Seasoned IT Professional Shares Insights on IIT Madras Data Science Program and Corporate Readiness

Interviewer:

Hi Lovleen, Good Evening and Welcome to our todays’ session of the series of best CAPSTONE projects . To begin with, it would be great to have a quick introduction of yours to our readers along with your professional background.

Lovleen:

Hi, Good Evening!! Thank you for this opportunity. To give a quick introduction of myself, I have more than 30 years of Industry experience mostly in the Telecom sector. I started my career in 1993 with Defence Research and Development Organization as a computer scientist. I actually worked in the key lab where all the missiles are being done. So that was a good starting point. The kind of data things that we see these days as you know, something very easily doable every day. Even a 50-60 thousand lines of data was considered as a big data in that era and, trying to do things in a very memory constraint way. It was a very good learning starting there as a computer scientist at DRDO. Following that I spent 11 years in Siemens which was a transition from a Government Job in a research lab moving into a Corporate environment. This was a very big change, I got a lot of exposure in business practices, in professional Software Development areas. I worked one year in Malaysia followed by a 5 year stint in the US working for Siemens mobile phones. And, it was really good you know to lead some projects in the mobile phone industry.

Last 16 years I have been associated with Nokia and this has been a very unique and different period because I have lead technology teams in my career and over last so many years I have also lead business functions. Business functions in Procurement, Supply Chain, Sourcing, Engineering, Supply quality. So that has helped me to get a good exposure on the technology and business side of the things. And for the last 7 to 8 years I have been primarily dealing with data science and AI analytics. So that has been a good professional journey which has given me a lot of exposure and to various kind of activities.

Interviewer:

Thank you Lovleen for the introduction. Coming to my next question, How did you learn about the data science program? And, what was the motivating factor to you to enroll into this program?

Lovleen:

Actually, I was aware of this program because when the program started from the very first batch itself I was aware of it. Actually, my daughter had also enrolled in it and then I have gone through the content for the first quarter couple of terms. So, I knew it was a very high quality program. So that was something I was able to figure out in the beginning itself. Now, I have a master’s degree in computer science and I got my masters in 1993. And I’ve been keeping myself updated all the time.

I actually learned about AI and neural networks back in 1992 itself, but there was a long gap when I was working in the mobile phone and other areas and due to this I got a little disconnected with what I learnt. So, later on I started upskilling myself again doing courses in the Coursera and other platforms. But I knew that there were some gaps in my knowledge. I was aware of the gaps in my Knowledge. So I thought okay. It's time for me to go back to the basics. And since I was aware of this program, I knew this will be good fit instead of going to any kind of fast track shortcuts. There are a lot of things available for diploma one year two years things, I decided no, Let me go slow. Let me do a Four year degree because there's nothing like a graduate program to rebuild your fundamentals and I believe I feel it was a good decision so far. It has been very beneficial for me.

Interviewer:

My next question would be coming to the Capstone project. But even before we get there, is any subject that you found very interesting in the entire program. Something That caught your interest even more.

Lovleen:

It is actually!!! There are a lot of subjects that were kind of a repeat for me. But then there were a lot of new stuff also that I learned. Especially in this modern application development, both the programs, a lot of new stuff. Business analytics is something which gives you very practical different way of looking at things and BDM is another thing. So far the weaknesses in my skill base was mostly around mathematics. So for me, I will say the biggest benefit that I got is I have developed a taste for mathematics, which all my years I was running away from it, like school or college time. Now you know I developed an appreciation for it and why things are being taught in a certain way. And surprisingly I have been getting good marks in the mathematics related subjects. Although my strength was in programming, I believe this has been the biggest gain for me that I've been able to develop a love for the topic and appreciation of how things are done.

Interviewer:

Alright! So coming to the Capstone project. How is that experience been if you can Briefly summarize what your project was all about? And you're overall learning from this project.

Lovleen:

It was a great opportunity to apply the classroom learning to a real project. I worked with a small retail startup which are dealing with the natural and organic foods. And they are facing the typical problems that retail store face, brick and mortar straight and they're trying to scale up. And I started analyzing their data and see I have worked in corporate areas. So I knew a certain way of doing things but here, the beauty of the thing was that you were able to apply the principles of a research project to a business area that was something very new for me. The rigor of a research project could be applied for a business and I could you know start from the data, identify the insights and I could look at that, you know applying and validate your hypothesis, applying various kind of statistical tests and it was great to see that sometimes multiple analysis that you're doing, they are pointing out in the same direction. So that kind of reinforces that you are moving in the right direction. So it was really good thing to do.

I believe a lot of students underestimate this project they kind of ignore this project and I think this is one of the most important project we should consider the BDM project as kind of a internship was whatever you do in a BDM project, you can show this to the industry

Interviewer:

Any challenges that you came across during the course of this project?

Lovleen:

I had a lot of challenges in terms of managing the data, in cleaning up the data. And you start the project with certain kind of expectations and sometimes you have, you know fixed thinking that this is the line of research I'll take and then everything will work as planned. But in reality it does not work out as planned. So you have to keep your mind open and you know be ready to change the things. So it was slightly easier for me because with my years of experience, I knew that I need to keep a good grip on the project management and the schedule part and I've seen lot of students are often struggling with that activity and my belief is; projects rarely fail because of technical reasons, the mostly fail because the project management reasons. So for me that, you know, bringing the mindset to follow the research rigour. That was the only Big Challenge.

There is very good stuff available from the faculty and the staff of BDM team. I will say one of the most responsive most interactive team in this entire program is really the BDM capstone project team. I have high levels of appreciation for that team and I think most of the students have very high, you know feedback for that particular team.

Interviewer:

So how was it like, the findings of your project when you went back to the business owners?

Lovleen:

There are very new ways of doing things because this is a small traditional business. They're not used to data analytics and you know data driven things. So for them some of these things were, you know, very new findings. And they have not been thinking about these aspects and then I told them okay, this is the way you are getting access to the expertise of IIT Madras. And for them they are not experts in technology. They are not experts and they are not MBA people. Okay, so it's a typical traditional shop people they know how to do their business, but then they don't know how to analyze the things from a big picture perspective. They're too much busy in the daily firefighting and you know crisis activities. So they appreciated the fact that you know, this kind of project was done and then they were able to get some help on the analysis and recommendations.

Interviewer:

Thank you for those insights Lovleen!! My last question would be how do you see this course value-add for anyone in general and how as a working professional are you able to balance both your coursework as well as your full-time job?

Lovleen:

I feel that this program is very disruptive in the field of Education. It is making knowledge available to lot of students across the country. See we have lot of interactions happening within the official forums of IIT Madras, but then we have much bigger interaction happening in. Different you know WhatsApp groups. I'm part of at least 20 different WhatsApp groups all related to this program. And I get to see there are students from various kind of economic backgrounds, various kind of small and big towns and they are discussing things. And I don't believe that they would have got this kind of opportunity without this program. So my message is that, everybody should try to make best use of it. Specially, for the working professionals keeping up things with the corporate work, as well as people who are married have family. It becomes a challenge. So far what I've seen is things are working very smoothly till the first quiz. And then after first quiz, you know things start piling up. Backlog starts piling up and then things become really tough by the second quiz. So I'll say, you know, we have a gap from one term to another term.

There are three to four weeks of gap. We should not waste that time. You should proactively start preparing for the next term. Videos are available. That four weeks plus time that we have till the first quiz. This gives us around 8 to 9 weeks. We should use this 8 to 9 weeks to cover as much as possible for those who are in job. Definitely they need to do this activity in a very proactive way. Otherwise, it becomes very difficult to catch up on the timeline. I have something else that I would like to say, especially to the beginner students as a lot of them are freshers. You know when they are doing data science analysis and specially for this BDM capstone project kind of things. First thing is they should not fall in love with their hypothesis. They should be open-minded because they may start with something but then something else maybe yielding them results. So I always say that data science is a bit like, you know criminal investigation.

You may be having suspicion on somebody but then you cannot just go and address that person you have to collect the evidence. You have to prove things with the evidence. You have to build out the story saying that, this is what happened and this led to the other thing and this led to another thing and you should develop that ability, to look at things from that perspective, how are you able to put together the things and connect the dots and this is really an exciting opportunity for all of us and make best use of this whole program. I'm a strong believer in the contribution of this program in the education disruption in our country.

Interviewer:

Okay, Lovleen, I think I'm mostly done anything else that you have to share any other message that you have to get.

Lovleen:

Specially for the students, specially from the college and freshers because there are a lot of youngsters taking this program, time management for them is a skill which they're not used to, although they have a lot of time. But they get into trouble because of time management things. Working professionals are landing in problem because they have less time. So for the beginner students, they should make use of this opportunity and that try to do as much as possible. Do it themselves. All the exercises course everything which are there are really great assignments and all the projects. There are 2 subjects which I have seen students are not really giving too much of importance one is business analytics and the other is BDM.

I believe these two subjects are making students ready for immediate Hands-On activities in a corporate world. So if you do business analytics and BDM course well, you are actually ready to pick up lot of jobs in the corporate area. Well, analytics has a lot of application and these two courses give you very Hands-On activities about how businesses using them.

Interviewer:

Lovleen, when you spoke about this. Just last one question that comes to my mind, right? We have always seen with our traditional degree programs. And when we get into a corporate job, there is certain delta gap that is always there right, you have to learn a lot of things to make yourself build enough for the corporate job though the traditional courses may help you crack the interviews and get a job, but there's a lot of significant learning that goes into, maybe say for computer science also right the technology-wise the way you have to upskill, there's a lot of training that is being invested into the fresher students or the candidates to get them up skilled and build their skill level to the corporate requirement. Where do you see this program standing in terms of making students corporate ready or you know skilled enough to take a job.

Lovleen:

I definitely see some gaps in that area, while it is providing the technical part of the training very well. But I do see some gaps and some of the gaps also come from the fact that students come here from a very diverse background. And some of them even have problem, you know, understanding basic English things also. So it becomes a challenge in that case. On the subject perspective, I will say if you look at subjects like machine learning, programming, these kind of things we are not dealing talking about how it is being done in a corporate environment. For example, when you look at precision and recall, What is the meaning of precision recall from a business situation perspective? Is precision more important for me or is recall more important for me. How do you make this decision? How do you connect it to the business? This is something which is important to understand and share it with the students. Similarly, in lot of this kaggle competitions we get perfect data. But in business environment, we do not get perfect data. So that is a something which students are not aware of. And then there are certain things which students have to work on and IIT I think will definitely help them. You know when they're taking interviews. And it is the same set of skills which are required for interview as well as for viva also. There's no difference between viva and interview.

The key thing is, you should be able to articulate yourself. You should be able to build out your narrative in the form of a story, say that okay, you know I did this analysis and I observed X out of this then I took a Y decision. And then I observed something out of it and I took another decision based on that. So how one thing led to the another thing, that entire story has to be there. Today, most of the people and even the experienced people also not just about the freshers, they are also doing things in a disjoint way. They are talking about 10 different things which are disjoint but they are not in a single common narrative, so building out this narrative, it is not anywhere, you know in the course curriculum at least not so far in the diploma. I have not seen anything like this. I think this is something which should be done. And I'll be very glad to help IIT on this topic and there are other people also like me that can help people create some kind of some cases that okay, for example, even from our BDM project also we can tell them that okay, this is how I did my interview. I did my viva and then you know, this here is a story out of it. So you may have a story but storytelling is an art. So you need to develop that storytelling thing for interviews as well as for Viva. It's a skill, which is required on both the places.

Interviewer:

Thank you Lovleen, for the wonderful insights that you have shared with us. I believe a lot of our students and readers will benefit out of these insights. Thank you and have a nice day.