We've had the chance to highlight several Community stars at this point and each time it's obvious that our community is made up of impressive people who love what they do. In this spotlight Elite TBMA and Srikanth Satakopan shares how he uses Apptio to support TBM at HP Inc. Have a look...
Let's start with the structure of your team. Do you work in a TBMO? How is it organized? Where do you sit?
Yes, I am part of the Technology Business Management Office (TBMO) at HP Inc. The TBMO is part of the Office of the CIO (OCIO) – Global Program Management Office (GPMO). We have three team members from the OCIO who play the Lead, Business Strategy and Business Analysis and another four team members from our Corporate Functions IT who perform Technical TBMA and Data Management roles.
Some of the team
@Pablo Santana, @Ericka Norman, Srikanth Satakopan, @Alex Puga
I recognize every one of those names from their community contributions. You guys have one of the TBMO dream teams.
The full team is not collocated but we operate that way. Team members are in Houston, Austin, Guadalajara, California and India (Truly Global team – GTBMO – Global TBMO!!). Some team members wear multiple hats and work on different projects in the organization.
"We're not collocated but we operate that way" I love that. I'm going to start describing Community in the same way. So what hats do you wear? I do whatever is needed for the team to be successful. I lead the TBMO program from the OCIO. So, you can refer to me as TBMO Leader and Operations Manager from a role perspective. I am responsible for TBM roadmap and successful deployment, as well as Executive and Stakeholder Management at CIO and Senior Leadership levels. More specifically, I:
- Communicate on progress and drive actions through TBM Governance
- Lead Premier Customer Success engagement with Apptio
- Drive Quarterly Operations Reviews
- Increase adoption by marketing to on-board internal customers
- Identify and prioritize the need for additional data, metrics, reports and dashboards
- Analyze and suggest improvements to current modeling and reporting strategies
- Ensure Operational stability and supportability for on-time Month End Close
As an Elite TBMA I am deeply involved in design, model configuration, and reporting changes.
It's definitely not always necessary for a TBMO leader to earn ETBMA but it's great to be able to manage executive and stakeholder communications AND to be able to get technical with Apptio. So what’s your actual job title? Does it have anything to do with TBM?
Senior Program Manager – Office of the CIO – Global Program Management Office
Being part of the Global Program Management Office, do you use Apptio to support any reoccurring reviews or processes?
Yes, our Quarterly CIO Operations Review for Financials as this is the one that has been signed off and deployed
Great, in addition to supporting that important review, in what other ways is your TBMO contributing to HP or helping your business partners outside of the TBMO?
We are helping increase data awareness, transparency and insights not previously available.
- TBMO has identified several Data Quality Issues and process gaps as we start integrating the information
- As we deploy Application TCO we are already starting to see costs for unused infrastructure or we are identifying cloud consumption costs not tied to an application. There is lot of discussion that is currently going with our Application owners related to allocation model for Managers Service applications, cost allocation for Platform software and database services. It is a such a great learning experience for the TBMO team and the Application Owners.
It's cool that you've found value in the process. You don't have to have App TCO fully implemented before learning emerges. It's obvious to those of us who consistently work in this space, why what you are doing is important, but how do you describe your job to people "on the outside?" When someone says, “Srikanth, what do you do for a living.” What do you say?
I am a Technology Leader. I say this as I love Technology and have a passion for Leading. A balanced blend of these two traits has positioned me well in scaling my strengths in both these areas.
Your passion for this space comes through on Community as well. What do you like most about this community we’re creating together?
Apptio Community is like a family. It all started with great teachers “gurus” from ApptioU who create this bonding as we spent a lot of time during our path to getting certified as RTBMA and ETBMA. I like sharing my experiences and I'm always a constant learner. I have not had this kind of experience anywhere else and ApptioU and the Apptio Community is unique in giving this enriching experience.
Speaking of sharing your experiences, In your ETBMA blog, you talked about the importance of communicating frequently. Can you share your progress in that area? What are some communication techniques that you’ve been using?
Most programs fail due to lack of communication. As part of our TBM program, our communication strategy has been:
Daily sprint standups where the team communicates
A weekly program status that goes to our executive stakeholders and to the TBMO team
Alignment and Engagement sessions with our IT Finance organization (which is very crucial)
Monthly Governance communication sessions and Executive Sponsor reviews to align on roadmap.
Quarterly we also have a deep dive with our CIO on all the capabilities delivered and our roadmap as well. TBMO team attends the staff meeting of senior vice presidents and directors to review. As you see my role requires me to be communicating all the time. We cannot take a “Build it they will come” attitude. It is my job to stay in front, communicate, share the benefits and business outcomes the IT Organization can get out of TBM and Apptio.
I was just talking at the London User Conference about the importance of constantly communicating the value of your TBMO. It's great to hear you underscore that with real-world examples. Switching topics a bit, you blazed a very cool trail by applying your Apptio education classes toward CPE credits, to support your PMI certification. Can you share that process?
As @Debbie Hagen called me, I'm a Certification Geek as I do different roles I add value
to myself and the organization by earning certifications so I am constantly learning. I am certified in ITIL Foundation, Certified Scrum Master, SAFe Agilist, PMI-PMP, PMI- Agile Certified Practitioner, RTBMA and now Elite TBMA and I just completed the Head of the TBMO office program. Each of these certifications comes with constant learning and having to update the learning with new developments and contributions. PMI requires 60 PDU (Professional Development Units) every 3 years and this can be obtained in many ways. So,as you know, I approached you to see if specific courses in the RTBMA/ETBMA can be aligned to the PMI certification PDU categories. I also, worked with PMI to get clarification and document them so anyone needing PDU’s can use them as well. As I said I like to share so the community can benefit
And we definitely have. Your insight along with @Elle Holtzman's prompted us to add Continuing Education info for other industry certifications to our learning plans. But I don't want to just ask you about things you've already done, let's talk about the future. We have Apptio product designers and engineers on Community. What’s at the top of your wish list in terms of product enhancements?
Apptio is a great product and has been designed well end to end. I know V12 brings a lot of cool features for TBMA and simplifies many things from previous version. Two things that come to my mind are report rendering with different form factors so that same report can be viewed on many devices without multiple versions. Also, it will be great to integrate the model with a data modeling tool like Visio so we can export the model and can model specific model objects and allocations for design reviews prior to making the changes in the Apptio ATUM model.
Srikanth, thank you for your time. We really appreciate you giving us a look into how you work with Apptio.
Thank you to the Apptio Customer Culture team, Apptio University and the products and customer teams. You recognize value, engage with customers and look out for their best interest and success. It is a win-win partnership as we start winding down 2017 looking forward to a great, fulfilling and successful engagement with Apptio in 2018 and beyond!!