For any organisation to "grow" and become "great", it must find "great" people to induct within its ecosystem. Such people are often entrepreneurial, and wish to bring their personal touch, a deep passion for technology / geographic location / business practice to the table. Providing an opportunity of self-expression of their passion - a platform for leap-frogging - that aligns with our goals at Srijan as well, we realised is one of the easiest way for us to grow, get to work with great people, and become a brand that is highly respected and loved globally. Ownership often is a key element in enabling such a platform. This has led to forming the "Srijan Co-operative of Businesses". This talk will cover how Srijan has managed this, how this aligns with its partnership/ownership culture and distributed team structure. Srijan is in transition to becoming an Agile company. The speaker will cover what practices they are adopting from the SCRUM-XP methodologies, the reasons for it, and how Agile fits into the "larger culture" of ownership

1. Creating Distributed Services Startups
Srijan Technologies Pvt. Ltd.

2. Running successful services startups
Assuming you have projects, clients...
 Lots of customer interaction, communication, commitment
 Writing good code
 Sprint-end Reviews, Holding people accountable
 A great culture of “critique”, “responsibility” and “feedback”
 Lots of good developers, lots of “mature” and “experienced” leadership
Srijan Technologies Pvt. Ltd.

3. How do you attract good leadership?
Assuming “you wish to work with people better than you”... how do you find
and work with such people?
 They are often in different cities in India (and internationally)
 Remote working? In India, feasible?
 Pay them high salaries? Small startups cannot afford industry salaries
 They often have an “entrepreneurial” spark
 They have a context – region they wish to belong to, technology they choose,
entrepreneurial aspirations
So how do you align goals?
Srijan Technologies Pvt. Ltd.

4. An opportunity comes calling
●
Bangalorean; Mountaineer, Rock Climber
●
Born, brought-up in Dharamshala; MBA;
worked in Delhi, Mumbai, Shimla in
●
22 years in software development; Embedded
corporates systems, Quality Assurance, Product
development, Moodle, PHP, Linux-geek
●
Tried running a software company in
Shimla
●
Tag-along sell-out of shares in company; moved
to Dharamshala in 2010
●
Moved back to Dharamshala and “be on
his own” (goal: generate employment
opportunities locally)
Srijan Technologies Pvt. Ltd.

5. Srijan Dharamshala
 Srijan is a web services consulting company based in Gurgaon (Delhi region),
and Dharamshala, Himachal Pradesh
 Design and build business applications, intranets, portals, and corporate
websites using Drupal
 Support/maintain applications built using Drupal
View from our Dharamshala office
Srijan Technologies Pvt. Ltd.

6. Srijan Dharamshala
 First mainstream technology company to be present in the city
 20+ people; 18 developers, managers
 People have moved from Mumbai, Chandigarh, Delhi; lots of locals
 International consultants (spiritual seekers; practicing buddhists; tibet-lovers)
come over and teach Linux Sys Ad skills, HR trainings, etc
 A beautiful large office; clean air, office cricket team; basketball, badminton;
travel time to office – 45 sec walk to 15 mins by bike; a good life
Srijan Technologies Pvt. Ltd.

7. Evolving Ecosystem
Srijan ONE
Sales & Marketing
Srijan Technologies, Gurgaon Srijan Dhauladhar
Technologies, Dharamshala
• Drupal Consulting; Architecture • Drupal Support and Maintenance;
• Development large projects • Drupal Development (small-mid size);
• Quality Assurance
Srijan Technologies Pvt. Ltd.

8. What has it done to Srijan (co-operative of
businesses)?
 People when they get disgusted with Gurgaon, go over to Dharamshala for 2
weeks; come back rejuvenated; employee retention has gone up
 We've got “partners” in the system
 That means so many more smart minds – aligned towards the success of the
enterprise
 Differential costs of operation; ability to cater to differently budgeted projects;
different regions with different PPP are being catered to
Srijan Technologies Pvt. Ltd.

9. Development Methodology and Tools
 Agile SCRUM practices
 Typical Project Team consists of :: Developers, CSS
themers, QA engineers, SCRUM Manager, Tech
Architect
 JIRA Studio (with Greenhopper) : For defining
Sprints, Tasks, and Releases; Bug Reporting; Code
Reviews; SVN Hosting, Time logging
 Story Walls are commonplace at both offices
Srijan Technologies Pvt. Ltd.

10. Geographically
distributed
SCRUM team
Srijan Technologies Pvt. Ltd.

11. Steps for success
 Investment in video conferencing between Gurgaon and Dharamshala for “daily
stand-up meetings”
 Commitment to remote QA
 Enable specialisation across business units
Srijan Technologies Pvt. Ltd.

12. Thank you!
Rahul Dewan; rahul@srijan.in
@rahuldewan
Srijan Technologies Pvt. Ltd.