Anuradha Sridharan

As I think of the perfect adjective to describe 2010, "busy" is the word that comes to my mind. Whether the "busy"ness yielded positive results is something time will tell. As for 2011, my plan is to live a much more conscious life - the moments lived and captured and not wonder later how the months went by. The review list below is for my own tracking as I've been doing for the past 5 years. So you can skip reading the rest. Getting my PGSEM degree from Mr.Mukesh Ambani during IIMB Convocation was a memorable moment Converted my final year project into an IIMB working paper  First time working in a start-up kind of environment. Lots of releases and action packed year it was! Good learning experience. Attended the inspiring TEDXChennai event, it was my first time attending a TED event Made a presentation at product camp Bangalore on " Product Positioning ". A nice feeling to see my topic as the top voted one 90% of my commute t...

My contribution to Sunday Scribblings - #246 foggy winter mornings, distant rhythmic hymns early morning routine clear objectives at hand purple and pink flowers plucked fresh from December bushes strung in a crisp, white thread a symmetric, neat garland a notebook filled with designs translated into distinct shapes frontyard neatly decked adding life to different colours praise the devotee one poetic verse everyday, offer sacred leaves bless us, Oh Lord Krishna! longing for the last month the fragrance, the colours, the music, the memories vividly etched for years P.S - #1 In India, we have a flower named December. These flowers blossom only during this specific month every year. P.S - #2 December is also special to worshippers of the Hindu Deity, Lord Krishna and his devotee, AndaaL.

My contribution to Sunday Scribblings It was the first day of my second year in Engineering. Having accepted the fact that my dreams of pursuing medicine as my career option is impossible, I decided to approach Computer Science Engineering with rigor. But the first day turned out to be a nightmare. I heard my classmates pursuing programming courses during the summer holidays. Many of them already had a computer at home. They had familiarized themselves with Fortran programming (Yes, we studied Fortran in our 3rd semester). I came home, feeling utterly depressed. Having been the class topper throughout school, there was this sinking feeling that I was way behind everyone in college.  I came home after a depressing first day. I clearly remember she was in the terrace that evening, preparing for some exam related to her promotion in insurance sector. She noticed the dullness in my face and called out to me. She had been the pillar of support during my school days, always enco...

My contribution to 3WW a planner I am systematic and meticulous, checklists and to-dos tracking the chores to the core shuffling amidst life's mysteries I trudge along, confidently aiming for complete control mastery over randomness bills paid in advance predictability on the rise, boredom strikes soon missing elements of drama ignoring uncertainty I take the stride as it comes along, at times pander for laziness

I can't believe it's almost 3 months ever since I returned from my wonderful vacation at Swaswara . This personal blog has been gathering dust though there's some action on the professional blog . Words getting shape in my mind during my long commute doesn't seem to get translated into my blog. But there's enough to share about my other interests in music, movies and life in general. Talking about music, 2010 has been one of the best years for Rahman fans like me. My last post on music was about Vinnaithaandi Varuvaaya and it still continues to be my favorite album of this year even after listening to the brilliant songs 100s of times. I had mixed reactions to Raavan/Raavanan when it got released. But there are a few gems in this unique album as well. Being a Karthik fan, I just love both "usure poguthey" and the Hindi equivalent "Behne de". The mysterious slow start is followed by a foot tapping beat and his voice so beautifully blends with t...

In the recently concluded Product Manager's Conclave event at IIM, Bangalore, there was a panel discussion on qualities required in a product manager. One specific quality that really made a lot of sense was " Empathy towards customers ". However, I'm still not sure how an interviewer gets to validate this quality during an interview for a product management opening. As a product manager, we interact with customers and try to understand their current problems. If more customers complain of a certain problem, we give a higher priority towards solving it. Nothing new, it's just the basic driver of prioritization. But I believe the quality of empathizing with your customers is not just restricted towards product managers. Everyone in the organization needs to have this quality. I've been reading this book - Linchpin by Seth Godin and he talks about a powerful concept called Emotional Labor. A line that Seth highlights is that "In most jobs that involve a c...

It didn't start out as expected, thanks to two flat tires our car ended up with. We missed out on the opening keynote since we reached the venue only at 11 AM. But the event turned out to be a very good experience. On Saturday, a bunch of people including me and my husband turned up at Yahoo! Bagmane Tech Park to participate in Bangalore's first product camp. Because of the delay, we could just catch up the last few points of the session by Vihari, Product Manager from Google. His topic was on product design. It was good to see that he recommended balsamic for low fidelity prototyping. Key Take-aways from this session:    * One of his points was on cognitive walkthrough technique with customers. When you are showing a demo or conducting usability testing with customers on new product features/flow, ask this question  - "Before taking action, what do you expect to see?" Were customers able to guess the flow as designed? This will provide good insights related to discov...

Based on the points I put together for a presentation in the recent IIMB product manager's conclave, Bangalore One of the best things about being a product manager is the number of activities one gets to work on in a day. Broadly, we can classify these activities into three categories – strategic, tactical and operational. All three categories are essential in solving market's problems and adding value to your target customers. What matters most is the percentage split a PM allocates in each of these categories in a given time period. There are no fixed guidelines on a percentage split that will work for a successful PM. But the more time a PM spends on strategic activities, he/she can create a bigger impact in the target market, thereby a bigger impact to his/her organization. Observe how your time gets spent in a week, consciously noting down the different tasks/activities that occupy your time - the interruptions, context switches, phone calls, emails, meetings, casual dis...

It feels like a dream. We returned from a magical vacation to a serene, beautiful place named Swaswara . In performance appraisals, you would have come across the term "Exceeds expectations". This place has definitely surpassed the high expectations that we had set before the vacation. Our idea of a vacation this time was to just take time out for ourselves and spend more time together in a quiet place, away from city life. Having been to Coconut Lagoon , Spice Village and Marari Beach resorts, we have become a loyal customer of CGH Earth properties. The perfect locations, sumptuous food and lots of activity within their property makes the trips so memorable that you keep revisiting those memories. When we were browsing through their site, we stumbled upon Swaswara and found to be a unique resort by itself. Being the off season, we got a very sweet deal for our 5 day stay. After working out the logistics, we knew the trip is going to be excellent. We took the early mornin...

 My previous trip to Madikeri/Coorg 2 years ago was mainly due to the fact that we wanted to go on a drive some place over the weekend. But when hubby put forth the idea of a long break, Coorg came to our minds instantly. The main purpose of this trip was just to do nothing. What better place than Linger which claims the same phrase as their tag line - "DO NOTHING"! While hubby decided to stay there for 5 nights, I planned to join him a little later since I didn't want to exhaust all my leave days on this trip (we followed it with another amazing trip, watch out for the next post!). Having booked a KSRTC to Bhagamandala, the challenge was to figure out where the Mysore Road Satellite bus station was. It turned out to be an easy task and I reached the bus stand 2 hours earlier than the departure time. The clean bus station with good seating facility and the few magazines that I picked up from the nearby stall helped me pass the 2 hours quickly. The bus reached my dest...

I couldn't believe this morning when I opened my blog URL after several weeks and realized that I haven't written a single word in the past 3 months. The irony is that the last blog post was on power of distractions while I was happily getting distracted with 2 games that I was hooked onto for the past two months. For those who follow my tweets, you would have guessed by now that I'm referring to Zynga's Farmville and Cafe World. Ever since I started working with Computers, I never was into any form of gaming (except for Roadrash for a while during college days). When my brothers introduced me to the world of social gaming, it immediately caught my interest and I started playing them every night after coming back from work. These games were even more fun to play, with hubby and brothers also playing enthusiastically. Weekends were busy with planting new crops that harvest and cooking dishes that get done in a few hours. What took 4-5 months for my brothers, I reached ...

The past six months have been keeping me a lot busy, thanks to a new job. There is also a feeling of restlessness and I feel distracted most of the times. I was not sure if the restlessness is leading to distraction or vice-versa. Last weekend, I sat for 4 hours straight and finished reading a book "Keep off the grass" by Karan Bajaj (review to follow soon). It felt so much better to focus on a single task at hand for a stretch with no distractions whatsoever. But such un-distracted times have become a rare and precious entity these days. While pursuing PGSEM, such focused activities were common - 90 minutes of focused attention on interesting lectures, reading a 18 page HBR case study at a stretch for 2 hours or working on a presentation deck with project partners, discussing on skype. I realized the reason I was feeling restless was that I was getting distracted, almost all the time these days. Constant interruptions over phone (both landline and mobile), multiple context...

2010 seems to be zooming past at a speed which I'm trying to comprehend. With 5 months already gone in a jiffy, I wonder how the time had flown by. Being a person who loves to travel, it didn't take me too long to figure out that I haven't traveled anywhere for leisure in these 5 months. So hubby and I decided to drive down to Wayanad in the last weekend of May. Although we had visited Wayanad in 2007 ( Vythiri to be specific), we didn't go around anywhere, thanks to the monsoons. After a quick browsing through the review sites, we finalized our stay with Thirunelli Agraharam cottages. The owner of the cottages, Mr.Sebastian had sent us a detailed route from Bangalore which was very helpful. Getting up early on a Saturday morning could have only been made possible, if we are traveling somewhere. It was a smooth drive on Mysore Road and we stopped for breakfast at Kamat (where else!!). After Srirangapatna, the route got exciting as we had to find our way to Hunsur. T...

At the beginning of this month, I decided to get the BMTC monthly bus pass since it had become a big pain to carry enough change every morning. On 4th May evening, I asked the bus conductor of a Volvo to give me the bus pass and I paid him Rs.1250. It was a big relief on 5th morning when I was leaving for work. "I don't have to carry 10s or coins. I can switch buses easily without any problem", I thought to myself. As I was about to leave my home, I quickly looked at the bus pass and there was a mention of ID card. I quickly went to my cupboard and grabbed my PAN card. Without much waiting time, I boarded a Volvo to work. When the conductor asked me to show the bus pass, I happily showed the pass as well as my PAN card. She stared at them for a while and then said "This is not a valid ID card. This pass is invalid". I looked at her in disbelief and replied "PAN card is a valid ID proof just like driving license". There were other passengers overheari...

Having touched upon the idea of integrating user behavior into the product design in the previous post, let me explore further on this topic. One of the approaches that I have found to be very useful is this idea of "user personas". By trying to build a persona, one gets to understand the intricacies of the user behavior. This provides valuable inputs that can be fed into the product design. A user persona is a mechanism to understand the potential users of your product or service. The idea of a persona derives more from the behavioral and psychographic aspects of the users. In order to build a user persona, explore the following questions: * Who is my customer? * Where does he live? * What does his typical day look like? * Whom does he interact with on a typical day? * What motivates him to do something? * What irritates him the most? * What is his typical personality? * Is he intrinsically or extrinsically motivated? * Under what circumstances does he feel t...

I use a Yahoo! mail account for my personal emails and I have subscriptions to many group emails. Over the past few months, my mailbox has been overflowing with many unread emails as I tend to scroll through the list and read only the most important ones at the beginning of my day. I have unsubscribed from many group lists to keep the incoming information under control. However there are some groups in which I might get a few important messages occasionally which I do not want to miss out. So I decided to create a few filters and organize my inbox. This is exactly THE time in the lifecycle of product-user interaction when one starts to think about filters in a mail product - when there is a bunch of unread mails and the user feels that it is getting unmanageable and wants to get organized; not when the time he/she creates a new mail account and immediately starts to create filters. Coming back to my problem, I located the "Filter emails like this" and created a filter. S...

Commute using public transport has paved a way for me to catch up on reading much more often than what it used to be. The last 3 books I have read in the past two months belong to different genres. Subroto Bagchi has given a very nice summary of Entrepreneurship 101 in his book " The high performance entrepreneur ". Starting from whether you are ready to take the entrepreneur path until the IPO, this book provides a breadth of coverage related to various aspects of building your firm from ground up. Easy to read along with personal examples of building Mindtree, he takes you through the different stages of building a firm, from defining your business strategy to nurturing an organization culture to creating your brand. Having attended Ms.Manjushree Abhinav's creative writing workshop a few weeks ago, I picked up her first novel " A grasshopper's pilgrimage ". The plot of this novel can be classified under spiritual fiction and also semi-autobiographical. T...

காதல் சொன்ன அந்த நிமிடம் கண்களில் ஆயிரம் கோடி வினாக்கள் ஏற்று என்னை அணைப்பாயா மறுத்து என்னை விடுவிப்பாயா காதல் சொன்ன அந்த நிமிடம் சில பல புவியியல் மாற்றங்கள் அதிர்ச்சி விரிசல்கள் நம் நட்பென்ற பூமியில் தெரிக்குமோ? காதல் சொன்ன அந்த நிமிடம் இருபது அடி மேலே பறக்கும் என்னை உன் "இல்லை" என்ற வார்த்தை மதிற்சுவர் மேலே இடித்து விழுவேனோ? காதல் சொன்ன அந்த நிமிடம்  என் வாழ்க்கையை பசுமையாக்க நயாகரா மேகங்கள் மிதந்து வந்து என்னை நனைக்குமோ? காதல் சொன்ன அந்த நிமிடம்  நம் இதயத்துடிப்பு ஒன்றாகி என் கை கோர்த்து நடக்க நீ சம்மதம் தெரிவிப்பாயோ?

I've always been a fan of Tamil movies with simple love stories - be it the youthful Kaadhal Desam, the scintillating Minsaara Kanavu or the emotional Mouna Raagam. But off late, such movies have become a rarity, what with populistic heroism oriented films dominating the industry. No wonder, I didn't see many new Tamil movies in 2009.  I cannot watch  a movie where the hero is larger than life, beating up the villains left, right and center, and blurting out punch dialogues like no-one else's business. The only exception to this rule is ofcourse, the evergreen Super Star Rajni. In such a boring scenario, Vinnai Thaandi Varuvaaya (VTV) feels like the first few drops of the monsoon rain. Having fallen in love with the music of this movie for over a month now, I couldn't wait to see how the songs have been picturized. Moreover, the promos of this movie have also been very interesting. I always liked the films of Gowtham Menon and he has moved up the ranks to become my fa...

It's been nearly three months ever since I started commuting to work everyday using public transport. Before I made the decision to join my current job, the commute was one of the important constraints that my husband and I pondered and discussed a lot. Except for a bicycle, I'm not trained to drive other forms of vehicles. I had become dependent on my husband's car or company-provided transportation in the past three years. Although I took the first step in joining a driving class and attended around 6 sessions, I am not very confident of driving a four wheeler on my own. I decided to take the plunge and trust BMTC services for my everyday commute. After nearly 3 months, I'm very much happy with the Volvo series (Vajra). The route that I commute has a lot of Volvos plying in both directions. It's very comfortable and quick. I get a seat immediately as I get inside the bus and sometimes, after a few stops. The 15 km commute during peak hours takes me around 75 min...

Ever since I started commuting using public transport, my reading habit has got a revival. Last week, I finished reading Nicholas Sparks's "A walk to remember". It's a very touching novel based on love, compassion and empathy. It's the story of Jamie and Landon, two teenagers whose completely different paths in life get intertwined slowly. Their journey in a year together as friends and later a lovely couple forms the crux of the story. Although the story is simple and we have seen similar stories in many Indian cinemas, I liked this novel mainly because of the way in which love transforms a person's character. Jamie's influence on Landon's life is narrated with incidents like the play they performed, the homecoming dance, their time together in the orphanage on Christmas and their walks together back home. Slowly and steadily, Jamie has helped Landon transform from being a mischievous kid to a compassionate teenager. It's a heart wrenching sto...

It's been 10 days and I carry it wherever I go. It's a perfect company for the long commute to work. Although I carry my iPod, the music of "Vinnai Thaandi Varuvayaa" has ensured I use it everyday. Ever since I bought the CD from Crosswords, the beautiful songs have been continuously playing in my music player and in my mind. It's been a while since Rahman created such brilliant music for a Tamil movie. I wasn't very much impressed with his earlier music in ATM or Sakkarakkatti. But VTV has smashed the bad spell and is here to stay in our memories for a long time. Of the seven songs, my favorites are Hosanna, Mannippaaya and Anbil Avan. The music feels so fresh and captivating in Hosanna. It starts off as a soothing melody and shifts gear to a foot tapping number, followed by an interesting rap by Blaaze. The way he says Hellooo is just superb. I'm sure the visuals and the picturization will be brilliant for this song. Although it is evident from the b...

18 days have passed since the beginning of 2010. I hadn't allocated the time to do my yearly review so far. 2009 was a good year for me in many ways. The most important occasion has been my completion of PGSEM from IIMB, the journey that began in 2007. It was an excellent learning experience that has given me a good headstart for new plans in future. 2009 was also the year when I decided to come out of a comfortable job and try something new. Although I started writing my first novel, I have lost track in the middle. My writing seemed to have come down a lot as reflected in my blog's dismal frequency of updates. But I managed to read a few good books and as always, hope to read more this year. - Our iceberg is melting - New Earth by Eckhart Tolle - The tales of Beedle the bard by JK Rowling - The Nordstrom way - Gently falls the bakula by Sudha Murthy - Anything for you, Ma'am by Tushar Raheja - 2 states by Chetan Bhagat - Getting things done by David Allen - Indi...

The long holiday break during Christmas and New Year provided the perfect time to read the voluminous Dan Brown's "The Lost Symbol". Similar to his other two books that I have read earlier (Da Vinci Code, Angels and Demons), this book was also just unputdownable (wonder if there is a such a word). The protogonist Robert Langdon traverses through symbols and codes to figure out the lost secret. If DaVinci Code was set in Europe, Lost Symbol is based entirely on Washington and United State's past history. Although the plot is gripping, one couldn't miss seeing the similarity in the flow when compared to his other books. Nevertheless, the plot is so interesting that one can just sit back and get intrigued by the turn of events. Langdon had been asked by one of his close friends Peter Solomon to deliver a lecture. When Langdon arrives, he is shocked by the event that happens and what follows is a thrilling sequence of unraveling the lost secret, the gory murderer Ma...