had when we were kids, we also felt that our parents needed us now more than anyother time, we thought that we would be more happier in India being amongst friends and family.

When we moved back in August, 2005, we were very apprehensive about how our children would adapt to the Indian conditions. It just took them 15 days to adjust. My son found many kids of his age in the community and on the 16th day he was out there on the playground playing with all the kids. Daughter was too little to understand the difference between US and India, however suddenly she found so many people talking to her and playing with her all the time. Both the kids were very happy. It was just me and my wife who took more than 6 months to get used to life in India.

Was it good decision to move back? Looking back, I feel that YES! It was a good decision to move back. I have never seen my family so happy and healthy. Professionally I am still adjusting to the work culture here, but, I do not have many complaints as such. Parents get to see us when they feel like. We are having a great time, being here. So far there are no regrets.

I made some very good friends while I was in US. I will never forget my friends Francisco, Scott, Jason, Bharath, Anup, Uday, Rajan and Steve to name few. We had a great time together. Shared many experiences. Enjoyed each others company. We all had similar mindset, "take care of the people working for you and do what is good for the organization while learning about business challenges and turning them into solutions".

About my experiences of coming back... It is a human nature, once you get adjusted to life's luxuries you start complaining a lot :-). It was the same case with us when we moved back. We complained about bad roads, dusty surroundings, lack of customer service, indesciplined drivers on the road and kept discussing how things were better in US. We had forgotten the fact that this was the place where we spent 20+ years of our life, before we moved to US. We failed to realize that nothing much had changed with Indian lifestyle, but, it was us who had changed. But slowly, we started forgetting about these complaints. Life in India has many good things to offer. We found our old friends and Friends and family visits became regular and fun. We started watching cricket game in groups and are having great fun. Me & my wife play with our kids in the playground almost everyday evening and we have made many new friends in the neighbourhood. We have been going around the town enjoying delicious Indian food. We are becoming part of this place. Now that road conditions have also improved, I do not have complaints about driving around :-).

Professionally it was a learning for me. Things have changed a lot in Software Industry here in India. There is a tremendous demand for software professionals and companies find it difficult to keep people on board. This was a challenge for me when I joined my current employer. After discussing with subordinates and others in the company, I came to know that many people left because of not getting proper recognition. The team that I am managing currently had a low morale as they were supporting and developing software applications for Company's use rather than for a outside client. Very few people knew what this department was doing and what contributions it has done to the company. My challenge was to create an image for this department, let the Executives and the whole of the organization realize the contributions done by the department. And, I had to retain good talent to get this done. Took me couple of months to understand the mode in which the department operated.

The issues were

• These folks were building applications on the spur of a request coming from a group of few people, without any analysis and without any ownership from the particular group.
• There was no analysis on what is the business benefit and who would use it
• Even after developing and deploying the application there was no tracking as to whether is it being used

First task was to change this process. What I did (ofcourse with the help of my team and various business users)

• Discussed with various departments for which the applications were built and identified business owners for various areas of operations
• Put a process in place to evaluate the need for an application by way of business users coming up with business benefits to the department and the company, savings that the application would bring (interms of money and saved resource time) and number of users who would benefit from the application.
• Introduced complete project management life cycle with proper SDLC, based on my previous experience
• Mentored my team on how to build enterprise class applications
• Included executives on communications and met with them to discuss how our department is helping in improving operational efficiency of the organization by way of delivering important applications.

All these things helped change the image of the department in the organization. People came to know about wonderful things that happened within our department through our Intranet site (which we had used to highlight our contributions). Team members started getting recognition from their friends and management due to the changes. I feel that, as a Manager, I have done the right thing for my team. There are many more people in the organization, who would like to work in this department because of the challenging work that we take up and the kind of friendly atomosphere we have. It has given me a sense of satisfaction that I have accomplished the task of building better image of the department. Now the challenge lies ahead to keep this image bright and shining moving forward.

I will be putting some real life project management and software development articles in next few days. Also look for some delicious Indian recipes for everyday life from my wife!!

Hope you come back to visit this place and look at other articles.

Till next time........God Bless!