Sumanta Mandal

It all started with my first computer program in high school at the sweet age of sixteen.

Information Technology (IT) is the only profession I ever had. I have been in this profession for the last seventeen years since 1997. Out of these seventeen years, twelve years are at Cisco. Over the years I have played multiple roles in this industry starting as a programmer, IT Analyst and last four years as IT Project Manager.

I have a Master of Technology in Optics from I.I.T Delhi and Master of Science in Physics from Delhi University.

Application development has been the primary focus of my career. I started my career with two tier architecture (Forms 4.5 front end and Oracle 7.3 backend). Then worked on all kinds of middleware technologies like Tuxedo, EJB (Enterprise Java Beans) and half a dozen of application servers. Application technology stack at Cisco IT has been primarily Java and Oracle running on Linux.

Although application development has been my primary focus but I can still install operating systems and databases on a bare bone machine. J

As an engineer, I saw an opportunity to improve the communication between the business (end users) and engineers and chose to become an IT Analyst. During my tenure as an IT Analyst, I enjoyed my role working with businesses to design workflows, business processes and User Interfaces.

With five years of having the role as an IT Analyst, I saw the opportunities in delivering higher business value, building teams, culture and growing people. This led to my current job as an IT Project Manager. In my current role, I’m managing three global teams and two dozen applications. My current role gives me the opportunity to focus on the human aspect of application development and maintenance. I spend a lot of time planning, team building, negotiating with multiple parties and sometimes jumping on priority one (P1) calls. J

Cisco IT is in the midst of transition as we deliver the need of our ever changing business. In the last six months, I have taken two teams from waterfall to Agile development methodology.

The prime reason behind this blog is to interact directly with Cisco’s customers. I know many of you are also going through the same transitions as we are at Cisco. I’m lucky to have access to great people, ideas and technologies at Cisco to make my life as an IT professional simpler, faster and efficient. This is a huge opportunity for me to share my experiences of application development and learn from all of you.

Outside of work I have a couple of hobbies like long distance running and woodworking.