Reviews Post Publication

Please read a review on the Software Ownership Transfer – from Software Development Books here

Other Reviews

by Aditya Pathak – Sr Director – Cognizant

This book is relevant for anyone in software delivery business, right from leads, to PMs to Delivery Managers, Transition Managers, as well as IT leaders. Vinod’s book on the often under-emphasized importance of Software Ownership transitions is a very well written and comprehensive one. It is an easy to read, as he has deftly narrated direct experiences to explain complex and nuanced concepts across process, culture, structure, motivations, infrastructure and business needs.

This book is a must read for organizations that are operating in the agile model and are planning changes to teams supporting their critical applications. I look forward to more books from the author on this topic.

by Clifford Higgins

Vinod’s book struck a very personal chord with me. I am very familiar with how software ownership transfer can affect the whole organization namely revenue streams. My experience includes being a VP and Director of Sales selling SaaS products as well as full life cycle software development and large systems integration projects. One very large project was for one of the world’s largest computer hardware manufacturers to develop software used for JIT manufacture through to global distribution to sales and country recognition and global financial roll up and software ownership transfer was a hairball and key issue. Also, while selling a global enterprise custom developed middleware software project to connect global databases, applications, and networks for one of the world’s largest banks, the CIO, CTO and team of architects I presented and sold to confessed they had over 200 custom developed software projects finished, which incurred huge costs, still on the shelf and probably never to be used because of poor software ownership transfer issues leading to lack of trust and missed opportunities and time frames for business relevance. They demanded a software ownership transfer plan up front as part of the proposal. Also in a very recent project I was involved in from a sales standpoint, software vendors had to be changed mid stream due to poor execution. The problem again included software ownership transfer which also was a huge factor in project shutdown! Vinod’s book provides a clear path and real solutions to resolving issues that can destroy trust and derail revenue and organization growth. It is a must read for anyone involved with business critical software development, organization deployment and adoption, IT performance and productivity, revenue impact, and shareholder value.

Highly recommended

by Makarand Purohit

Software often experiences a change of hand due to various reasons. Global in-house centers have aspirations of moving up the value stream and making meaningful contributions. But in this quest they often limit themselves to transfer of information or Knowledge transfer. This often leaves a sour taste in the mouth of everyone involved. Vinod strikes a chord right from the first page with anyone who is a part of such an exercise. Through this book he walks us through his EuroT story. A noteworthy part is that the end of the ownership transfer story is actually the beginning of the transformation of the organization captured in the epilogue.
My key takeaways from this book:
1. Pragmatic ‘Things to know and do’ at the end of each chapter. These enable you to effectively structure your conversations with all the stakeholders.
2. Purpose driven tracking strategy

PS: The parallel that Vinod draws about bringing a child home resonated with me and I found it a powerful metaphor for truly understanding ‘Ownership’.

Strongly Recommended!

Ashay Saxena

Excellent Book – Easy-to-read! Extremely well-written with examples from day-to-day life to establish the context. The book goes beyond the conventions of knowledge transfer in the software world. With agile fast becoming the de-facto approach to software development, the book presents a unique large scale case of ownership transfer where the entire setup benefitted. ‘Own’ it to understand and implement knowledge transfers in the fast-paced agile environment!

A topic I was looking for since a long time !

This is an interesting take on a vexing topic for the IT Industry. The first thing that stands out is how taking ownership is different from having knowledge. Though it seems obvious, Sankaranarayanan has cogently illustrated the distinction. He chooses to call this phase as ownership transfer and not just knowledge transfer. He has covered a lot of ground in this book and segmented all of the various strands in an ownership transfer. The script takes a case study format and hence keeps the reader engaged. The author gives examples of a number of transitions which makes this a practical read as against a theoretical one.

Ignore this book at your own risk, especially if you are in the business of transferring projects from one team to another!

By Ramesh Doaraij

This is a serious topic, but Vinod is a great story teller. If you are in the business of IT services, you will find this book an interesting read. Even if you are not, but use the Agile paradigm in your management of some of your projects, you will find this useful.
As companies move away from command and control, and holocracy (or some other model that evolves from it) takes centre stage, you will need to transfer projects from build to run; and even change your service providers during either build or run.
This book shows you how. And more importantly, why.
By not reading this book, you will be missing out on what can make your transition project a success.

Solid effort on an underserved topic

by Ashwin Bhaskaran

This is a pretty solid treatment of an important but underserved topic. The author has some good ideas in terms of how to think about ownership transfer situations and is smart enough about the variety of situations in the real world to avoid being prescriptive. My professional ownership transfer situations have been very different from what the author uses as use cases, but nevertheless the ideas and concepts are very pertinent. I think this is an important book for middle-to-experienced managers.

Also read a detailed review by Ashwin at his website here

As a BA (business analyst) when I was recommended this book for reading I thought it may not …, 10 January 2017

Amazon Customer

Verified Purchase(What is this?)

This review is from: Software Ownership Transfer: Evolving Knowledge Transfer for the Agile World (Paperback)

As a BA (business analyst) when I was recommended this book for reading I thought it may not make too much sense for my role. However I was in for a very pleasant surprise. Even thought I am for a non-technical background most of it made lot of sense even to my role and responsibilities. And more importantly it was a very easy read and easy to relate to since it is more in a story telling format. Highly recommended.
Excellent book. Very well written.

By Vinod Sankaranarayanan with No Comments 0

Related Posts

Leave a Reply Cancel reply