The ThoughtWorks University programme is over and I'm back in my home office Pune. It was an experience of a lifetime :) On the last day when the week-long project simulation was over we were doing a retrospective of the week that was and a group brainstorm came-up with these top 3 learnings from the activity.

1. Customer Commitment.
2. Communication and Collaboration.
3. Managing customer expectations.

The project simulation is supposed to be the most significant part of the University programme. Here we are expected to apply all the consulting skills, developer/analyst specific learnings, and agile practices that we learn through the programme. Trainers double-up as customers and are constantly watching us at work. It is set-up to give us a feel of how projects are done in ThoughtWorks.

Read the rest of this post »

Chautauqua, let me speak about it first. Webster's defines it as:  any of various traveling shows and local assemblies that flourished in the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, that provided popular education combined with entertainment in the form of lectures, concerts, and plays, and that were modeled after activities at the Chautauqua Institution of western New York. But if you read Robert Pirsig's Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance, you know why this applies to ThoughtWorks University sessions. Its not about what a Chautauqua was intended to be (as described above), but what it actually did that matters. It was influential. (The dictionary needs to be updated.) But, how did Robert Pirsig come into the picture from out-of-the-blue?

Read the rest of this post »

Well most of you know that I'm at the TWU these days and that's what this post is about. I'm just awestruck at the amount of opportunities that TWU has offered to me:

Read the rest of this post »