Datta Vellal

2019

Moved in July from architecting one product to company-wide software excellence, after leading identity management to automated end-to-end tests and unit-test coverage from 63% to 86% with no extra people. I brought duplicate-code detection to business units with hands-on workshops, put the data in front of the CTO, started and led the campus interview-standardization work and ran 341 connects across 109 business units. Rated Exceeds.

  • 63%to 86% unit-test coverage
  • 18,688duplicate lines removed
  • 29workshops at 8.93/10
  • 225+at one sharing session
  • 341connects across 109 business units

What mattered most

  1. 01

    Rated Exceeds in my first year in software excellence

    My 2019 review was rated Exceeds for the speed with which I built a network across the company and scaled up to many workshops with good feedback.

  2. 02

    Compiled measured duplicate-code data for the CTO's extended call

    Five weeks into the duplication program I compiled the results of every workshop and session, with before-and-after reports, for the CTO's extended call, so leadership could discuss code quality from measured data.

  3. 03

    Brought duplicate-code detection to Philips, and teams removed 18,688 lines

    I introduced an open-source duplicate-code detector to Philips and built the program around it, with guides, a hands-on workshop and a before-and-after report teams could run themselves. With a senior director as sponsor, I ran workshops across business units, and teams I worked with removed 18,688 lines of duplicate code.

  4. 04

    Recognized for changing code-quality culture across the campus's businesses

    A Software Center of Excellence leader recognized my code-quality drives and workshops with teams across the campus, and credited them with cultural change across its businesses.

  5. 05

    Set up measured outreach: 341 connects across 109 business units

    In my first half-year in software excellence I designed a connect format and ran 341 connects, sessions and mentoring conversations with 236 people across 109 business units, 52 roles and 25 programming languages. I tracked every one so the results could feed the team's KPIs.

“Great Datta. It provides good insight. As next step we need to devise mechanism to remove and commit 23% of duplicate code.”

Senior Director, softwarePhilips, October 2019Read the capsule

By month

Also in 2019

  1. 4 December 2019Coordinated the kick-off of Philips' technical-debt measurement work with Software Improvement GroupProgram
  2. December 2019Ran open year-end code-quality assessments with product teamsProgram
  3. 28 October 2019Led the working group that upgraded campus hiring and reworked the interview questionnairesHiring
  4. 16 October 2019Judged the campus best-practices competition finals and connected finalists to take ideas furtherProgram
  5. 14 October 2019Introduced mutation testing to a radiation oncology product teamTalk
  6. 11 October 2019Measured 20% duplicated code in a shared application codebase and reported it to its ownersProgram
  7. October 2019Proposed that teams protect 3 days per program increment for technical debtProgram
  8. 11 September 2019Panelist at the Philips developer conference fireside chat 'How much is enough?' (~500 attendees)Talk
  9. 11 September 2019Spoke at Bengaluru's Software Excellence Conference on program behavior metrics (70) and BDD live coding (20)Talk
  10. September 2019Took the duplicate-code tool to 225+ engineers in two time zonesTalk
  11. 1 August 2019Ran a half-day TDD and clean code workshop for 25 nominated engineersTalk
  12. 4 July 2019Ran a half-day unit testing workshop for 24 nominated engineersTalk
  13. 1 July 2019Moved to company-wide software excellence to lead technical debt reductionRole
  14. 15 May 2019Manager recognition 'Eager to improve and inspire' for coaching a product team on interviewing (500 points)Recognition
  15. May 2019Trained a product team's interviewers to collect evidence, design questions and stay neutralHiring
  16. 23 April 2019Ran a hands-on workshop on S101 architecture visualizationTalk
  17. April 2019Drove central ELK logging and monitoring for identity management and started its next monitoring iterationProject
  18. April 2019Spoke at the Software Center of Excellence April technical sharing session, before joining that teamTalk
  19. March 2019Raised unit-test coverage from 63% to 86% with no extra peopleProject
  20. 1 February 2019Ran a Java best practices session for 24 Philips engineers, the first of the 2019 workshop seriesTalk
  21. February 2019Started the Philips Innovation Campus interview-standardization initiative with a five-point frameworkHiring
  22. February 2019Led the first CI/CD milestone: automated end-to-end testsProject
  23. January 2019Introduced by the chief architect to Philips architects worldwide as Project Architect for Identity ManagementRole
  24. January 2019Set one defect life cycle for identity management, with required fields, owners and change-control rulesProject
  25. January 2019Set up a single team site for identity management's process, standards and plansProject