Soma Bhattacharya
Let’s get to know Soma Bhattacharya:
City, Country: Hyderabad, India
Title: Program manager
Industry: Industry- IT
Number of years of work experiences: 15 years
Languages: English, Hindi, Bengali
Certifications: CSM, CSP, Safe Agilist
Diploma: Masters in English Literature and Masters in Mass Communication
3 Passions: Travelling, creating content, reading
Social Media: Linkedin, Twitter- Soma_b, Insta – Somab2014, Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQtf0mHw_ph7fJQm_PjbSDQ
How would you describe yourself?
An INFJ (Myers Brigg personality), who loves to learn, research and teach. This is where my energy is channeled for my blog and YouTube channel. My work is a combination of being an Agile Coach and Program Manager which brings in both freedom, structure and joy to my work. When not working, I like to travel (when possible) and spend time with my 7 year old son.
You have a background in mass communication. Most of the project managers I know have a technical background. How did you become a project manager with agile methodologies?
I started the journey in a Chicago (US) firm, where my manager was super supportive and allowed me to learn and grow. While I didn’t have IT background, I had the zeal to learn. I initially started as an intern but started reading and looking into the project management blogs and anything I could find. On weekends I would call my friends in IT and ask the questions I had that I had accumulated over the week in attending meetings or hearing and reading about ongoing projects and research them over. Today I know there are few project managers who always don’t come from IT background. My manager at that time and mentor always emphasized that I came with a unique quality that I wasn’t an insider (from IT perspective and a fresh grad), so my opinions were always fresh and I was encouraged to keep on focusing on that and bring that to work. That helped my confidence and focus.
You have a blog about project management: when did you start it? And why?
I started it years ago, when I was new to the industry. While I was looking for information over the web, all project management blogs were an overload written by professionals. However, none of them had anything for starters and nothing to introduce the newbies to this field. It just seemed too much. So, I started journaling my journey and failures. In the process others started reading it and that’s how it started.
As a project manager, what is one thing you would like to improve or learn in the future?
Honestly, I think todays everything is evolving so fast and we always have to keep up. My latest venture has been on analytics and I hope I learn it fast enough.
Do you have any resources to recommend?
While there are amazing books and resources available which one can buy, I always talk about availing the free ones first available via blogs and Youtube channels. All of them done by seasoned professionals and it’s free. Start there and then figure out where you really want to dive deeper and buy a book or course.
