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Akash Deshmukh

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Akash Deshmukh

Technical consultant

Hexaware Technology

Brief description about me

I have completed my Bachelors in Computer Science and engineering in 2006. As a part of campus recruitment procedure I got placed in Cognizant Technology Solutions (CTS). I joined CTS as trainee and continued to work with CTS for almost two years as a Technical Analyst-ERP. However, I was not too happy with my current role in CTS. Wherein my mundane tasks involved modifying logic in existing system and had nothing very fascinating to offer me and hence I decided to change my career path and perceive higher education. Since I was always skewed towards Technology, I decided to complete my Masters in Technical stream over Business management. I travelled to Rochester Institute of Technology USA to perceive my masters in Software Engineering. Currently I am working with Hexaware Technology Limited, Pune, India. My journey with Hexaware started as a Technical consultant but I moved towards Functional stream working as a functional consultant. In addition to my regular delivery team activities I provide consulting to the pre-sales team, prepare project estimates and write proposals to be used by Bid management team.
Currently I am leading a PeopleSoft Payroll GL implementation project for a financial client from USA. During peak time we had 5 Technical developers, 3 Testers and 2 Subject Matter experts including me. Our team is staggered between Pune and Chennai locations. My involvement in this project started right from conducting the as-is study till go-live of the Project. As a part of this project, I traveled to New York USA in April 2012 and returned back to India in Oct 2012.
To sum up, I have a total experience of almost 5 years. My role involves Requirements engineering; creating technical design for the Requirements, Development and Unit testing. As a part of requirements engineer we conducted as-is study, creating to-be document, Fit-gap analysis and creating functional specifications. It involved series of meetings with business and Technical team at client end. Some of the modern tools like use case modeling and UML 2.0 were used during design phase.

Challenges in job

My current engagement with our client as a part of Hexaware assignment proves to be very challenging in two main aspects. These are diversity in team & unstable requirements.
Let me refer to unstable requirements first, since we are currently working in a reverse engineering project which includes replacing a legacy system with a new solution our requirements specification document keeps changing in each project phase. Obviously we are working in an iterative model of software development where-in each phase produces a shippable deliverable from our side. We still find it challenging to implement ever changing requirements.
Diversified team, this aspect is really challenging, my team is already divided geographically between Chicago, New York, Pune and Chennai. In addition to that level of experience of each resource is varying. It becomes challenging for us to produce right product at right time with acceptable quality.
Definitely when we can produce deliverable with so many challenges we can easily produce deliverable in ideal condition. As of now, I am not aware what future will unfold for me but definitely, as the saying goes anybody can swim downstream but only braves can swim upstream. We as a team will be able to sustain in both difficult and easy conditions.

Job made easy

“Planning”, I think is a key to success. For any software project to succeed good planning is very much necessary. For example, a migration activity is planned for a weekend then we need to identify set of resources who will be involved in completing these tasks. How much time each activity will consume and who will be coordinating these efforts otherwise things might go hay-wire. As a team lead driving the project of my project size, it becomes necessary for me to foresee the things and plan my resources accordingly. Remember resources also include human resources who are most critical for any task. Of course good plan resolves many problems in advance.

Upcoming Trends

Pristine PeopleSoft model that worked on licenses for each module is subject to change. With the growing competitiveness and every changing customers Technology vendors need to be flexible enough to provide a package solution rather than making client pay for every module that they buy. In general, I think technology needs to be flexible to support mobile devices. Recently PeopleSoft overcame its limitation of not being accessible from ipad and other mobile devices. Keeping technology flexible is need of an hour.

My point of view

I perceived my studies in both countries India and USA.I think the change has to be initiated from the grass root level wherein right from the college campus people are encouraged with innovations and research. I meet many undergraduates during my masters in USA who had a dream of becoming a gamer or a solution architect. They had their own fantasies and fascinations which actually drive their thoughts towards making a product. Personally I have never meet any of a college graduate who is so fascinated about technology and this obviously explains why in India we do not have a single tech product.

My goal

I would like to create an end-to-end HCM solution for any company. Currently I see most of the ERP vendors such as SAP and Oracle provide solutions to client on the basis of module. Personally, I will not want to buy a piece meal solution. Imagine from a CIO or CTO’s point of view, they cannot go back there board each time asking for a budget to buy modules board of directors will definitely find difficult to approve all the budget requests. After all IT is a service and product.

family background

I stay with my beautiful wife Rachana who has completed her Masters in Software engineering as well. Currently she is working TATA consultancy services (TCS) in Investment Banking domain. My father is a IAS officer and my elder brother is a Business man who was working with Infosys technologies for almost 5 years.

Advice to professionals

Definitely a general guideline to every person joining an IT firm, “Love your job, do not love your company”. I think it is very important for an IT professional to keep learning and not to become stagnant. I am a firm believer of the fact that Knowledge is Power and that we should keep acquiring it. So as a fresher you should be flexible enough to absorb knowledge in any technology domain unless you become old enough to claim that you have married to a technology. We need to strive hard to learn new things in quick succession remember the world is fast changing we need to be flexible enough to embrace these changes.

Advice to students

There have been numerous occasions when I happened to visit my college providing advice to my juniors. Over the period of years I have learnt one thing that we have to be creative enough to progress ahead in life. Imagine had Steve Jobs not being so creative people had no reason to switch to “apple” iphone over Nokia or Motorola phones. Honestly, our parents/ seniors suggest us to take a beaten path which may not be correct always. We need to believe ourselves and keep doing what our heat says is right. For some reason our heart already knows where we want to go……As the famous saying goes “Two roads diverged in wood , I took the one less traveled by and it made all the difference.”