Background and Inspiration

My name is Abhilash Gopalakrishnan, currently serving as Principal Engineer at ABB at its R&D in Bangalore, India.

Career Journey

After having completed Bachelors in Mechanical Engineering, was fortunate to work with some exceptional professionals like Anoop M while at Time, who conceived some of the best projects, working on an e-Tendering system focusing on Visual Basic and IIS Applications. At Lucid while in Tech Support was guided by Gopi in ASP and SQLServer and later in development of Condensor project by Sibi focusing on Visual Basic. Having learnt some of .NET, changed gears to product development at BNS Solutions at Thiruvananthapuram. As module lead led User management part of OnWarehouse and Remoting Messaging for Diagnostics mentored by Ashok Potty. Sent to Germany for taking up the CRM project, since it was shelved, left BNS to join Cognizant in Bangalore.

At Cognizant I learnt UML and Requirement Analysis using Use Case Models and Use Case Realization while in ADP project. Later on deputation in Chennai learnt lot of ASP.NET and Web Services while working on Shwan's mainframe elimination. Back in Bangalore, Working on Metlife project and learnt databases - SQL Server with Shiju as mentor. Later after a stint working on Webservices and installation packages for Travelport, left Cognizant to join LG CNS. At LG, working of BBC The Motion Galley, learnt design patterns and the architectural approaches under guidance of Mark, the BBC Architect that time. While this was one of my best leaning experiences, more time for personal life took me to ABB.

Initially mentored by Viju into substation automation and later guided by Ganesh and Padmasri, my journey became quite interesting. Was trained by ABB on Software Architecture. Some life lessons came from Anoop. My Masters in Software Systems triggered an interest in Decision Support Systems and Sherlock Holmes's approach termed, Ladder of Inference. Later on by being mentored by Abhinna, could scale new heights in learning and get past some of my worries on mathematics. The transitions also were guided by major shifts in programming including waves of python, R and similar languages with data science emerging as an important element. An ardent futurist, ably guided by centre head Magnus and Abhinna, ventured into IEEE conference publications. In the conferences after meeting stalwarts like Jan Bosch, got inclined to balance existing and research.

In researchgate, listening to these gurus in Software Architecture, Martin Fowler, Jan Bosch, Eoin Woods, Eltjo Poort the learning became exponential. I have been blessed with friends who have always stayed supportive. I am indebted to my parents, family and friends for what I could learn. Equally indebted to gurus in school, college and life. This is me today at career. I love learning and sharing, and spend time in software architecture meetups and keynotes in conferences. My belief is Design Thinking needs to be embedded to architecture practice. As someone who contributed to embedded systems in industrial automation domain, wrote about- Cyber Physical Systems and Future Energy Systems. Eternally curios and trying to make sense of latest trends by following approaches like Technology Radar (suggested by Thoughtworks), work on tools to accelerate innovation in products and systems. IEEE Senior Member and member of Computer Society and Technology and Engineering Management Society and member of ACM.

Inspiration

A morning walk makes me feel connected to the world and nature. It reignites the belief in nature/god and gives the clarity to mind. As a lifelong learner, my interests include reading everything that comes my way. From college I started following the great authors who provided clarity whether science or novel or information. An Indian with a global mindset, was always amazed by the vision set by the people's president Dr. A.P.J Abdul Kalam. He and his book Ignited Minds and his journey stays an inspiration for life. Someday I came across this book Accidental Genius: Revolutionize Your Thinking Through Private Writing. This struck a chord with me who was in habit of taking notes on what ever I read. Over a period, this really started influencing my thinking. The ability to reflect while writing, unique to mankind, led me to synthesize multiple readings into new understanding or insights. While my organization made me a global citizen, IET and later IEEE as professional societies shaped my career. Listening to great professionals became a passion. I felt everything on engineering career was written in this guidebook, Real-World Engineering: A Guide to Achieving Career Success. As a design student following the guru Don Norman and his great works- The Design of Everyday Things and The Design of Future Things. As of Leadership, the guidebook is From Values to Action, from Kraemer. Great learnings on management and leadership came by following Peter Drucker and CK Prahlad including New Age of Innovation. My own earlier bosses Latha and Padmasri are good leaders as well. Organizational learning came from Rajeev Peshawaria. Project planning and execution is influenced by Theory of Constraints explained in The Goal by Goldratt. Stephen Covey in his writing First Things First kind of enabled steering in right directions and value time.

After completing 20 years at work daring to pen some of my learnings - a synthesis of the knowledge shared by gurus.