Technical Program Manager with a decade across solution, project, and product delivery — PLM is my domain, not my ceiling.https://sudharsanbalaji.com/enhttps://sudharsanbalaji.com/blog/think-in-systems-transform-with-purpose/https://sudharsanbalaji.com/blog/think-in-systems-transform-with-purpose/Many digital transformations stall before a single tool is bought, and not because of the technology. Six steps for thinking in systems and bringing people along, plus what a transformation really needs.Sat, 03 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMTBusinessdigital transformationsystems thinkingchange managementstrategyhttps://sudharsanbalaji.com/blog/evaluation-metrics-by-stage/https://sudharsanbalaji.com/blog/evaluation-metrics-by-stage/There is no single score for an AI system. What you measure changes four times between choosing a model and running one in production — what an eval actually is, which metrics earn their place at each stage, and why the governance ones belong on the same schedule.Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMTAIevalsmetricsresponsible AIlearning noteshttps://sudharsanbalaji.com/blog/from-open-ended-problem-to-production/https://sudharsanbalaji.com/blog/from-open-ended-problem-to-production/Building an agent is the easy half. The hard half is choosing what to build and closing a vague business problem into a bounded one — with TOSCAR — before a single prompt gets written. Then the four stages that follow.Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMTBusinessagentsproduct managementproblem framinglearning noteshttps://sudharsanbalaji.com/blog/how-rag-works-with-an-example/https://sudharsanbalaji.com/blog/how-rag-works-with-an-example/Retrieval-augmented generation changes nothing about the model — it changes what the model is looking at when it answers. The mechanism, worked end to end on one real question.Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMTAIRAGretrievalagentslearning noteshttps://sudharsanbalaji.com/blog/a-framework-for-building-agents/https://sudharsanbalaji.com/blog/a-framework-for-building-agents/Six parts every working agent has, whether or not the team building it named them. A practical structure for scoping, building, and containing an agent — before the demo becomes a product.Thu, 03 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMTAIagentsframeworksproductlearning noteshttps://sudharsanbalaji.com/blog/model-context-protocol-explained-with-an-example/https://sudharsanbalaji.com/blog/model-context-protocol-explained-with-an-example/Every AI product used to write its own tool-calling glue. Here is what the Model Context Protocol actually is, what a server exposes, and one small server walked through end to end.Tue, 01 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMTAIMCPagentstoolslearning noteshttps://sudharsanbalaji.com/blog/agentic-ai-autonomous-agents-and-rag/https://sudharsanbalaji.com/blog/agentic-ai-autonomous-agents-and-rag/Three terms get used almost interchangeably in AI conversations, and they mean genuinely different things. Here's the actual distinction, plus why retrieval-augmented generation matters underneath all of them.Mon, 31 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTAIagentsRAGfundamentalslearning noteshttps://sudharsanbalaji.com/blog/n8n-workflow-form-to-sheet-to-email/https://sudharsanbalaji.com/blog/n8n-workflow-form-to-sheet-to-email/Not every automation needs a model. A small, real workflow — three fixed steps in n8n — that turns a form submission into a logged record and a sent email, automatically.Mon, 31 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTBusinessautomationn8nworkflowlearning noteshttps://sudharsanbalaji.com/blog/pm-discipline-when-ai-is-the-deliverable/https://sudharsanbalaji.com/blog/pm-discipline-when-ai-is-the-deliverable/Most 'AI and business' conversations skip the part where you decide what to build first. Here's a simple value-vs-effort framework for sorting real initiatives from expensive demos.Mon, 10 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTBusinessAI strategyprioritizationproduct managementhttps://sudharsanbalaji.com/blog/how-large-language-models-actually-work/https://sudharsanbalaji.com/blog/how-large-language-models-actually-work/A mental model of what's happening inside an LLM, written for someone who needs a clear picture without an ML background — not a machine learning course.Wed, 15 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTAIfundamentalsLLMslearning noteshttps://sudharsanbalaji.com/blog/prompting-techniques-that-actually-help/https://sudharsanbalaji.com/blog/prompting-techniques-that-actually-help/Not a list of magic words. A short, practical set of prompting patterns that consistently produce better output, and why each one works the way it does.Sun, 28 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTAIpromptingpracticallearning noteshttps://sudharsanbalaji.com/blog/a-short-history-of-ai/https://sudharsanbalaji.com/blog/a-short-history-of-ai/What the word 'AI' actually contains — machine learning, deep learning, generative AI and LLMs are nested, not synonyms — and the short version of how the field moved from the outer ring to the inner one.Fri, 05 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTAIfundamentalshistorymachine learninglearning notes