Kunal Sharda, A resident of Jaipur, Rajasthan. Started his journey as a low-code developer in 2016 working on the Appian BPM platform. He’s an engineering graduate from Manipal Institute of Technology, Manipal in Information & Communication Technology specialization. Postgraduate in MBA from NMIMS, Mumbai in Information Technology & Systems Management. When he’s not coding or learning something new, he loves to play the guitar, gym, & blog
About Me
Since this is my first blog post, I would like to start by introducing myself:
A 16-year old me would have never imagined that I would be so deeply interested & engrossed in broad terms like tech, cloud, BPM, low-code, SDLC, databases, agile etc. I was a school going student who had just opted for the science stream going against the will of my dad who is a well-known practising chartered accountant and wanted me to join his practice. I remember telling him that commerce is not for me and it doesn’t interest me. He understood with very little effort from my end & wanted me to pursue what I wanted. The problem was I didn’t have a clear vision at the time but I opted for science anyway – like many other students do.
My passion at the time was music & playing the guitar. I had been playing since 8th grade and had got a good hang of it, especially in classical rock, progressive, alternative rock, pop, country & Bollywood music styles. I was the lead guitarist of our school band (St. Xavier’s senior secondary school, Jaipur). We named it “Tarangg”. I remember practising & performing with my band as the best time of my school life. I have memories which I will continue to cherish for the time to come. Like, winning inter & intra-school music competitions, performing at various events, writing, composing & producing our original songs and also taking part in national competitions where we had to compete with professional musicians double or triple our age! I was improving myself in guitar every day by learning new techniques and playing styles & could see myself continuing the same as my full-time career.
I continued my love for guitar and stage performances throughout my college life at Manipal Institute of Technology. I was never a top student in engineering but always loved the topics which were about software design, management & development. I had moved 2500 km away from my home in a college-town called “Manipal” in south India. I had a lot of freedom living on my own, which I loved but also hated. I spent most of my time socializing, living life to the fullest, travelling, making lifelong friends, playing/performing guitar and sometimes studying as well.
During my time at my undergrad college & all my internships at various tech companies, I fell in love with software design & development and I knew this is what I wanted to continue doing.
Fast forward to the year 2016, I had finished college and was all set to pursue further education when I came across an organization (my current employer) which also happened to be in my hometown – Jaipur.
This organization was partnered with different modern & innovative work platforms to offer accelerated and advanced digital transformation to their clients located globally. One of those was “Appian”. This place is where I met amazing mentors who helped me learn about SDLC, Appian, databases, project management, the value of a team and working together to build end-to-end software solutions for customers & help them achieve ROI & meaningful business value. I was fascinated with everything and would spend most of my time in the office & at home learning about various technologies as much as I could. I would code, make mistakes, correct them or seek help and in the end, be happy with the end product I could create. This would give me immense happiness & sense of achievement. I was also termed by my manager as the “quickest learner”. I think it was all because my passion had gradually changed from music to tech & software. Guitar had become just a weekend hobby because I had found a new “passion”.
As of today, near the end of 2019. I am working directly with clients from US, UK & middle east, leading a development team, helping create products and launching them on the “Appian app market”, participating in hackathons, and conducting workshops & training sessions to spread my knowledge while learning something new myself every day. I am proudly certified as Appian Level 3 Expert (highest certification with less than 40 people holding this credential globally), AWS Solution Architect, Professional Scrum Master (Agile), Advanced Excel expert and various other things I learned along the way. Another “nice-to-have” thing I have started in parallel is a 2-year degree in management from Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies, Mumbai.
Although I spend most of my weekdays & weekends being occupied with practising and learning various aspects of software development & management, I believe that family & true friendship is all that matter.
What to expect from this blog?
- Articles about Appian low-code design & development, trends, best practices and my day-to-day experiences working with a large team in the IT industry
- Articles about agile, databases, Amazon web services, project management, time-management
- Tech reviews of various things I use in my day-to-day life
- Life as an MBA student while working in the IT industry
- More personal blogs like this one
- Guitar lessons (can’t promise but I’ll do my best as I’m rusty!)
I’m just getting this new blog going, so please stay tuned for more. I will highly appreciate it if you subscribe below to get notified when I post new updates & I have also linked my social media. Excited to connect with you guys! 🙂
– Kunal Sharda
Kunal's Blog 
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