All right. Happy Tuesday. A very good morning, good afternoon and good evening to all the colleagues here at today's summit.I'm truly thrilled to be part of this uh 2022 women in Tech Chief summit and really excited to be with each of you and share some of my experiences with all the talented colleagues out here. I'm speaking from beautiful Canada and just want to wave my hand and uh just a quick check, like if you're able to hear me and see my presentation, can I have thumbs up? All right, cool. So for those of us in this summit today, let's start by acknowledging our good fortune. Um uh And by admitting that we are lucky, it's just unprecedented time. It's so fantastic to be here. And well, before we get started again, like uh just wanted to check, like you're able to hear me. OK. So if you're in 2022 submit, let's give a moment and think of all these small amazing things that you have accomplished, applaud and be proud of them. So, as a women in tech evangelist, nothing thrills me more than the potential of others. Um Moving on to the next slide. I would uh like to get started a brief journey of myself as a tech evangelist. Well, it was not planned or straightforward.

Uh throughout my journey, I met various colleagues who shared their experiences with me and helped me grow as a leader. It hasn't been an easy journey, but it has been worth it. The valuable lessons I learned from my own experiences and from the other women mentors and leaders have been truly instrumental in shaping where I am today in today's session. I would be sharing my journey, a short video clip, small town, big dreams and a brief brief introduction about myself. Well, my name is Nilima Mangal. I'm based out of North America. Achieve global head of delivery management, heading nut cash product management and technology, org wide globally subsidiary of DICOM Technologies. I have spent over two decades of the, I have spent over two decades in the corporate world in various leadership roles across North America hopping around East Coast, West coast, Silicon Valley and Canada. And well, a lot has changed in these years and most have been for the better. Some have stayed the same when I was in college and was going through the journey. I had no idea where life would take me like more.

I like most others was just trying to make it. We did not set out to thrive. We just wanted to survive. I've been really fortunate to held various leadership positions at Apple Inc in Cupertino, A TNT in Atlanta, Wells Fargo in San Francisco Scotia Bank in Toronto, where I got an opportunity to build high performing teams help business drive innovation. With the technology ran massive delivery engagements which processed multibillion dollars of uh transactions and adapt sustainable and accessible business models. I'm also a co-founder uh technology Executive of Spectrum North and I have started Spectrum North as a campaign that celebrates women's stories and showcases the lesser known successes of women in order to support and encourage the next generation. I also host a podcast and the name of my podcast is the power of women in the world of tech, which typically features thoughtful discussions about women in tech, women empowerment and motivate women to overcome the real life challenges they face within the corporate world today.

And me and my nine year old son, NAV, also host the Curious navs podcast where we talk about interesting fun and educational stem topics so well. Two decades in the corporate world, three continents, three oceans, seven companies including Apple A TNT Wells, Fargo's Kashia Bank ad Pxeo, an awesome crew of team members, amazing mentors and all my dear mentees. If you're part of this wonderful summit. Thank you. That's me in a nutshell.

I would now like to play a short video clip of my journey, small town, big dreams before we deep dive into today's topic,

you are breathing nice for. Yeah. See that and her work across a number of fortune 500 firms including Apple and the, and the I was born and raised in a small town called Monre, located in State of Mexico City. I'm the youngest of Children. My two elder sisters were also part of the music academy. And I also have 11, like any other young girl growing up in a small town in the nineties and being raised in a very dominating society. It took a lot of courage for send me to an independent school, but also for all teachers and family to study around as a senior student in the university, I can certainly be called my fabulous and in German as a year, graduating economic student gave me responsibility and I like that.

However, my childhood one to to some of the best years of my life uh largely because of the diversity of the student body and being a great money. One is the double I can see the what I really love about 20% spiritual value and program are extremely based on the concept that function in the future, the future with typically most holistic development inside from the it offers various social activities like sport, diving, swimming orchestras, yoga, classical dance.

Uh I think it is flying in that. Mhm. Where it actually I saw the door. Ok. Ok. When I was a kid, I promise my, yeah. One day. Number 1, 19 nineties, Tim God. My family and the education that I got from this one, I prefer my. Well, we're all in family was a very fabulous experience for me and my family. I'm not sure how many times I have narrated story of my wonderful family. Every time I do it I get and a very proud feeling for being part of such a. So I will end my talk in a very short note, live your life, fully accept the way you are be kind to yourself. I will repeat, be kind to yourself. And then I am looking to come together like will be heart that will become noise. There'll be the cars, but that's the. So one is still in your area would be a city. All right, uh One of the you actually deliver to come. Um It will give you a chance to nurture your uh you will get plenty of time and the suggest to shape you in a much better way. All it takes is your dedication towards yourself. Yes, it will cut you down from the outer world, but it will surely help you to slow the world. Uh You are uh really in a very good hand and one of you guys like quick straight.

So please take the time to find the thing that excites you more than anything else in the world.

All right. Thank you for listening and be with me with my short journey, small town, big dreams. Well as a women and tech evangelist. Nothing thrills me more than the potential of others. OK. So in today's session, I would be sharing my journey of digital engineering and lineage transformation and the power of iteration cycles and some of the key insights with the opportunities in transforming the engineering landscape of enterprises for a true digital shift with a heavy focus on emphasizing product Centricity as a strategic team, which has worked wonders for me.

And I would love to share some of these insights with you. Well, what's driving this mindset shift while transforming my colleagues often ask me what's different about my job now than when I started my career two decades ago. Well, uh if I were to ask, how do you build a car, what would you say, Henry Ford uh is the straightforward answer. You have each of your pieces on an assembly line and you work your way down it. Finally, you will build a car, right? Not so fast though, not so fast. My dear uh team or dear colleagues, perhaps you have placed too much emphasis on the interior and the exterior no longer reflects the latest fashion trends or perhaps uh you have recognized after the fact that a tiny TV in the backseat would have been a good idea. Well, uh in either case, you skipped over critical nuances because you were so focused on completing the ultimate product that you thought needed to be completed. So when driving a car. The main issue is getting from point A to point B. How can we give a solution uh that solves this problem as rapidly as possible so that we can learn and decide what to do next to move from point A to point B. All we need is a block of wood, some sandpaper and some wheels.

And we have got ourselves a skateboard, then we can take our new skateboard out for a spin, show it off to our team, uh receive their continuous feedback and figure out what to do next. Building a car is unlikely to begin with a vehicle. It most often begins with something much more basic such as skateboard and iterations value is in this and that's the power of the iteration cycle and the modern agile processes over traditional waterfall approach and methodology perhaps uh we should use what we learned from our uh skateboard to build a scooter that is better than if we hadn't made the skateboard in the first place.

So by repeating this pro procedure and maintaining a constant engagement loop, we should be able to arrive at the car that we are much satisfied with in the end. Who knows, maybe we will finish up with a spaceship instead of car. Well, this is the power of iteration cycle. So my dear friends and my dear colleagues here at Summit uh do not focus on building the car, build the best possible engineering and product team who the power of uh product centric approach. Well, uh there are many facets to engineering and product art designs. Uh The two most prevalent uh methodologies are code centric and product goal centric approach. What matters most to your organization in the next year or two as well as the risk you are willing to take will determine what's the best alternative for you. In fact, I have noticed an almost uh predictable tiktok between the two approaches every 18 to 24 months as an organization grows and scales. But hopping to pick a model that will last indefinitely is a pipe dream so well. Uh in a quote centric approach, uh engineering teams are typically organized into missions with code of or uh technology defined boundaries.

For example, for instance, like there could be a web team, a database team, a data science team, a backend team, a middleware team or a number of platform teams, engineering teams are typically assigned here responsibilities based on a product objective in a product goal centered organization.

So some examples typically include the XYZ product team, uh the ABC feature team and the performance teams. So these teams on the other hand, have um kind of more layered relationship with the code base as well as strong ownership of product goals. Uh Here are some of the typical challenges and impediments I would like to share in today's keynote and we'll talk more about these methodologies as we go in pace, each product centric group should have at least two engineers who can cover uh certain technical specialization.

According to a basic rule of thumb, this allows for code reviews, the elimination of bus factor one issues and the reduction of isolation. So if you can't meet this minimal minimum, critically examined whether this model can work for you. Uh Many organizations kind of overlook to invest in the maturing of their code base while they chase initial product or market fit. So as the organization grows in the ladder and wants to expand like its product line, the balance shift and uh and it may shift back again as they find a fit and raise funds to build the business. A basic uh uh trade off between uh various techniques is the difficulty of coordinating activities. And thus the maturity of the product management, organization and managers, engineering managers, tech leaders becomes complex. Uh The product management team typically bears a lot of uh complexity in the code centric methodology and to be successful in their work, a product manager must typically negotiate and synchronize objectives and uh timetables across several technical teams. And the final crucial trade-off element is accountability, accountability.

Well, it plays a very, very meaningful goals. The product centric strategy has a clear benefit in this regard, which is one of the reasons in my opinion why this model tends to dominate in larger well, more mature companies where accountability concerns are also widespread I would also like to share uh some of the key benefits of product centric uh methodology and approach that ha ha that has worked wonders for me.

And I have really found it useful while reorganization, number one, a better awareness of users and customers within engineering. Uh number two, able to undertake more ambitious product changes slash investments. Uh Number three, stronger relationship with product organization and uh finally clearer accountability towards goals and impact impacting metrics. So if you see on the right side, like these are some of the overhead. Uh when we kind of did reorg within our reorganization, where uh teams were using code centric methodology. We used to have like separate platform, teams like a front and separate back end product team. Uxuy quality engineering, data science skills were pretty much distributed across teams.

We had distributed can band boards, a lot of increased dependencies and overhead and lack of integrated reporting. So when we transition from code centric to product centric methodology, a few key advantages that uh all the stakeholders and the respective labs they started seeing number one is like teams became more self sufficient as these labs were structured as a full stack labs. And each full stack lab had a dedicated role including Scrum, master Gile coach, an architect, product manager, business analyst, Uxuy, full stack engineers, QE engineers and devops colleagues which were like shared on a shared basis uh within several labs. This has significantly also improved overall maturity, collaboration increased throughput. Definitely the velocity has significantly increased all the way from 25 to 30% with faster time to market better and enhanced end to end visibility all the way from customer discovery till post go life support.

And these labs also gave an opportunity to breed innovation by creating opportunities for experimentation where a lot of uh proof of concepts and R and Ds were conducted uh uh to stay abreast with the current market. So uh to summarize here when it comes to art design, be clear about your priorities, uh what you need to optimize for and what you can live with. Also keep in mind uh product centric approach aligns product and engineering speeds, product development and kind of pushes the responsibility to engineering, fosters accountability and creates technical debt. OK? The power of communication and collaboration. I love the slide with colorful pictures of uh various colors like when one of our mobile app and website were designed, uh the close relationships we have created with our technical product and design teams are one of the things I truly appreciate most about working. However, there have been cases where engineers have unintentionally secluded themselves resulting in anguish. Uh well consider the following scenario. So a screenshot of all the different colors and buttons in the app being developed, there are a lot of colors and buttons as you can see on the slide.

This means a lot of reden and code and a lot of code maintenance because there are so many color choices to pick from both the engineering and design team spent a lot of time on it. Why can't designers provide us designs that are consistent and have the same buttons? The front end engineering team uh be on for a long time about this problem. Why do we need to continually coming up like with new colors? Well, after a year of internal grumbling, the engineers decided it was time to meet down uh with the UXU I team and actually talk about it when we did, we were surprised to learn that the UXU I engineers was also interested in doing so. They simply figured we wouldn't be sold on the idea and wouldn't be interested in taking on the challenge. Like even in my previous many organizations where we had excellent relationships, we kind of slipped into the trap of siloing ourselves. So my dear friends and all the colleagues out here in the summit today, it is very impact impe imperative uh to understand your client's demand and agreeing on a common business goal, which is very, very critical to succeed, not only as a team, uh but also to reach ambitious organizations mission.

OK. So here we will, here are some of the key strategies I would like to share in today's summit that has worked wonders for me. I hope you can use it too whenever you feel stuck. Uh strategy one create a steering committee. Firstly, to be successful as with a product centric goal theme that must become your strategic it team. Uh consider creating a steering committee to promote product Centricity. As one of your organization's uh top operational strength, identify, define and uh initiate product centric roles.

Say, for example, uh assigning capability leaders, uh product managers from business would be your very first step to initiate uh continuous collaboration strategy to identify business capabilities and product lines. Uh When I say identify and prioritize business capabilities, try to link them to product line.

The next step is to identify products under each product line. Apply the following validation questions to each capability as you identify and rank them. What is the situation and what is the goal? What kind of data is consumed and are generated? Who is involved in this? How does it function or offer services? What technologies are needed to make the capability a reality? What is the return of investment? That is, what is your ro I next across three important dimensions, people, processes and platforms. It is very, very critical to investigate ways to deliver these commercial and operational capabilities in a product centric manner. Uh Strategy three identify uh define and initiate product centric rules and align the it department structure. Um uh Engineering. Uh uh next kind of determine product centric positions like capability leader, product managers, engineering manager, a Gile coach and DEV ops architect, which we went in one of our previous slides. So engineering managers and those that play technical roles uh in a product centric organization often come from it. Whereas capability leaders and product managers typically comes from business line and each product owner would be in charge of a team of 10 to 15 people divided into two or three labs.

Strategy four, boost A G Dews adoption and transformation will improve the deployment of agile and dev ops methods to ensure continuous delivery, uh assess the majority of your organization's agile and devops team. And then take a web based strategy to continuous delivery uh covering a set of link products and teams in each wave. Uh invest in agile coaching to assess teams and unlearning old habits and adopting new ones. Uh Strategy five, incorporate lean start up ideas and adopt a minimal product focussed budgeting strategy. Well, the lean start up movement aims to change the way teams create and launch products. Uh adopt the lien strategy to make it more flexible so that budget reviews with your steering committee group may direct financing to the product, proper product lines and products based on business priorities at regular intervals. Uh uh Sixth encourage engineering excellent and implement helpful tools well, to create a high quality software solutions with little technical depth. A continual focus on engineering excellence and tool adoption is very, very critical engineering governance based on KPIS provides an objective perspective of engineering performance and tool usage at all levels.

Strategy seven prioritize client service and invest in modern platform well, continuous collaboration, uh customer journey mapping, uh design thinking, customer feedback and insights and data analytics are some of the examples of uh customer centric processes and methodologies that product centric firms should define and typically use them well, at all levels, try to develop customer focused leadership and culture uh strategy.

A to build a contemporary infrastructure by embracing cloud engineering. So embrace a cloud engineering and modernize uh it infrastructure by paying off legacy infrastructure debt associated with under utilized servers, provisioning and release management overheads. Uh strategy nine adopt uh microservices cloud native development and align enterprise dev ops with enterprise architecture. Well uh flexibility, maintainability, auto provisioning, auto scaling and auto redundancy are some of the advantage of the microservices architecture and cloud native development.

Uh When developing microservices architecture, choose one or one or two pilot projects to begin with. And then as you see uh teams are gaining momentum or try to maximize the benefits of embracing microservices architecture and cloud native development. Uh And this has really worked wonders for me and I'm sure it will work for you as well when you move forward with this methodology. Uh strategy 10 last but not the least, invest in innovation labs and knowledge management platforms change when new technology and solution emerge.

So try to invest in innovation labs allow companies um and organizations to learn about new technologies and platforms as well as to develop, to ensure rapid acceptance of new products, which is very, very uh critical. So key takeaways uh in order to reach these ambitious goal, uh uh number one definitely embrace agility and be willing to try new roles that may be a stretch for you. Uh team spirit, le and learn along the way and team spirit and collaboration. Well, teamwork surely makes the dream work and team spirit is very, very crucial for to in order to boost motivation um across your teams and the organization uh de I culture where diversity, equity and inclusion is uh should be an integral to all the organization and part of the culture.

And it's very essential for each organization to compete in today's talent marketplace. Uh Advancing workplace diversity is more important today than ever before. And a growing number of laws and the requirements are being enacted to support greater diversity in the workforce. Uh focus on lean agile growth mindset.

This is one of my favorite. Uh one which I always love and work with the team as a growth mindset as we all know, innovation is what gile is all about. And needless to say with everything changing as fast as it does in all the industries, a growth mindset is highly preferable uh transition to Okrsokrs are definitely the bridge to the new culture and mindset. Having a shared company goal that everyone works towards is a great metric to measure. And as we all know, Okrs have two important part, the objective we want to achieve and the key results which are the way we measure, achieving the objective, uh give back and pay it forward when you can and last but not the least uh celebrate small wins and have fun as you go.

Uh Don't uh worry if your plan changes over time. Well, every achievement, regardless of its size deserves a record, a reward. Not only does this gives a wonderful feeling, but it also encourage you and your team to keep going and build the momentum. So. Well, I hope this keynote is helpful to you. And I would like to thank uh Anna Women in Tech Committee and all the key listeners and part and participants. And if uh any of my dear mentors or men, if you are part of today's summit, uh note of gratitude and thank you for listening and uh enjoy the rest of your conference. And you can follow me on linkedin and on my website uh spectrum north dot C A. And you can also follow my podcast, the power of Women in the world of tech. Uh Before we uh close this call, I would also like to advise to young women colleagues who is just starting in the tech that believe in self discovery, invest in yourself and have a short term goals, which is very in the long term, which is very, very important, believe in yourself and you will be unstoppable, believe in your strength, most importantly, love yourself and be comfortable to be uncomfortable and step out of your uh uh comfort zone.

You will come out very, very strong and trust me that happens. Thank you everyone and thank you for listening.