It is not often that you meet someone who teaches you that no matter how steep the hill is, always keep up the climb, and you will reach your goals. Like the proverbial boulder that the myth of Sisyphus describes, Sridhar’s journey is nothing less than a spellbinding tale of determination. He took every challenge head-on, including daily travels between Mumbai and Pune for six months to balance work priorities at both locations
Humility comes naturally to Sridhar, who has worked with Tech Mahindra for over 16 years. He likes to give credit and acknowledges the whole team regarding his accomplishments and impact at the company. As we probe into his methodologies of going beyond his call of duty to make his client accounts stronger, here’s what we have learnt:
Be an Archer of Efficient Transformations
As an efficiency expert, Sridhar was tasked with the challenge of improving efficiency and productivity across multiple teams and over 30-40 applications for one of his biggest clients. It would have been a mammoth task considering that there were 1,000-2,000 people under each IBU. He also needed to reduce his client's deployment cycle from 45 days which was comparably higher for the daily deployments that many competitors follow.
On top of connecting the dots across various teams, another important task on his plate was to filter out the legacy and critical applications and prioritise them according to maturity by running an agile assessment across all applications.
On the operations side, Sridhar created a DevOps culture by leveraging his previous experience working with the largest telcos in the world and implementing a similar framework to theirs. Automation and DevOps became the primary driving force in this journey. To train, collaborate, and build a community of practice, Sridhar held multiple workshops that helps his team to improve their productivity.
Three Magic Words: People, Process, and Communication
According to him, people, process, and communication are the most important factors to work on to make efficient strides. He strongly believes that his preparations have already positioned his customer to increase the deployment rate to a weekly cycle, which is now on the roadmap. Further investments from the client can potentially even bring up the cycle to daily deployments in the future. He has already driven efficiencies in 22 applications for the client's consumer, global and enterprise offerings while also saving a whopping USD 200,000+ in the last fiscal year alone. He aims to double that number to USD 400,000+ in the coming fiscal year.
Finding Opportunity in Adversity
Before taking on such a big role, Sridhar started his TechM journey as a tester for one of our biggest clients. Call it fate, but his first project turned out to be code red. This meant that he had to work till early morning every day, i.e., 15–16 hours a day.
His positive outlook on learning through adversity and the support of leaders allowed him to rise to the rank of project manager within just four years of joining. Sridhar acknowledges that TechM has helped him realise his potential and that he has been able to learn with each passing day.
Advice for Budding Techies
He believes that the best way to grow is through self-motivation and self-counselling.
"Today, the world is exploding with technology, and there is much scope to dream and achieve something. But, if you want to be a continuous learner, you need dedication and hard work. So, my simple advice is that you need to be good at the basics and continue to learn."
According to Sridhar, IT is already exploding and will continue on that path. The metaverse, IoT, AI, and electric vehicles are just a few avenues that IT will explore. As such, Sridhar wants young techies to keep learning and have a strong knowledge of the basics of technology and life.
About Sridhar Balijepalli
Sridhar is a Program Manager at Tech Mahindra with experience in roles like quality assurance/E2E testing, delivery management, pre-sales, and governance. His life is studded with instances that showcase how you can don multiple hats at once with the force of conviction and adaptability. Sridhar finds solace in his passion for music. A master of various instruments like guitars and drums, he continues to delve deeper into various forms of music programming.
