Following business obligations through thirty-four years of technology work

Mandate

Make system change preserve the service and information obligations it carries

Outcomes

• Introduced purpose-led review of diagnostic fields
• Changed maintenance planning around continuing hospital-service demand
• Kept failed fallback evidence in the rollout decision

Decisions in context

Five heads lead sixty-eight technology employees in my current remit, with twelve contractors counted outside that employee total. The annual operating expense is ₹17.8 crore, alongside ₹5.9 crore approved change investment whose accounting treatment remains a finance responsibility. I report to the CEO and explain recommendations to directors when invited, without a statutory seat. The logging work and maintenance programme both required more than a technically plausible configuration. Information owners needed to establish what data the support process required, while operating colleagues needed a workable route through a service interruption. My responsibility was to connect those obligations with the design, cost and release decision. I have learned to keep the incomplete part of the programme visible even when most exercises succeed. A CIO should make it possible for the organisation to decide with that limitation understood, rather than inherit it after a confident launch report.

Reason for the move

Current appointment; considering insurer technology leadership and a prepared first outside contribution

Concurrent appointment

Executive CIO role without a statutory directorship

Mandate

Connect application changes with the work required after migration

Outcomes

• Withdrew a premature legacy-retirement recommendation
• Mapped historical report types to retrieval evidence
• Retained controlled access while three report types remained unresolved

Decisions in context

I led forty-eight employees within ₹11.2 crore annual technology expense by the end of this appointment. The 2019 retirement proposal exposed a weakness in my own evidence: current transactions had moved, but historical reporting work had not all acquired a usable replacement. Thirty-six report types needed examination, and nine still depended on the older system. I withdrew the shutdown recommendation and explained the transition expense rather than preserve the appearance of an on-time exit. The work did not give technology authority to retain every record indefinitely. Information owners still had to determine the applicable obligations and authorised disposal. My role was to make the technical dependency and remaining retrieval limitation explicit. That experience shaped my subsequent CIO appointment because it changed how I described completion to operating and financial colleagues: the migrated transaction count could not stand in for the work people would still need to perform.

Reason for the move

Promoted to CIO with enterprise technology planning and direct CEO reporting

Mandate

Translate continuing business work into maintainable application responsibilities

Outcomes

• Connected application support with named service owners
• Separated information access from business decision rights
• Built experience across current transactions and historical enquiry

Decisions in context

Twenty-four colleagues worked within ₹4.3 crore annual applications expense. Joining an insurer meant learning how the same record could matter to different people at different points in its life. A current service transaction and a later historical enquiry were related, but they did not necessarily require the same interface or permission. I learned to ask operating colleagues what they needed to establish before deciding which technical route would support it. The applications team could expose information and implement authorised rules; it did not decide policy entitlement or make clinical judgements. That boundary helped when requests arrived with an urgent business label but an unclear owner. The later legacy-retirement mistake showed that understanding the principle was not enough. I still had to apply it to the whole migration decision rather than assume that a modern transaction platform had absorbed every older obligation.

Reason for the move

Promoted to lead the wider technology function

Mandate

Make the boundaries between systems understandable before changing them

Outcomes

• Led interface and support handovers
• Identified work that remained outside a new application
• Learned to distinguish a technical transfer from business acceptance

Decisions in context

I led eleven colleagues within ₹1.2 crore annual delivery expense. Integration assignments made the edges of a system more interesting than its launch presentation. A transfer could succeed while leaving the receiving team without the context needed to complete its work. I learned to describe that remaining responsibility in the handover instead of treating a successful connection as the whole outcome. Clients retained business approval and investment authority, while our team owned the implementation and support evidence within the assignment. Moving to Merqlavi offered an opportunity to remain with those obligations after project completion. I wanted to understand how application decisions accumulated inside one enterprise, rather than see only the short period around installation. The transition also required humility about insurance: experience connecting systems did not itself provide the professional knowledge needed to interpret a policy, settle a claim or decide which records could be discarded.

Reason for the move

Joined an insurer to lead applications through their continuing operating life

Mandate

Make the status of scheduled work and unresolved exceptions clear to the next operator

Outcomes

• Worked within supervised operating instructions
• Recorded incomplete tasks for the following shift
• Learned that a successful run did not answer every user question

Decisions in context

After completing computer-science studies in May 1992, I joined a six-person operating group. The work involved scheduled tasks, status records and handover to the next operator. I had no purchasing authority and could not decide how a client’s information should be used. It was an early lesson in the difference between seeing a technical status and understanding the business obligation behind it. A successful run might still leave someone needing a report, an explanation or a permitted correction. I learned to preserve the unresolved question rather than write the account as though the machine’s last message ended the work. That discipline supported my move into integration, where the same distinction appeared between organisations and applications. Later leadership added financial and people responsibility, but it did not remove the need to explain what the system had actually done and what remained outside that evidence.

Reason for the move

Promoted to lead integration delivery