Ctrl Alt Del. Shut down your systems, step away from the monotony and let your hair down! A suggestion unlike any offered to IT employees, yet featuring as the drawing card at Telelogic India.

“Fun and passion form an integral part of the work culture here,” explains Sreehari Narasipur, Vice President-Product Development, Telelogic India. Winner of an HR excellence award for best employee motivation, Ctrl Alt Del is the coterie responsible for ‘engineering’ all this fun.

A monthly feat, the group takes charge of crafting a common platform for employees to network amongst themselves, over events like treasure hunt, ethnic day, Independence day, et al.

“Working in a high-pressure environment, it is very necessary at times to take a break, talk to other people and get away from the daily routine ,” says Narasipur.

Stacking it right
After all, servicing high-end needs of Enterprise Lifecycle Management (ELM) would pose as a high-pressured job. Requirements for managing the successive stages of a product lifecycle are getting more complex with the ever-evolving nature of technology. This is where Telelogic steps in.

Exhibiting a product portfolio under Requirements Management, Software Assets Management, and Enterprise Architecture and Modeling, the company offers solutions that would enable organizations to align products, systems and software development lifecycles on the same platform of customers needs.

“It becomes a lot easier for an engineer to work without feeling the need for any other software, while using our integrated product suite,” says Narasipur.

The engineers operate on various stacks like C++, JAVA/J2EE and Dot Net. Each of the products, when acquired from their original makers, were built in a complete stack of its own, so they are not entirely re-engineered per se, but are given hooks that enable them to function on a common platform layer, explains Narasipur.

“We need to understand the original architecture of all these products. It is a big challenge to integrate products from various stacks without using SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) due to the differences of the original product stacks,” he says, adding that the challenge was to engage all the counterparts and stake holders while executing the product.

“When our India Development Center began two years ago, most of the products and architectures were new to the engineers here. It was a challenging job but it was also the opportunity that could turn advantageous if utilized right,” says Narasipur.
Hire me this!

Probably why he is insistent on recruiting only ‘above average’ engineers. An irate Narasipur explains: “ Many candidates deck their resumes with fancy key words without in depth knowledge on the subject matter.

At this stage of expansion, we can’t afford to waste time filling gaps and training
candidates.”

This call for the brightest and experienced minds in town required a lot of looking ‘below the rocks’. As Narasipur put it, “these ‘star performers’ were already settled in their comfort havens and did not see much reason in moving to a lesser known company.” But for the benefit of Telelogic India, their weakness turned to their biggest strength and soon it was attracting plenty of talent from the big daddies of IT who found the ‘small’ company a perfect place to hone their developmental and architectural skills, while being a significant contributor. Himself from Oracle India, Narasipur threw open the doors to the similar kind making it the crux that molded the future of the company.

Within six months of initiation of its developmental effort, the team at the Bangalore Center took ownership of a theme feature for one of the new releases. Being a key factor of the product that initiated further product development activities, it was a proud moment for them signifying their coming of age amongst other development centers at Telelogic in a short span.

The smaller kind
“Being a small organization, Telelogic India not only assures me a sense of ownership but also lets me have the career growth,” says Phani Challa, who moved from Oracle India and is currently project manager, Doors XT at Telelogic.

“Small suits us fine,” admits a satisfied Narasipur. “These are very good designers with an inclination towards architecture, we don’t note people only by experience. They can get into any position they want with the work they do.”

The project managers are not just team leads in the administrative sense; they are also technical guys who identify, groom and refer technically sound members in their respective teams for better growth in the appraisals. These identified engineers are given an opportunity to interact and involve themselves in forums where cross functional groups from other developmental labs gather to discuss the latest trends and innovations.
Engineers are encouraged to analyze competitor products and learn from their standards and submit papers on their latest innovative ideas, which is later be reviewed by the board.

In a bid to raise younger talent, the company is equipping IIT Bombay with Telelogic’s Automated Lifecycle Management Suite-Telelogic Lifecycle Solutions. This will help students gain practical exposure with state-of-the-art tools and technologies as a supplement to regular classroom teaching of concepts and techniques.

“For a techie who has five- six years of experience, this would be the best place to develop products. Until three-four years, somebody is telling you what to do. Overtime you know you have the capability to do better things but are still contained and controlled in bigger organizations. This is what we don’t have at Telelogic,” Narasipur says offering you a stack of print outs he calls company information.

Comprising many a credible product review, account of awards and accolades gathered by the company, a 200 plus impressive customer base in India, and half a million end users; You are left wondering: Does size really matter?