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Srinivas Koushik

Srinivas Koushik is Senior Vice President, Enterprise Chief Technology Officer.  In this role, Srini leads the IT Strategy and Planning functions for Nationwide IT.   He manages the Program Management, Solutions Analysis, Architecture and Software Quality Assurance functions for Nationwide IT.  He manages all shared applications at Nationwide and drives all large application development efforts through the Nationwide Development Center.   Finally, he leads all IT capability development including Architecture Information Risk Management, Production Support and Application Development.Prior to this role, Srini served as SVP, Chief Information Officer of Property & Casualty Insurance Operations.  He was responsible for leading the IT organization supporting the Property & Casualty line of business.  Previously, Srini was the SVP, CIO for Nationwide Services Company. He managed all of Nationwide’s shared applications (finance, legal HR and IT), operations (data centers, document solutions and IT service desk) and infrastructure (network, mainframe, servers, storage and desktop). Prior to joining Nationwide in January 2002, Srini held numerous positions with IBM Global Services, including CTO of Business Innovation Services, responsible for technical architecture and implementation of solutions for IBM’s customers in several industries. He was appointed as an IBM Distinguished Engineer and elected to the IBM Academy of Technology, two honors which are bestowed upon a select few (less than 250) of IBM’s 150,000 technical professionals. He is a published author and holds one patent with three others under consideration and has authored a best seller. Srini holds a bachelor’s degree in physics from the University of Madras, a master’s degree in computer science from the University of Bombay and a master’s degree in business administration from the Ohio State University.

Abstract:

PM Career Management

How PMs get involved in planning and execution of their own career…

A fundamental component of proactively managing your own career begins with understanding your role/expectations, your experiences, your opportunities for career growth and your personal development needs.

Understanding Your Role/Expectations. Understand your role and the consistent expectations of your role to enable better understanding and line of sight between what is expected of you and the project/organizational goals.

Understanding Your Experiences. Understand and proactively measure your experiences via five capability tenants:

Business and Technical Solutions.

•  This capability represents your knowledge of standards, best practices and methodologies associated within the applicable business domain as well as IT processes and methodologies.

Project Planning

•  This capability represents your ability to create project objectives, work breakdown structures, estimates, scheduling, contingency planning and trade-offs among scope, schedule and resources.  This includes creation of scope and goals, contract development, resource identification and duration estimates.

Project Execution

•  This capability represents your ability to lead teams in the implementation of IT solutions.  This includes ongoing management of project issues, change management and resources required.

Leadership

•  This capability represents your ability to leverage interpersonal influence to direct the achievement of a goal or goals.  Basically, ability to influence more than one person toward a common goal.

Communication & Relationship

•  This capability represents the key learned skills that are critical dimensions to the project management profession.  Success in the project management profession relies upon the relationships the project practitioner is able to build with resources, peers and leaders.

Understanding your opportunities for career growth. Understand the roles within your project management profession/organization and gradually take on projects of increasing size and complexity over time to build up your successful delivery record.  Reality is ‘you are only as good as your last project’; this is the reputation you’ve earned and must continue to earn to progress in your career.   Be proactive, yet balanced, in managing your professional aspirations while continuing to deliver.

Understanding your personal development needs. Understand your role, what is expected of you, and your career opportunities to better equip you with the necessary tools to create your own development plan.  Remember, development planning starts with you!

In order to manage your own career, focus on consistent, effective and efficient delivery while constantly learning and growing in the Project Management profession.  An outcome of this focus will assist you in your development growth; contribute to improved project-delivery effectiveness which overall will improve credibility with business partners.