DNF: Please tell us about yourself.
Sandeep: I am currently with Neudesic, working in the capacity of Associate Principal Consultant.
DNF: When did you started your career and how?
Sandeep: I started my career back in 2002 as a VB programmer and moved on to become ASP, PHP and VC++ developer. Was a little late in adopting .NET.
DNF: Why did you choose Software Professional as a career?
Sandeep: The Term ‘Computer’ always excited me as a child. I loved playing the DOS based games like Paratroopers. I always wanted to do something with ‘The Computer’ and ended up becoming a software professional.
DNF: As a technical person, when you have been asssigned a job that you seem difficult, how do you approach it.
Sandeep: I always found success in Bottom Up approach. Break a problem into smaller pieces, work on the details and then connect the dots.
DNF: When you want to learn any new technology, how do you start? Do you have any strategy in place that you follow to learn any newer technologies.
Sandeep: Yes. I found out that understanding a business problem and trying to fit a technology to solve it helps in the learning process. Blog about the problem and the technology. This will also help.
DNF: These days every now and then newer technologies or new concepts are popping up, what do you think about it and how do you cope with them?
Sandeep: Very hard to cope. There is no shortcut to it. You need to be diligent and stay focused.
DNF: This is a general questions now MS technology developers are asking: Almost every year or so new version of .net framework or Visual Studio IDE are being released, many a times people are not even fully familiar with the current technology and new things come along and they really feel difficulty in learning and be in line with these new things. What do you think about it and how to deal with it?
Sandeep: Never try to learn new technologies. Try to solve business problems. While solving a business problem try to find out what technology would best fit to solve the problem. This helped me adapt newer technologies rather that just trying to learn them. I cannot learn a new technology unless I know a reason to use it. A school of thought says try to be a “generalizing specialist” and I kind of agree. Work hard to become a master in one technology (the one you are best at) and then be aware of other technologies that provide alternatives to solving your business problem.
DNF: This is little personal however if you do not mind sharing, can you please tell us how do you balance personal as well as professional life when the work is getting demanding now a days and need to spend more time in office?
Sandeep: Personally I feel you can’t. If you love your job you got to sacrifice some of your family time.
DNF: What technology or software do you think will be hot in coming 4-5 years and why?
Sandeep: Convergence is the mantra. Surface has great potential and there will be a huge demand for Microsoft Surface based applications. Cloud computing also looks very promising.
DNF: When any of the team members is difficult to manage (technically and personally) how do you tackle them?
Sandeep: I think trying to tackle issues with team members will not make teams successful in the long run. Follow Agile principles. Make empowered teams and have complete trust in them. Trust will make them accountable and will help alleviate technical and personal issues.
DNF: How do you deal with the situation when your project deliverables is getting delayed?
Sandeep: Make sure that the reasons are well documented and communicated to the client. Follow a defined escalation matrix in mitigating risks. Prompt communication with all the stakeholders is very important.
DNF: Do you remember any event/challenge that you have faced in your career and how did you deal with it?
Sandeep: Every day is a new challenge and a new experience. Learning from previous experiences helps deal with them.
DNF: What short of qualities are necessary to be a technical person or architect and how to develop them?
Sandeep: An eye for detail and holistic approach to solving problems is very important. This definitely comes with experience and rational thinking.
DNF: What do you want to say to the aspirant architect and leads?
Sandeep: Keep your eyes and ears open. Spend time with different teams to try and understand their approach to business problems. Do not hesitate to share your thoughts on how things can be improved and learn from them at the same time. Always have a flair for refactoring.
DNF: As a senior technical person what short of qualities you look for in your team members?
Sandeep: Accountability.
DNF: How do you maintain the team spirit?
Sandeep: Team lunches. Sharing thoughts over food always helps building team spirit. Also inculcate a habit of acknowledging the achievements of each member and make sure that everyone makes each other feel their importance in the team.
DNF: You must have completed several projects in your career, what short of design pattern or architecture you follow and how does it help you.
Sandeep: Designs are very specific to the nature of the project. However I always try to design against contract rather than building an inheritance chain. Data tiers should be designed to be chunky and not chatty.
DNF: What short of qualities you are developing right now that will assist you in future.
Sandeep: Closely monitoring the paradigm shift in technology and trying to embrace the change.
DNF: To deliver a successful project what short of things are necessary and how do you ensure them?
Sandeep: Accountability and communication is the key to delivering successful projects. Following Agile principles provide good support in ensuring accountability and proper communication.
DNF: What project management methodology do you follow, please brief us about them.
Sandeep: Agile Scrum. The reason we chose Scrum against all other Agile methodologies like XP is that scrum is not water tight. It provides a lot of flexibility.
DNF: From your past experience what project management methodology best suits to you?
Sandeep: Agile Scrum.
DNF: You must have something exciting while working for so many year? Would you like to share with us?
Sandeep: Every day so far has been exciting and I guess sharing that will need a lot of space J:
DNF: What do you do in your free times, what are your hobbies?
Sandeep: Hardly get any time for hobbies. Try to spend every moment of the free time with my family.
DNF: Anything else you want to share that may help the visitors of DotNetFunda.Com in building their career.
Sandeep: Stay focused and do your job well. Times are not very good now and there is lot of competition. If we don’t stay diligent we will lose out in the race.