Chennai, India, November , 2025: Watts Humphrey Awards 2025, an initiative by SPIN Chennai (www.spinchennai.org) marked a triumphant culmination of recognising and honouring case studies which have demonstrated business impact through Trikonas (Trikonasstands for Methods of Excellence, Innovation and Digital Transformation).
Software Process Improvement Network (a.k.a) SPIN Chennai (not for profit entity), one of the 100+ SPINs in the world is a 30 year old knowledge network out of Chennai, affiliated to Carnegie Mellon University’s Software Engineering Institute. SPIN Chennai instituted Watts Humphrey awards in memory of the world famous quality guru Dr.Watts Humphrey (hailed as the father of software quality across the world) for contributions that generate value for customers through implementation of practices including Agile, DevOps, Automation, Design Thinking, Lean, Six sigma, CMMI 2.0, High Maturity Processes, AI-ML, Innovation etc. This industry award has been happeningevery year since 2010 (post the demise of Dr.Watts Humphrey in 2010). Watts Humphrey collaborated with SPIN Chennai between 2000 and 2010 and have created the Watts Humphrey Institute which had its office in Guindy Industrial estate, Chennai, prior to 2010.
Themed “Business Impact through Trikonas”, the competition finals with LIVE jury round, Awards event as well as the book release was held at “Cognizant Auditorium”, Cognizant Campus, MEPZ, Tambaram, Chennai on Nov 7th. More than 250 delegates from various sectors across India, including large and medium size companies, Start-ups, Entrepreneurs, Industry experts, Policymakers, business consultants, and educational institutions attended the LIVE Jury round as well as the awards ceremony.
Distinguished Chief Guests for this year’s award ceremony included Mr.P.R.Krishnan, Board member TVS Next and Former EVP & Global Head, Enterprise Intelligent Automation and AI, TCS as well as Dr.Gulshan Rai, Former Advisor on Cyber Security to PM, Govt of India and Senior Advisor, DuaConsulting. They both shared their invaluable insights through their keynotes at this event.
Expressing his delight on being the Chief Guest at the 16thedition of Watts Humphrey Awards 2025 and presenting the awards to various winners, Mr.P R Krishnan applauded DrRajaram Venkataraman and the Watts Humphrey Organizing Committee and SPIN Steering Committee for the diligence and discovery that happens when such events are conducted to uncover case studies, which normally go buried within organizations. These are great learning and inspiration for many smaller and medium size companies and entrepreneurs. He also appreciated how this kind of discovery can improve the profile of India and Indian Software in the world view. He also mentioned several good examples of India having already implemented & scaled such solutions like Passport processing, Railway reservation, Income tax, Aadhar, UPI and several others.
Dr.Gulshan Rai who was the Guest of Honour at the eventhighlighted the remarkable efforts in community building and the conscious efforts by SPIN Chennai team to nurture the Trikonas in terms of “Methods of Excellence, Innovation and Digital Transformation” over the years which has resulted in SPIN Chennai uncovering lot of wonderful case studies from across the country. He also mentioned about the Indian talent and achievements being known across the globe and our diligent efforts in various areas including cyber security, quantum computing research, Defence related R & D, Space R & D are expected to propel us into the next orbit by 2030.
Playing a pivotal role in architecting and orchestrating the 16th edition of the Watts Humphrey Awards, Dr Rajaram Venkataraman highlighted how this year’s theme, “Business Impact through Trikonas,” encapsulates the essence of what it takes to thrive in an era marked by rapid change and unprecedented challenges. The three vertices of this triangle—Methods of Excellence, Innovation, and Digital Transformation—serve as powerful pillars for achieving tangible, sustainable business outcomes. He also said when these three elements—Methods of Excellence, Innovation, and Digital Transformation—work in harmony, they create a powerful synergy. This synergy drives business impact in ways that are measurable, scalable, and sustainable. He also pointed out examples in healthcare, where excellence in processes ensures patient safety, innovation leads to breakthroughs in treatments, and digital transformation democratizes access to care. The results are transformative on multiple levels—economic, societal, and environmental.
During his welcome address, Dr. Rajaram Venkataraman(President) highlighted not only how SPIN Chennai has been leading the industry process and technology trends by enabling insights from global thought leaders & guru’s like Dr. WattsHumphrey, but it has also been an OPEN forum for exchange of knowledge around software processes, technologies, management practices, HR practices for its members and associates. He also mentioned about how SPIN Chennai has been leading from the front with respect to Process, Technology, Behavior, Management and Business Frameworks with a key focus on Business Impact and Competitiveness.
During the award ceremony, Dr. L.N. Rajaram, one of the core founding members of SPIN Chennai and the Chief mentor,recounted his experiences with Dr. Watts Humphrey during the period (2000 to 2010), when Watts Humphrey visited Chennai multiple times and jointly held meetings with various teams from the industry and corporates for improving awareness and improvement on Software Processes. He also highlighted the recent focus area that SPIN Chennai has got into in terms of launching the deeptech forum to make India figure in the top 3 deeptech countries of the world on par with USA and China. The next few years and the decade ahead will see the power of deeptech driving competitive advantage and deep disruption and SPIN Chennai and its deep tech forum would work with Govt and key stakeholders to enable key policies, infrastructure, talent that is needed by Indian companies to take part in this disruption and atmanirbhar.
Speaking on the Jury and the Judging process, Mr.Rajamanickam, the Jury anchor highlighted the stringent process adopted to shortlist the top 13 finalists from the 39 contestants and finally select the top 2 in each category. The judging panel for this year’s Watts Humphrey awards included Mr. Rajamanickam (Pro XL Consulting), Mr. Anant Krishnan (Business Advisor and Consultant), Mr. Chandrashekar Kupperi (ANOVA), Dr. Sankaran(KPMG) and. Chandramouli (Pi-One Consulting). The International journal IJITCE was the International Journal partner for the Watts Humphrey Awards Event.
The Watts Humphrey awards included 2 awards such as Winner and Runner-up in each of the cateories like Large Enterprises as well as MSME world. In the Large company category, the case studies of CGI for their “Future Ready Settlements System: Azure Cloud + AIOps Powered Modernization”, and Infosys for their “Positioning Integrated Optimization Platform (IOP) in the Trikona of business” were declared as winner and runner-up respectively while in the Medium and Small company category, the case studies of enGen Global (formerly Thryve Digital) for their “GenAI Transformation Engine: How a ‘Sidekick’ Model is Reshaping Healthcare Workforce Productivity” and KritilabsTechnologies for their “VAIOT – An AI and IOT based Visual Intelligence” were declared as Winner and Runner-up.
The companies apart from the above (winner and runner-up mentioned above) that competed in the finals included Wipro, HCL Tech, Impiger Technologies, Neurealm, Cognizant, Wipro, LTMindtree and Persistent Systems.
The event also had a book release on “Managing Innovative AI Projects” co-authored by Dr.K.R.Jayakumar (Founder, Amity Soft) and Dr.Alain Abran is an essential guide that addresses the critical industry crisis where an estimated 85% of AI projects fail, not due to flawed technology, but due to the misapplication of traditional project management methods. It is the first book of its kind to deliver a comprehensive, process-driven framework designed specifically for the unique complexities of artificial intelligence initiatives.
