Meeting Title: Brainforge Interview: Uttam & Alex <> Justin Date: 2025-08-26 Meeting participants: Justin Breshears, Alexander Lubka, Uttam Kumaran
WEBVTT
1 00:01:53.170 ⇒ 00:01:54.600 Alexander Lubka: Hey, Justin, how are ya?
2 00:02:01.010 ⇒ 00:02:06.960 Justin Breshears: Hey! I’m good, how are you? Sorry, it took me a minute to get my mic and my video up.
3 00:02:07.330 ⇒ 00:02:09.470 Alexander Lubka: Hey, if that’s Lisa, you’re Zoom problems, then you’re in good shape.
4 00:02:09.470 ⇒ 00:02:10.490 Justin Breshears: I know, right?
5 00:02:10.729 ⇒ 00:02:11.399 Alexander Lubka: Yeah.
6 00:02:12.340 ⇒ 00:02:12.750 Alexander Lubka: each….
7 00:02:12.750 ⇒ 00:02:15.749 Justin Breshears: of, working on Zoom all day.
8 00:02:16.780 ⇒ 00:02:17.959 Alexander Lubka: Are you fully remote now?
9 00:02:17.960 ⇒ 00:02:19.190 Justin Breshears: I am, yes.
10 00:02:20.630 ⇒ 00:02:22.689 Alexander Lubka: Yeah, so you deal with that every day.
11 00:02:22.920 ⇒ 00:02:34.759 Justin Breshears: Yeah, for sure. Yeah, we work with a global team, so we’re all the time working with, you know, different countries with their different internet and technological challenges and all that stuff, so….
12 00:02:35.040 ⇒ 00:02:37.429 Alexander Lubka: Totally. Do you, you like remote life?
13 00:02:37.830 ⇒ 00:02:43.970 Justin Breshears: I do, yeah. I’ve been doing, remote only since 2019, and I don’t really see myself
14 00:02:44.180 ⇒ 00:02:46.709 Justin Breshears: Wanting to go back to an office anytime soon.
15 00:02:46.710 ⇒ 00:02:48.170 Alexander Lubka: You’re a trendsetter, man.
16 00:02:48.440 ⇒ 00:02:52.659 Justin Breshears: I know, I like to say I did it before it was cool, when everybody did it in 2020.
17 00:02:53.020 ⇒ 00:03:04.339 Alexander Lubka: Yeah, good for you. Yeah, I love it. I, I go to… so I’m an advisor for them. I work maybe, like, 10 hours or so a week. I work at a company called Bridgewater, is my day job. I’m a TPM.
18 00:03:04.530 ⇒ 00:03:12.089 Alexander Lubka: And, yeah, we go in 2 days a week. And 2 days… I think one day is fine. Anything more than that is really unnecessary.
19 00:03:12.860 ⇒ 00:03:13.480 Justin Breshears: Yeah.
20 00:03:13.620 ⇒ 00:03:21.660 Justin Breshears: Especially, like, depending on the work you’re doing, right? When you’re doing technological work, you don’t need to… don’t need to go anywhere. You can do it all the time.
21 00:03:21.900 ⇒ 00:03:29.380 Alexander Lubka: Exactly, because we have, offshore teams, we have teams in, like, you know, domestically, but also we have a lot of contractors in Spain, so… they’re not there.
22 00:03:30.120 ⇒ 00:03:34.130 Justin Breshears: They’re never there in the office just to be on video calls.
23 00:03:34.130 ⇒ 00:03:35.350 Alexander Lubka: That’s right.
24 00:03:36.460 ⇒ 00:03:37.600 Uttam Kumaran: Hey, Justin, nice to meet you.
25 00:03:37.600 ⇒ 00:03:39.819 Justin Breshears: Hello! It’s good to meet you as well. How are you?
26 00:03:40.180 ⇒ 00:03:49.940 Uttam Kumaran: Great, yeah, thank you so much for taking the time today, and … yeah, I appreciate you also, you know, spending time doing the Loom and meeting with Amber.
27 00:03:50.050 ⇒ 00:03:56.289 Uttam Kumaran: It’s a really, really important role for us, so we’re really excited to chat with you.
28 00:03:56.320 ⇒ 00:04:03.260 Uttam Kumaran: And yeah, so on my side, maybe we’ll do some brief intros. So, my name is Utom, I’m CEO of Brainforge.
29 00:04:03.260 ⇒ 00:04:19.720 Uttam Kumaran: It’s a company I started about 2 years ago. My background is previously in data engineering, leading data teams for a while. I’m based here in Austin, so just down the road from where you are. Moved here about 3 years ago, I was in New York.
30 00:04:19.790 ⇒ 00:04:34.209 Uttam Kumaran: Before this. And yeah, we are continuing to grow, so we are growing our delivery organization, and more specifically, continuing to try to invest in project management. Right now, we have, sort of, like.
31 00:04:34.330 ⇒ 00:04:47.300 Uttam Kumaran: one and a half project managers. We have someone that’s part-time operations, part-time PM, but Amber is currently our current project management on most of our clients. And yeah, I’m still doing a lot of
32 00:04:47.340 ⇒ 00:04:59.370 Uttam Kumaran: project management, my business partner, Robert, is. My background, I also did a bunch of work in as a product manager, in tech before, so I’ll bring some of that background, but it’s an incredibly important role for us, so…
33 00:04:59.370 ⇒ 00:05:16.210 Uttam Kumaran: super excited to chat today, and then also, I know we only scheduled for 30 minutes, but Alex and I can both stay for 15 minutes after. I know I want to make sure you have time to answer questions. I know you don’t get much time on the last call to do that, so… happy to stay as long as, as long as you need, so….
34 00:05:16.550 ⇒ 00:05:20.610 Justin Breshears: Yeah, appreciate that. Yeah, I’m excited to talk with y’all.
35 00:05:21.420 ⇒ 00:05:21.990 Uttam Kumaran: Cool.
36 00:05:23.310 ⇒ 00:05:32.229 Alexander Lubka: Yeah, Alice, go ahead. Okay, cool. I’ve been working with, Brainforge about 3 months now in an advisory role, helping with, mostly Amber.
37 00:05:32.230 ⇒ 00:05:45.440 Alexander Lubka: Helping build out a project management office, helping to do some mentorship. This was her first PM role, so helping to, you know, educate her, helping her to ramp up in some of the, you know, more, hands-on training, with her, trying to get her CAPM.
38 00:05:45.440 ⇒ 00:05:46.470 Alexander Lubka: And just…
39 00:05:46.470 ⇒ 00:06:00.369 Alexander Lubka: you know, making sure they have some of the documentation processes that weren’t there before, but hoping to work with a new project manager, in addition to Amber and any of the part-time folks that come in, that can really, you know, bring in some expertise on the project management level.
40 00:06:00.370 ⇒ 00:06:17.909 Alexander Lubka: Partner with them, make sure every… projects are running well, that they have the skill set that they need, and, you know, processes in place, and iterate as we grow. It’s gonna be a, you know, developing department within Brainforge, but it’s been fun, up to this point, and looking forward to continuing that with, this new project management hire.
41 00:06:18.920 ⇒ 00:06:20.740 Justin Breshears: And where are you located, Ellis?
42 00:06:21.450 ⇒ 00:06:24.380 Alexander Lubka: I’m still in New York. I haven’t made the Austin move yet.
43 00:06:25.330 ⇒ 00:06:27.549 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, we don’t need more of you guys, don’t worry.
44 00:06:27.840 ⇒ 00:06:28.200 Alexander Lubka: Yeah.
45 00:06:28.200 ⇒ 00:06:29.439 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, no, that’s not fair.
46 00:06:29.440 ⇒ 00:06:31.169 Justin Breshears: You’ll come around.
47 00:06:31.170 ⇒ 00:06:34.580 Uttam Kumaran: I close the door behind me.
48 00:06:34.580 ⇒ 00:06:37.300 Alexander Lubka: Yeah, that’s what they all say. Justin, are you originally from Texas?
49 00:06:37.840 ⇒ 00:06:47.980 Justin Breshears: Yes, I’m from the Fort Worth area originally, but I lived in Austin for 8 years before I moved to where I currently am in Richmond. So, Austin, I believe, is really my home.
50 00:06:49.200 ⇒ 00:06:54.440 Alexander Lubka: So they don’t… so you’re not considered an Austin… when you were in Austin, did they consider you a transplant? You’re… I don’t think so, right?
51 00:06:55.010 ⇒ 00:07:01.539 Justin Breshears: I mean, if you’re talking to, like, a born and raised Austinite, yes, but anybody else, no.
52 00:07:01.540 ⇒ 00:07:06.490 Uttam Kumaran: Everyone that’s born and raised here is, like, from North Aust. Like, there’s not a lot of people from, like.
53 00:07:06.580 ⇒ 00:07:22.290 Uttam Kumaran: the city in Austin. Like, my girlfriend is from Cedar Park, and she… so she never even came downtown, like, until, like, a couple years ago. So, yeah, I feel like… I feel like usually you have to be from California or from New York, which I am both.
54 00:07:22.320 ⇒ 00:07:36.790 Uttam Kumaran: And yeah. But I feel like I still do… I do a lot of great, awesome things. I got kolaches yesterday, I do a lot of stuff outdoors. I have a lot of… I don’t know, I do a lot of local stuff, so… went to farm.
55 00:07:36.790 ⇒ 00:07:49.100 Justin Breshears: I probably did more Austin things than I ever did when I lived there, because, yeah, I was… I was one of those that lived up north in Austin, like, right next to Cedar Park, actually. I was at Anderson Mill.
56 00:07:49.100 ⇒ 00:07:49.600 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
57 00:07:49.600 ⇒ 00:07:53.169 Justin Breshears: And yeah, I, like, never came downtown or anything.
58 00:07:54.560 ⇒ 00:07:57.110 Justin Breshears: So, you probably do more fun stuff than I ever did.
59 00:07:57.430 ⇒ 00:08:01.160 Alexander Lubka: Oh, Tom, if you want to repurpose this time, just use it as your Austin, we could do that instead.
60 00:08:01.160 ⇒ 00:08:07.659 Uttam Kumaran: No, no, no, I feel like he has more awesome friends than I have, so I’m gonna be embarrassed, so, yeah, no, I’m okay.
61 00:08:08.020 ⇒ 00:08:10.009 Justin Breshears: We’ll schedule another meeting for that, how about that?
62 00:08:10.590 ⇒ 00:08:11.959 Alexander Lubka: Yeah, we’ll circle back.
63 00:08:12.070 ⇒ 00:08:15.440 Justin Breshears: Yeah, maybe I’ll just come down, we’ll grab a coffee, and, you know.
64 00:08:15.440 ⇒ 00:08:17.570 Uttam Kumaran: Blaze, yeah, happy to.
65 00:08:18.380 ⇒ 00:08:35.330 Justin Breshears: Yeah, I will do a little brief intro of myself, and then we can dive in. Obviously, my name’s Justin. I’m super excited to talk with y’all because, this is the type of thing that gets me excited, so I love, building things, and, like, the…
66 00:08:35.400 ⇒ 00:08:47.330 Justin Breshears: I’ve done kind of this, you know, size and stage, of company before, when I worked at Builder’s Update. I was, like, the 10th hire, there, and hired to,
67 00:08:47.560 ⇒ 00:08:53.040 Justin Breshears: build that organization from the ground up. I mean, my title was Director of Operations, it really just meant, like.
68 00:08:53.080 ⇒ 00:09:15.839 Justin Breshears: do everything to build the organization while everybody else goes out and sells or builds the product, right? So, very, very similar, I think, stage in being just a younger company and a smaller company, and I love doing that, that type of work. From there, I went on into specific project management at my time at Logic Monitor, and now, at my time at Kalent.
69 00:09:15.960 ⇒ 00:09:25.990 Justin Breshears: Where now I actually lead a team of project managers and lead a portfolio within Kalen of small business customers. So…
70 00:09:27.090 ⇒ 00:09:44.939 Justin Breshears: I love… I love project management specifically, but overall, I just… I like building things up and seeing them grow and develop into new things. So, super excited to speak with y’all about that, but also specifically because data and data analytics and all that is something that I’ve been
71 00:09:44.940 ⇒ 00:09:58.940 Justin Breshears: super interested in, and, you know, doing things like taking a Python bootcamp, you know, online, and, you know, I’m gonna move on into, like, SQL and Power BI, and all the things data analytic related, was kind of my goal after that.
72 00:09:58.960 ⇒ 00:10:07.290 Justin Breshears: in all of my not-so-great spare time, because I have a 2-year-old and a 5-month-old as well that I’m keeping up with, so, …
73 00:10:07.370 ⇒ 00:10:13.739 Justin Breshears: A lot of stuff going on in my life, but I like to bite off a lot. Yeah, that’s a little bit about me.
74 00:10:14.000 ⇒ 00:10:22.810 Alexander Lubka: Cool. Sounds like it. What’s… that’s awesome, thanks for that. What’s driving the, interest into, like, the Python and the Power BI and the SQL stuff?
75 00:10:23.390 ⇒ 00:10:34.969 Justin Breshears: It’s the exposure I’ve gotten at Kalent, because we’re an AWS partner, so we’re a third-party consultant that helps, you know, companies get set up on AWS, and, you know, one of the three
76 00:10:35.110 ⇒ 00:10:45.619 Justin Breshears: practices that we do, with different types of projects, is data engineering. And we’ve just… I’ve just seen a lot of those type of projects come through, and especially with, like.
77 00:10:45.620 ⇒ 00:10:56.320 Justin Breshears: generative AI and all that stuff exploding, you know, that wing of our business has been really poppin’ lately, and just diving in, learning more about it.
78 00:10:56.490 ⇒ 00:10:59.030 Justin Breshears: It’s really just fascinated me.
79 00:10:59.520 ⇒ 00:11:01.740 Alexander Lubka: How far are you along in the Python bootcamp?
80 00:11:01.910 ⇒ 00:11:18.890 Justin Breshears: Not far. Not far. I can write the simplest program you can imagine. I think on Udemy, it says I’m 12% done at this point, so very much scratching the surface. I am not able to speak intelligently about it yet, but I hope to….
81 00:11:20.270 ⇒ 00:11:22.919 Alexander Lubka: Fair enough. 12% more than a lot of other people, so congrats.
82 00:11:22.920 ⇒ 00:11:24.220 Justin Breshears: Exactly, yeah.
83 00:11:24.870 ⇒ 00:11:25.570 Alexander Lubka: Yeah.
84 00:11:26.020 ⇒ 00:11:44.340 Alexander Lubka: So I’m a little curious about, like, your… so it sounds like, to me, in my world, you’re a portfolio manager, it sounds like. You have a portfolio of programs and some, probably, and project managers that have, like, a similar theme of small businesses, for AWS implementations at Kalient.
85 00:11:44.540 ⇒ 00:12:03.359 Alexander Lubka: Is your… and versus this kind of role, which is, you know, like, you’re talking about building, or more like the builder’s update thing, is it more… is it… what interests you more about, you know, working more hands-on on projects, you know, being more in the weeds here, being a smaller company than your current role in more of a portfolio management capacity?
86 00:12:03.960 ⇒ 00:12:13.270 Justin Breshears: Yeah, I mean, I’ve kind of done all of the above. The… my time at Logic Monitor was kind of a blend between the two, because I was the first senior PM hired there to kind of
87 00:12:13.400 ⇒ 00:12:23.019 Justin Breshears: handle all of the really complex, like, enterprise customers. Like, some of my customers were Coca-Cola, Johnson & Johnson, like, some of the biggest companies in the world. So, I’ve been
88 00:12:23.300 ⇒ 00:12:42.520 Justin Breshears: like, building up the startup, I’ve been managing the portfolio and all the small business, you know, projects, and I’ve also done, like, the super deep dive, you know, enterprise-level, complex projects. I like them all. I don’t really have a preference, it’s just there’s pros and cons to all of the above.
89 00:12:42.540 ⇒ 00:12:45.440 Justin Breshears: So it’s not necessarily, like.
90 00:12:45.990 ⇒ 00:12:51.300 Justin Breshears: there’s a specific type that I prefer, … I just…
91 00:12:51.680 ⇒ 00:13:11.630 Justin Breshears: I like to be able to, while I’m doing projects, like, also be, you know, building organizations and having a voice in, like, the growth and development of things as well, and so I tend to like smaller companies more because of that. Like, right now, what I do kind of mimics that. When I was hired at KLAN, it was like.
92 00:13:11.800 ⇒ 00:13:33.519 Justin Breshears: I think I was higher 324 or something like that, and we’re now over 700, so we’ve kind of gone out of that, and now my portfolio kind of operates as a business within the business at this point. So, like, I’m responsible for P&L and, you know, kind of the main escalation point and things like that. So, like, I kind of operate as, like, a business owner within the umbrella, but obviously.
93 00:13:33.520 ⇒ 00:13:36.249 Justin Breshears: Beholden to our executives and all that.
94 00:13:36.540 ⇒ 00:13:40.629 Justin Breshears: Kind of got off track there, I’m rambling at this point, but …
95 00:13:40.970 ⇒ 00:13:48.860 Justin Breshears: I kind of… I have experience in, like, all of the above, and enjoy doing all of the above, whether it’s deep dive into specific projects or building up PMOs.
96 00:13:49.610 ⇒ 00:14:03.640 Alexander Lubka: Cool. So I’d love to dig into it and, like, see how your mind thinks with some of these pro- with a project that comes in. Like, I’d love to just walk through, like, a full project lifecycle with you, and just, like, I want to see where you would go with certain things, so, like, I… Sure.
97 00:14:03.640 ⇒ 00:14:08.809 Alexander Lubka: what, … like, how we’re working now is that, you know, Robert and Utam are mostly working with sales.
98 00:14:08.810 ⇒ 00:14:33.500 Alexander Lubka: And, you know, they’re having demos, signing contracts, killing it. And so, we’re sort of the machine of… or process… sorry, that’s a Bridgewater term. I gotta stop doing that. We started the process of, you know, starting the initiation process through a project charter, so they’re trying to get as much information as they can on paper for the PMO to implement for the, planning process, and to close out the initiation process.
99 00:14:33.500 ⇒ 00:14:50.740 Alexander Lubka: I’m trying to get the, you know, PMs more involved with the end of the sales cycle, so in addition to the project charter, you would have, you know, some insight at the end of the sales cycle, meet some potential stakeholders for prospects, you know, learn about resourcing, and start the capacity…
100 00:14:50.740 ⇒ 00:15:09.229 Alexander Lubka: We’re gonna start doing resourcing planning and capacity planning at that end, and so that the project charter will inform a lot of the, you know, planning process that you would do. I’d love to hear, like, what you… what would happen… I want to hear about, like, you know, you get a charter, project charter, your contract signed, great,
101 00:15:09.230 ⇒ 00:15:17.620 Alexander Lubka: what’s next in your mind? Like, what do you… can you walk me through, like, planning to kind of closing for a project that you receive a charter for?
102 00:15:18.120 ⇒ 00:15:18.840 Justin Breshears: For sure.
103 00:15:18.960 ⇒ 00:15:21.469 Justin Breshears: Yeah, similar to how we do it. I mean, the million dollar…
104 00:15:21.470 ⇒ 00:15:40.089 Justin Breshears: you know, idea would be, how do we figure out how to get, you know, RPMs involved pre, you know, sales cycle, kind of before the contract is signed. That’s exactly the same problem we’re facing for those reasons. But basically, the way it works with us right now, we get a statement of work signed and delivered, you know, from sales.
105 00:15:40.090 ⇒ 00:15:44.399 Justin Breshears: At that point, it’s, focusing on that sales delivery handoff.
106 00:15:44.400 ⇒ 00:15:58.910 Justin Breshears: So we… the customer, in their eyes, they’ve been dealing with Kalent this whole time, and they don’t see a division between sales and delivery, right? They don’t care about the handoff there. So we gotta make sure that’s as seamless as possible, so that they don’t have to repeat themselves from…
107 00:15:58.910 ⇒ 00:16:08.460 Justin Breshears: you know, what they did in the scoping calls, you know, prior to that contract being signed. So, that’s the main focus, initially, is we get assigned, you know, a project, we get a sale.
108 00:16:08.970 ⇒ 00:16:16.730 Justin Breshears: … now we’re meeting with sales, and we’re doing that handoff, and we’ve developed some AI tools to make that easier, so we have a…
109 00:16:17.270 ⇒ 00:16:23.359 Justin Breshears: our company’s mascot is a little alien named Steve, so that’s why this… we named it this, but we have an AI tool called Seller Steve.
110 00:16:23.360 ⇒ 00:16:48.120 Justin Breshears: That we… it’ll basically, like, mine all of our internal data for projects and everything, so all of our Salesforce and PSA data, our scoping calls on Gong and Zoom and all that, and it’ll condense it down into, like, a digestible summary. So, that’s the first thing I do. I get a project assigned to me, I’m hitting up Seller Steve, which is just, like, a chatbot in our Slack, and saying, hey, give me a summary of these guys and what’s going on.
111 00:16:48.120 ⇒ 00:16:55.739 Justin Breshears: Then I’m deep diving into… so I schedule a sales to delivery call to actually talk to sales about them, because you can really only get
112 00:16:55.880 ⇒ 00:16:56.870 Justin Breshears: that…
113 00:16:57.050 ⇒ 00:17:14.670 Justin Breshears: you know, context from them on a call. But prior to that, I’m doing a lot of pre-work and utilizing Seller Steve, and gathering up, you know, what I need to know, all the details. I’m watching the relevant scoping calls, because sometimes our projects, like, they’ll have two one-hour scoping calls, and then, boom, they’ve signed a contract. So, like.
114 00:17:14.670 ⇒ 00:17:24.500 Justin Breshears: I can spend the time to, you know, watch those calls and get exactly, you know, what… usually watch it on, like, one and a half, two times speed, but, you know, get the idea of what they’re looking for.
115 00:17:24.540 ⇒ 00:17:28.159 Justin Breshears: We have our delivery teams do the same, and then we get together with sales.
116 00:17:28.290 ⇒ 00:17:44.590 Justin Breshears: get the gist, and we focus in that call more on, like, you know, how’s the client, what’s the sentiment, what’s the pipeline in the future, too? That’s a huge thing that we’re thinking about. You know, project number one with the client is really an audition for, you know, future work as well. So, we’re talking about that, …
117 00:17:44.650 ⇒ 00:17:56.870 Justin Breshears: And then from there, it’s huddling with the delivery team. After we’ve got all the information from sales, it’s now officially handed off. Huddling with the delivery team for engagement strategy, is what we call it. Talking about how we’re gonna attack it, you know, who’s…
118 00:17:57.070 ⇒ 00:18:09.990 Justin Breshears: even down to, like, kickoff call, who’s going to be presenting what slide, you know, how… making sure that that’s all buttoned up and the flow is right there. From there, it’s, you know, scheduling with the client, getting a pre-kickoff, what we call engagement launch.
119 00:18:10.670 ⇒ 00:18:22.800 Justin Breshears: you know, call together, which is basically just, let’s get everything scheduled, let’s get access requirements started, you know, so they can give us access to their AWS environments, or, you know, GitHub repos, or whatever.
120 00:18:23.230 ⇒ 00:18:27.969 Justin Breshears: So we get all that started so that when we get to the kickoff call, we can hit the ground running at that point.
121 00:18:28.110 ⇒ 00:18:38.120 Justin Breshears: There, it’s kickoff, just setting the ground rules for how the engagement’s gonna go, making sure we’re all on the same page about what’s gonna be delivered, success criteria for everything, you know, all that.
122 00:18:38.880 ⇒ 00:18:50.739 Justin Breshears: From there, we jump into discovery, so we’re just gonna ask a lot of questions, you know, dig deeper than those two one-hour scoping calls could dig. Those are very high level, like, let’s get into it now.
123 00:18:50.740 ⇒ 00:18:54.720 Uttam Kumaran: Who’s in that discovery… who’s in that discovery call, by the way? Like, in terms of personas?
124 00:18:54.970 ⇒ 00:19:18.469 Justin Breshears: Yeah, so our delivery team will usually consist of a tech lead who is partially allocated to the project that’s kind of more technical oversight, so they could be an engineering manager, or a principal architect, or something like that. The real drivers of those discoveries are going to be our architects that are 100% allocated to our projects, and so they’re going to be driving the discovery and design initially up front as well, and then we’ll have however many engineers that we have.
125 00:19:18.470 ⇒ 00:19:19.700 Justin Breshears: On the call as well.
126 00:19:19.700 ⇒ 00:19:25.680 Justin Breshears: And then I’m there listening in for keywords and issues, but most of it’s led by the architects.
127 00:19:26.760 ⇒ 00:19:27.390 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
128 00:19:27.390 ⇒ 00:19:42.280 Justin Breshears: So we do discovery, typically a week of discovery, and then after that, we’re building out, or throughout the discovery process, we’re building out the roadmap in Jira, backlogs get built out, all the tickets, we’re organizing them into sprints, and basically, you know, mapping out the whole thing.
129 00:19:42.730 ⇒ 00:19:47.680 Justin Breshears: Then we present that backlog and that roadmap to the client, gain acceptance on it, and we’re off and running in Sprint 1.
130 00:19:47.900 ⇒ 00:19:51.769 Justin Breshears: That’s… Typical start for a project for us.
131 00:19:54.220 ⇒ 00:19:56.510 Justin Breshears: Keep going through if you want.
132 00:19:56.510 ⇒ 00:20:00.020 Alexander Lubka: Yeah, yeah, keep going. So you kick off the project, then what?
133 00:20:00.320 ⇒ 00:20:19.260 Justin Breshears: Yeah, so, we typically run one-week sprints, unless there’s a good reason to run two. Most of the time, the only reasons to run two weeks would be to align with a customer and their, you know, internal practices that they have if they run two-week sprints. Let’s say we’re doing a staff hog, just to boost their bandwidth, like, we’ll just kind of match what they do.
134 00:20:19.390 ⇒ 00:20:27.359 Justin Breshears: But mostly we’ll run one-week sprints so that we can, you know, focus on, you know, iterating really quickly and delivering things, so…
135 00:20:27.880 ⇒ 00:20:41.240 Justin Breshears: we… it kind of depends on the project type, too, because we run anywhere from, like, full-scale migrations to the cloud from on-prem data centers, or, you know, hey, we’re setting up a CICD pipeline, and a data lake, or…
136 00:20:41.430 ⇒ 00:21:00.530 Justin Breshears: whatever the project is, we’re doing a GenAI chat bot, or whatever. That’ll determine the length of it, but really, you know, we’ll run everything agilely with one-week sprints, you know, doing daily stand-ups, having the sprint reviews and ceremonies weekly with the client. I usually run, like, if I’m running a Monday through Friday sprint.
137 00:21:00.530 ⇒ 00:21:03.160 Justin Breshears: I’ll have spare review with the client on Monday.
138 00:21:03.170 ⇒ 00:21:19.310 Justin Breshears: stand-ups with my team throughout. I will usually schedule a Wednesday, a Thursday, or a Thursday leadership status call with all the, like, project leadership on both sides, just to get high-level, you know, feedback, feelings, deal with customer sentiment, things like that.
139 00:21:19.670 ⇒ 00:21:25.770 Justin Breshears: And then my Fridays are just spent reporting. What do we do the week? Where are we at?
140 00:21:25.770 ⇒ 00:21:30.570 Justin Breshears: We’re on track, green, yellow, red, any escalations, blockers, things like that.
141 00:21:30.570 ⇒ 00:21:46.259 Justin Breshears: And so we also have portfolio health review calls, that just deal with all the different projects, but specifically for each project, that’s kind of the cadence that I run it at. So, however many sprints we’re signed up for, or a 3-month project, or whatever.
142 00:21:46.340 ⇒ 00:21:55.500 Justin Breshears: that’s how we run them, and then we’ll do a final KT and handoff at the end, and Project Retro to wrap it up.
143 00:21:56.830 ⇒ 00:22:09.769 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I guess my question would be, reflecting on, sort of, the sales to kick off, and the actual delivery, are there parts of your current process that you would do differently if you were…
144 00:22:10.330 ⇒ 00:22:11.520 Uttam Kumaran: in charge.
145 00:22:11.950 ⇒ 00:22:13.259 Justin Breshears: Yeah, I think, exactly.
146 00:22:13.260 ⇒ 00:22:14.229 Uttam Kumaran: And in-law’s talking.
147 00:22:14.230 ⇒ 00:22:23.789 Justin Breshears: Yeah, exactly what Alex was talking about, like, trying to get a delivery presence in before the contract is inked and finalized, because
148 00:22:23.940 ⇒ 00:22:27.309 Justin Breshears: We’ve had way too many situations where
149 00:22:27.480 ⇒ 00:22:33.789 Justin Breshears: That scoping call was insufficient to discover, really, all that needed to be scoped.
150 00:22:33.790 ⇒ 00:22:35.589 Uttam Kumaran: Can you go into an example of that?
151 00:22:35.590 ⇒ 00:22:39.659 Justin Breshears: I’m on both sides right now, and so I haven’t….
152 00:22:39.870 ⇒ 00:22:44.080 Uttam Kumaran: I… I know when I probably don’t do enough on one side.
153 00:22:44.430 ⇒ 00:22:49.560 Uttam Kumaran: But I’m just curious, because, yeah, it’s totally, you’re right, it’s a million dollar question.
154 00:22:49.770 ⇒ 00:23:00.749 Uttam Kumaran: But, you know, I think it’s… it’s always a problem. I think this is something I’ve never… I’ve always heard, and… but I, you know, I’m open to hearing kind of, like, what you think, or any improvements you’d make.
155 00:23:01.160 ⇒ 00:23:17.080 Justin Breshears: We recently, tapped into a new funding program at AWS, because AWS funds a lot of our program… our projects, and so it was called RAPID program, and it was designed around AI ideation and strategy projects for companies. So a company would come.
156 00:23:17.080 ⇒ 00:23:24.110 Justin Breshears: utilize that funding to hire a third party like us to come in and just basically help them with their AI strategy.
157 00:23:24.180 ⇒ 00:23:34.040 Justin Breshears: Sounds cool, right? Like, that’s great. You know, we’re gonna tell them how they should be set up on AWS, we’re gonna tell them how they can use it, feasibility of, like, what they want, all this stuff, right?
158 00:23:34.320 ⇒ 00:23:35.270 Justin Breshears: …
159 00:23:35.510 ⇒ 00:23:43.149 Justin Breshears: Rapid was an apt name for the funding program, though, because it was, like, spun up really quickly, and it’s already gone at this point, and…
160 00:23:43.150 ⇒ 00:24:00.360 Justin Breshears: there was, like, zero time to actually scope things out well. So, we got handed a rapid-funded AI ideation project that, we had principal strategists and consultants on our side who were supposed to be developing these strategy, you know, deliverables and
161 00:24:00.360 ⇒ 00:24:05.499 Justin Breshears: Helping with… shape the entire corporate strategy for how they’re gonna handle AI for, like, the next few years, right?
162 00:24:05.980 ⇒ 00:24:23.390 Justin Breshears: Except we did not leave them near enough time to actually deliver those things, because all the time that we allocated for them and budget that we allocated for them was taken up by the meetings required in there. So having a delivery presence in the scoping of that would have probably raised the red flag of.
163 00:24:23.650 ⇒ 00:24:38.959 Justin Breshears: yeah, guys, we can’t actually deliver anything when all the time that they have budgeted is spent in meetings for this, according to the Sal. So, that was one recent example that we dealt with. And so, we had to, as a leadership team, basically just say, hey, we’re gonna take a hit on this and do.
164 00:24:38.960 ⇒ 00:24:39.350 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
165 00:24:39.350 ⇒ 00:24:47.639 Justin Breshears: The extra work that we have to… to get the deliverables done because of pipeline, like, this is going to be an investment to get future work.
166 00:24:47.800 ⇒ 00:24:52.960 Justin Breshears: Because they have the strategy, now… now they gotta go implement the strategy and hire us to do it, basically.
167 00:24:54.150 ⇒ 00:24:59.510 Uttam Kumaran: Is there anything in the delivery process that you would change? …
168 00:25:00.720 ⇒ 00:25:15.320 Uttam Kumaran: you know, I can probably tell some… maybe a couple of specifics, given, like, our world, but just curious, like, looking at your current process, or processes you’ve dealt with in the past, like, if you were coming into a company like ours, and you have a little bit of free rein on
169 00:25:15.740 ⇒ 00:25:29.609 Uttam Kumaran: you know, I think… I think for everybody in project management, there is this sort of, like, by the book, but given the scenario, given the types of clients, or given where we want to innovate on process, we have the ability to change. And so I’m curious on, like.
170 00:25:29.710 ⇒ 00:25:39.679 Uttam Kumaran: from your whole career now in, you know, the world of PM, is there anything that you would do differently, that you would change, or is sort of the process you described, like, the best process, you think?
171 00:25:41.260 ⇒ 00:25:49.619 Justin Breshears: Yeah, it’s… it’s hard to… talk about that in generalities, because I think that it’s very project-dependent, and, like.
172 00:25:49.620 ⇒ 00:25:50.030 Uttam Kumaran: Thank you, dude.
173 00:25:50.030 ⇒ 00:26:09.760 Justin Breshears: So, if anything that I would change, I would make things less prescriptive across the board. Like, our PMO has SOPs for everything, and it’s very much like, do everything this way, this way, this way. And what I’ve had to empower my PMs to do is say, that’s a starting point. Like, those SOPs are templates.
174 00:26:09.830 ⇒ 00:26:18.479 Justin Breshears: But if that does not make sense in your project, don’t be beholden to the template. Like, you need to be able to adapt, to what makes sense. For example.
175 00:26:18.490 ⇒ 00:26:34.149 Justin Breshears: AI ideation project, the very first one that we did. They were like, it does not make sense for us to use a JIRA board for this project, because we’re not doing typical, like, development work here. Like, it’s consultants coming in and creating decks and strategies and things like that.
176 00:26:34.150 ⇒ 00:26:41.310 Justin Breshears: And… but, like, our company was very rigid in the sense that, like, no, we needed your word to justify our work, right? …
177 00:26:41.420 ⇒ 00:26:47.030 Justin Breshears: So I had to, like, work around that with them to be like, okay, we’ll use Jira, but we’ll make it more…
178 00:26:47.370 ⇒ 00:26:55.890 Justin Breshears: Kanban style, and just kind of, like, project as a whole versus individual sprints, and then, like, move the cards along, as it makes sense, so…
179 00:26:56.040 ⇒ 00:27:09.200 Justin Breshears: I think if I would change anything, I would probably try to introduce more project ownership and more flexibility in the process to adapt to the project needs, because I had never seen two projects that were identical to each other and what they needed.
180 00:27:09.250 ⇒ 00:27:16.200 Justin Breshears: And that goes down to, like, reporting, too, because we have very static, like, status reports that we use.
181 00:27:16.570 ⇒ 00:27:22.420 Justin Breshears: But that may not make sense, and I’ve had to, like, go outside of that sometimes to report on
182 00:27:22.550 ⇒ 00:27:37.999 Justin Breshears: you know, pulling out things like velocity reports from JIRA that are not, like, in our standard report. Well, some clients really care about that. They care about how many story points are we hitting every sprint, you know, because that project, they would basically have us say.
183 00:27:38.170 ⇒ 00:27:56.520 Justin Breshears: we want you to do 50% planned work from the backlog, but we want you to leave 50% capacity for just stuff that comes up, because they constantly had stuff that was urgent that would come up, right? So, they were trying to track, you know, what’s the… the breakdown between emergent versus planned work that we were doing.
184 00:27:56.520 ⇒ 00:27:57.230 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah.
185 00:27:57.230 ⇒ 00:28:13.660 Justin Breshears: all that. So, I don’t know if that really answers your question, but just allowing for, like, definitely guidance and framework to keep things, like, consistent to a certain quality standard, but allowing for flexibility is probably the thing I would like to see more.
186 00:28:15.000 ⇒ 00:28:20.829 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I feel… I feel pretty similar, like, I think we should have every… we should have SOPs for most things, so that
187 00:28:20.930 ⇒ 00:28:27.630 Uttam Kumaran: You know, if, like, someone just walks in and wants to figure out how we do things, there’s… there’s direction. But you also…
188 00:28:27.910 ⇒ 00:28:41.400 Uttam Kumaran: have the flexibility to change based on the client, because not… the reason we’re in client service is the client always wins, and you’re right, not every client is the same, and they wouldn’t work with… like, we’re of course not selling them the same product.
189 00:28:41.400 ⇒ 00:28:48.339 Uttam Kumaran: So delivery is a huge aspect of that, so that’s… that’s really great to hear. Sorry, Alex, you can go ahead with questions, too. If you have any.
190 00:28:48.630 ⇒ 00:28:53.960 Alexander Lubka: No, those are all great. What happens when there’s a delta from the initial
191 00:28:54.100 ⇒ 00:28:57.089 Alexander Lubka: Tickets and backlog that you wrote up.
192 00:28:58.280 ⇒ 00:29:15.050 Justin Breshears: Well, that always is going to be the case. The roadmap and the backlog that we build out is kind of just, like, how we view it from the beginning, but that’s the nature of Agile, and working so closely in collaboration with appliances is constantly changing. And the idea with that is just to, like, be able to really track
193 00:29:15.050 ⇒ 00:29:27.939 Justin Breshears: velocity, because if we were to just go in with a completely blank JIRA, and start Sprint 1, and just kind of build it up as we go, I don’t think there would really be any kind of idea of how we were tracking overall to finishing those deliverables. So the idea is
194 00:29:27.940 ⇒ 00:29:31.189 Justin Breshears: Hey, let’s build this backlog out as we see it right now.
195 00:29:31.270 ⇒ 00:29:49.969 Justin Breshears: as we change along the way, we can kind of use that North Star that looked somewhat like the sow at the beginning to see how far on track or off track that we are, right? But it still allows for that flexibility of, like, we’re all the time, you know, taking stuff in and out. As things go and things get deprioritized, like.
196 00:29:49.970 ⇒ 00:29:56.389 Justin Breshears: Okay, let’s de-scope that, let’s add this in, you know, and we’re changing along the way, but having at least
197 00:29:56.600 ⇒ 00:30:02.630 Justin Breshears: that outline. I mean, it’s like if I were trying to write a novel, right? I can’t just go and just start writing chapter
198 00:30:02.770 ⇒ 00:30:12.709 Justin Breshears: I feel like I would have to have an outline first of, like, where I want to go with it, and then start filling in from there. That’s kind of the idea behind having the backlog mostly built out.
199 00:30:13.260 ⇒ 00:30:22.790 Alexander Lubka: Yeah, no, it’s great to do as much as you can up front, and then obviously things are gonna change, but, you know, get it all as much as you can in the backlog. If things won’t do, things need to be… get rid of them.
200 00:30:23.120 ⇒ 00:30:34.189 Alexander Lubka: Makes sense. And then, so you said you’re working on one-week sprints. What… and I know you mentioned stand-ups and sprint reviews. What other ceremonies are you working on, or working with, and what other cadences?
201 00:30:35.410 ⇒ 00:30:46.389 Justin Breshears: At times, depending on the project, we’ll do, like, a backlog refinement, if it’s kind of a more complex… like, I did a migration for a major shipping company.
202 00:30:46.390 ⇒ 00:30:55.749 Justin Breshears: It was a migration, and then, application development, then we had a customer portal, built up at the same time, so moving from on-prem, legacy.
203 00:30:55.770 ⇒ 00:30:59.590 Justin Breshears: you know, systems out of their data center onto AWS.
204 00:30:59.640 ⇒ 00:31:08.559 Justin Breshears: And then building the application. So, there’s a lot going on, and, you know, we would have that backlog refinement session to, you know, to make sure that
205 00:31:08.910 ⇒ 00:31:13.329 Justin Breshears: We understood the requirements, basically, from the client as we went, because it was…
206 00:31:13.330 ⇒ 00:31:38.280 Justin Breshears: very much not clear, up front. So, we’ll add those in. I mean, I tend to combine my sprint review, sprint planning, and sprint retro all together in that one meeting, because we do weekly sprints, like, having those three separate in a week is, like, just too much to ask. Yeah, brutal. Brutal. So, have it all done, and usually, I mean, unless there’s any kind of, like, major questions or issues, like, I can get those things done in 30 minutes, so I’m taking 30 minutes of
207 00:31:38.280 ⇒ 00:31:45.959 Justin Breshears: client’s time, and then a 15-minute status meeting just to check in later in the week. That’s kind of why we built it that way.
208 00:31:45.960 ⇒ 00:31:51.479 Justin Breshears: Take the least amount of time from them, but have the maximum, you know, impact from that time.
209 00:31:51.480 ⇒ 00:32:06.809 Justin Breshears: Well, we’ll add in things as needed, like, the more complex it gets, the more, like, meetings that we’ll add in, like those backlog refinements, maybe having a joint, stand-up three times a week. I’ve done that Monday, Wednesday, Friday, like, joint stand-ups with their team and ours. Most of my…
210 00:32:06.840 ⇒ 00:32:12.290 Justin Breshears: stand-ups I want to keep internal only, but then we’ll do them with the client as needed and stuff, too.
211 00:32:12.990 ⇒ 00:32:17.920 Justin Breshears: So really, it’s… it’s very project-dependent, but those are some examples that I would do.
212 00:32:18.980 ⇒ 00:32:22.449 Alexander Lubka: And, when you’re in execution mode, how are you holding your engineers accountable?
213 00:32:23.790 ⇒ 00:32:37.620 Justin Breshears: Yeah, to basically the tickets and the velocity that’s expected, mostly, so I need to see them, you know, completing what we committed to at the start of the sprint, and so if they’re not.
214 00:32:37.730 ⇒ 00:32:43.439 Justin Breshears: we’re having conversations about why, oh, are you blocked? Let me help you unblock that. Are you…
215 00:32:44.250 ⇒ 00:33:02.410 Justin Breshears: not able to do it, let’s see if we can get you some… some guidance, some… some coaching, or some help. That’s where that tech lead kind of helps, having that… that swing man, because I don’t story point tech lead work. Let’s say they’re 30% allocated to it. I’m not pointing their work, but they’re kind of that… that pinch hitter where they need to be to help.
216 00:33:02.410 ⇒ 00:33:04.890 Justin Breshears: You know, any technical gaps or issues along the way.
217 00:33:05.170 ⇒ 00:33:18.639 Justin Breshears: But I mean, it’s just meeting with them, like, checking them against the blueprint in the JIRA board, and discovering, okay, why are we falling behind, or are we ahead? Well, where else can we tackle and maybe get ahead a little bit further here?
218 00:33:19.010 ⇒ 00:33:20.409 Justin Breshears: Or whatever, so… he’s in….
219 00:33:20.410 ⇒ 00:33:37.749 Uttam Kumaran: I guess maybe to double-click there, like, let’s say you’re just getting the usual, like, runaround, like, oh, it’s delayed by client, or something came up, or it’s still working, like, you know, the usual suspects. Like, I guess I’m interested in, like, what sort of…
220 00:33:38.240 ⇒ 00:33:55.959 Uttam Kumaran: your ideal, like, escalation process looks like. One of the things that I’m trying to institute across the company is these layers of execute… of escalation, right? Which gives everybody a toolkit on, like, how do you solve some of these within a stand-up, within a sprint, maybe within a monthly review, but
221 00:33:55.960 ⇒ 00:34:00.869 Uttam Kumaran: Kind of interested in, like, let’s say you’ve done as much as you can, and still things are lagging.
222 00:34:00.870 ⇒ 00:34:11.859 Uttam Kumaran: kind of talk to me about how you would work with either the tech lead, or the solutions architect, or the engineering manager. Let’s just assume they’re all kind of just the technical leader on that project. Like, what does that process look like?
223 00:34:11.909 ⇒ 00:34:15.040 Uttam Kumaran: … Yeah, just curious to hear about that.
224 00:34:15.300 ⇒ 00:34:25.439 Justin Breshears: It sounds like we have very similar problems, because we dealt with this at the beginning of the year. That’s when we created our portfolios, was in January, for this reason, mostly.
225 00:34:25.449 ⇒ 00:34:25.849 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
226 00:34:25.850 ⇒ 00:34:32.719 Justin Breshears: A little bit of sales segmentation reasons, but mostly for escalation paths, because before having portfolios set up.
227 00:34:32.969 ⇒ 00:34:37.029 Justin Breshears: Any PM could just be assigned to any project, there was no competition.
228 00:34:37.389 ⇒ 00:34:38.980 Justin Breshears: Which meant that…
229 00:34:39.100 ⇒ 00:34:58.020 Justin Breshears: who do you know to go to for an escalation? Like, you just don’t have this pathway set up. And so what was happening is the sales folks would see an escalation happen on their project, and they would ping the CEO, and they’d be like, hey, we need to get involved in this, there’s an escalation right here. And that’s skipping, like, 5 levels of leadership, you know, to go to
230 00:34:58.020 ⇒ 00:35:07.880 Justin Breshears: straight to the sea levels, and that’s wasting their time, it’s creating too much noise, and now people are, like, nervous, oh, you know, CTO’s involved now, like, you know, everybody’s.
231 00:35:07.880 ⇒ 00:35:09.929 Uttam Kumaran: You just don’t want to be on their mind.
232 00:35:09.930 ⇒ 00:35:12.470 Justin Breshears: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
233 00:35:12.470 ⇒ 00:35:33.030 Justin Breshears: That’s exactly what we did, is we tried to give you the answers to the test prior to when the escalation is happening, right? With the portfolio structure. So now, within the portfolio, we have the PMs themselves that are running the projects. We have the PM managers, like myself, who are oversight over that portfolio. On the technical side, we have,
234 00:35:33.030 ⇒ 00:35:40.580 Justin Breshears: practice directors that are assigned to each portfolio that are responsible for that, depending on which practice it is, but.
235 00:35:40.580 ⇒ 00:35:44.709 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, they’re assigned to the portfolio, but the… is the… is the portfolio…
236 00:35:44.940 ⇒ 00:35:47.650 Uttam Kumaran: Organized by practice, or not necessarily?
237 00:35:47.650 ⇒ 00:35:50.760 Justin Breshears: No, so the practices on the technical side kind of…
238 00:35:51.000 ⇒ 00:36:08.539 Justin Breshears: manage themselves differently, because, like, for example, we couldn’t have a portfolio with, like, CDE completely within that, which is data engineering, completely within that, because there’s such a wide range between, like, the machine learning side and, like, the other, you know, all that stuff that you are probably aware of.
239 00:36:08.540 ⇒ 00:36:19.750 Justin Breshears: So they were like, that portfolio structure, we can’t, like, really fit into that, but they will get practice directors assigned within the portfolio per project.
240 00:36:19.750 ⇒ 00:36:20.180 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
241 00:36:20.180 ⇒ 00:36:37.979 Justin Breshears: And so that it’s clear up front, like, who are the escalation paths? So we have these processes laid out where it’s like, okay, you have an escalation that is no longer able to be handled by the project team. It now goes to the immediate next level of oversight, both on the PM side and on the technical side.
242 00:36:38.020 ⇒ 00:36:40.579 Justin Breshears: 90% of things should be able to be solved by that.
243 00:36:40.580 ⇒ 00:36:41.320 Uttam Kumaran: Sure.
244 00:36:41.650 ⇒ 00:36:58.539 Justin Breshears: outside of that, then it goes up to portfolio leads, and we have portfolio CTOs that are in specific, you know, high… they’re the head of the technical aspects of that portfolio. Interesting. So we have, like, 5 portfolio CTOs right now.
245 00:36:58.770 ⇒ 00:37:08.860 Justin Breshears: And then they all roll up, obviously, to, like, the C-levels after that, the actual CTO. I actually personally hate the title, Portfolio CTO, it just gets confusing, but….
246 00:37:08.860 ⇒ 00:37:10.060 Uttam Kumaran: Weird title.
247 00:37:10.060 ⇒ 00:37:12.830 Justin Breshears: Yeah, I don’t… don’t love that at all, but I don’t make those decisions.
248 00:37:12.830 ⇒ 00:37:16.400 Uttam Kumaran: You don’t want to have multiple C’s, is what I heard, you know?
249 00:37:16.400 ⇒ 00:37:18.739 Justin Breshears: Yeah, yeah, it just gets confusing.
250 00:37:18.740 ⇒ 00:37:21.239 Uttam Kumaran: the advice I got. I think….
251 00:37:21.240 ⇒ 00:37:45.389 Justin Breshears: and it’s all, like, new and being iterated on since January, but anyway, all those pathways are set out, and so, like, all of our PMs know, like, okay, well, here’s the trigger to move it to that next escalation pathway. Like, if a customer escalates to AWS directly, it automatically goes to the portfolio leads and be involved. And then on the sales side, too, because our sales folks are very involved, even, you know, post-contract being signed.
252 00:37:45.660 ⇒ 00:37:52.139 Justin Breshears: There’s regional directors on the sales side and everything that are assigned to these projects as well, in these portfolios, so…
253 00:37:52.260 ⇒ 00:38:03.079 Justin Breshears: It’s all… and the segmentation is sales-driven, so we’re segmenting based on size of the project, size of the company, and potential pipeline.
254 00:38:03.080 ⇒ 00:38:04.280 Uttam Kumaran: Future value, yeah, okay.
255 00:38:04.280 ⇒ 00:38:12.690 Justin Breshears: So we have, like, enterprise portfolios, S&B portfolios, and what we call core, which is kind of in between. Like, these are SMBs that have a huge potential.
256 00:38:14.400 ⇒ 00:38:21.630 Justin Breshears: Makes sense. Yeah, I think to give you a sense of, like, where we’re at in our evolution, so, at the moment, you know, we’re just now, I think.
257 00:38:21.630 ⇒ 00:38:39.080 Uttam Kumaran: you know, to think about, like, maybe a year ago, it was maybe just, like, 5 or 6 people in the company as a whole, right? So I’m… if you talk about an average project team of, like, 3 to 5, usually I’m playing, like, 3 hats, or 2 hats, right? So now, for the most part, I’m playing
258 00:38:39.130 ⇒ 00:38:52.569 Uttam Kumaran: 0 or 1, because at least I’m the account executive, because we’re selling every… all the business. But now that we’re starting to build redundancy, my job and what I’m looking at the entire org is building these
259 00:38:52.600 ⇒ 00:39:03.769 Uttam Kumaran: you would call them, like, practice or, like, basically, like, service excellence groups. So, on every part of our data offering, right, we do product analytics work, we do data engineering, analytics engineering work.
260 00:39:03.770 ⇒ 00:39:15.810 Uttam Kumaran: We also are doing AI work. There is both, like, a lead and, of course, the engineers that have those capabilities. But also those people are tasked with having opinions on how those
261 00:39:15.970 ⇒ 00:39:29.129 Uttam Kumaran: like, get service, and they tend to float across every client that is getting that service. So similarly, in the project management world, that’s, like, what we’re hoping to develop, but I would say we’re… that’s the part we’re in, is now…
262 00:39:29.180 ⇒ 00:39:42.940 Uttam Kumaran: to just have multiple people that can discuss, to have… for all of our PMs to now have a group first, they can escalate to, and then, of course, I think I’m right above that, but that’s the… those are the layers that we’re… we’re currently at right now.
263 00:39:43.620 ⇒ 00:40:02.479 Justin Breshears: Yeah, and you’re… that’s the… that’s the hard part about a service organization like… like yours, is in order to grow business, you have to grow headcount, you have to have the right people with the right skill sets there, so you gotta get these structures in place, and then get, like, the right bodies in there to be able to handle all those things. That’s exactly the same problem that we’ve been dealing with this year.
264 00:40:03.570 ⇒ 00:40:04.410 Uttam Kumaran: Makes sense.
265 00:40:05.550 ⇒ 00:40:15.639 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I guess I was gonna ask another question, kind of just about, the technical projects you’ve worked on, and sort of if you could tell me a little bit about,
266 00:40:16.000 ⇒ 00:40:26.350 Uttam Kumaran: like, if you can kind of percent bucket them by, like, high-level services, like, okay, was it… if this was, like, a redshift migration, or this was a…
267 00:40:26.350 ⇒ 00:40:36.400 Uttam Kumaran: DPT, like, data modeling thing. If you can kind of bucket, sort of, the types of technical projects that you worked on, that would give me kind of just a little bit of sense of your background on the technical side.
268 00:40:36.940 ⇒ 00:40:52.019 Justin Breshears: Yeah, mostly migrations. Our bread and butter really is in the CAE practice, architecture and engineering, and doing migrations. I mean, we were, AWS Migration Partner of the Year last year, so top premier partner for them.
269 00:40:52.280 ⇒ 00:41:10.289 Justin Breshears: And so, that’s a lot of what my portfolio does, because we are the emerging portfolio, the SMD portfolio. It’s our largest segment. We don’t have a huge enterprise presence at this point, so our largest segment’s about $65 million worth of business in my portfolio for the year.
270 00:41:10.570 ⇒ 00:41:26.539 Justin Breshears: That’s the goal, at least, which is over half of the total plan goal out of, like, the 5 or 6 portfolios that we have. So it’s huge, and we do mostly with migrations, mostly, you know, small businesses trying to get set up on AWS.
271 00:41:26.590 ⇒ 00:41:33.159 Uttam Kumaran: Are these data migrations, like, pure data warehouse, or are these also, like, Lambdas and other things, or…?
272 00:41:33.360 ⇒ 00:41:40.320 Justin Breshears: All of the above, yeah. Okay. All of the above. So we’ve done, you know, data migrations, a lot, but, …
273 00:41:40.770 ⇒ 00:42:05.730 Justin Breshears: Yeah, a lot of it is like, hey, company has an on-prem data center that they use, they’re tired of all the upkeep and costs associated with that. They want to go to the more flexible pricing model of the cloud, you know, have the elasticity to scale up, scale down. They contact us to do it because they have no idea what… how to do anything on AWS, basically, and they don’t have the bandwidth to do it. So they hire us to do it, and there is, specific funding programs with
274 00:42:05.730 ⇒ 00:42:06.919 Justin Breshears: AWS that help.
275 00:42:06.920 ⇒ 00:42:14.849 Justin Breshears: companies do that based on their expected ARR on the platform once they get set up, so it’s kind of a symbiotic relationship between us for that.
276 00:42:15.190 ⇒ 00:42:21.310 Justin Breshears: The reason is AWS pays us to get them on the platform so that they can pay AWS in perpetuity after that.
277 00:42:21.810 ⇒ 00:42:41.370 Justin Breshears: So that’s a lot of what we do, but, I mean, with AI being the new buzzword and the new thing, the CDE practice is exploding right now, so we’ve seen a ton of Gen AI work lately. Cool. With these, chatbots, voice bots, things like that, using the LLMs, and Amazon Bedrock, and all.
278 00:42:41.370 ⇒ 00:42:41.980 Uttam Kumaran: rock, yeah.
279 00:42:41.980 ⇒ 00:42:47.489 Justin Breshears: Yeah, we’ve… we’ve seen a huge explosion in that lately, so I would say that is on the rise.
280 00:42:47.980 ⇒ 00:42:58.440 Justin Breshears: the breakdown percentage-wise, I would say, is in CAE, with just, like, your architecture and your migration and stuff, probably 60% of what we do. CAE, probably…
281 00:42:58.560 ⇒ 00:43:01.310 Justin Breshears: 30, and then CNA probably 10.
282 00:43:01.740 ⇒ 00:43:02.360 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
283 00:43:03.730 ⇒ 00:43:04.480 Uttam Kumaran: Great.
284 00:43:07.340 ⇒ 00:43:15.429 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, Alex, I had one more question. I know we’re already at 12. I have one, like, quick question. I can stay on, but I don’t know, Alex, if you have anything else you wanted to ask.
285 00:43:15.570 ⇒ 00:43:16.779 Alexander Lubka: No, go for it.
286 00:43:17.350 ⇒ 00:43:35.049 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I guess I want to just hear about, like, what your, like, long-term goals are. You know, I saw… kind of saw you talking a little bit about that in the video, kind of get a sense for, like, where your head is at in terms of getting more technical. I think I can tell that you just want to sort of… you’re kind of very similar to me in that you just want to have
287 00:43:35.050 ⇒ 00:43:54.270 Uttam Kumaran: almost, like, empathy for every part of the organization, but of course, like, whatever you’re tasked to do to nail it. But I’m kind of just interested, like, if you… if, you know, coming to a company like ours with a lot of opportunity and, you know, fingers crossed, a lot of growth, I’m just interested in, like, where you see yourself, not just in the next, like, year or two, but even longer term.
288 00:43:54.270 ⇒ 00:43:56.569 Uttam Kumaran: And to give you the reason why I ask is, like.
289 00:43:56.710 ⇒ 00:44:13.670 Uttam Kumaran: for us, and for me in particular, we ask this for every candidate, and my job is to put you in that spot. You know, the way I keep you and keep you motivated is to enable you to go achieve your goals, and that’s… that is, in addition to what you do for us and for our clients, that’s my…
290 00:44:13.670 ⇒ 00:44:22.290 Uttam Kumaran: way to give… to give back, you know? And so, for me to hear that also allows me to think about our 3-5 year plan and find, like, where you fit and how we can
291 00:44:22.290 ⇒ 00:44:25.750 Uttam Kumaran: enable you. So, if you have any thoughts on that, that would be helpful.
292 00:44:25.750 ⇒ 00:44:34.769 Justin Breshears: For sure. That’s really awesome to hear, and I have… I’m a forward thinker, like, sometimes I live too much in the future, so I have this, like, mapped out in my head already. In the near term.
293 00:44:34.770 ⇒ 00:44:48.209 Justin Breshears: my goals with, like, becoming more technical, like, I just got certified in AWS at the, like, base level and, like, stuff like that. My goal with that was to, like you said, have an empathy or understand more of, like, what’s actually going on in project.
294 00:44:48.210 ⇒ 00:44:51.809 Uttam Kumaran: You don’t want to sign up to do it. You don’t want to sign up for it, but yeah, I see what you’re.
295 00:44:51.810 ⇒ 00:44:55.589 Justin Breshears: Yeah, like, I can lead any type of project without really knowing the details.
296 00:44:55.590 ⇒ 00:44:56.549 Uttam Kumaran: So it’s like, that.
297 00:44:56.550 ⇒ 00:45:03.279 Justin Breshears: project management, like, transfers, but when you do know the details, you become… It’s way better. Yeah.
298 00:45:03.610 ⇒ 00:45:08.519 Justin Breshears: But that’s, like, the near-term goal, is, like, let me learn this stuff, but also the, like.
299 00:45:08.650 ⇒ 00:45:28.260 Justin Breshears: data analytics and all that, like, that fascinates me. I’ve always been very data-driven in, like, how I think and do things. Like, when I had my daughter, my first kid, the only parenting book I read was, like, an economist who wrote a very data-driven, like, study-based, like, parenting book or whatever. It’s, like, the most…
300 00:45:28.390 ⇒ 00:45:29.840 Justin Breshears: Nerdy way of.
301 00:45:29.840 ⇒ 00:45:30.870 Uttam Kumaran: About their outcomes?
302 00:45:30.870 ⇒ 00:45:36.670 Justin Breshears: Yeah, it was like, what should you do, with sleep training? Here’s what the data says, and like….
303 00:45:36.670 ⇒ 00:45:37.100 Uttam Kumaran: Come back.
304 00:45:37.100 ⇒ 00:45:40.139 Justin Breshears: research says, and I was like, that’s how I went about, like, how I formulated.
305 00:45:40.140 ⇒ 00:45:40.630 Uttam Kumaran: Perfect.
306 00:45:40.630 ⇒ 00:45:51.420 Justin Breshears: how I parent. So that’s a little bit of why I did. So that’s near term, it’s like, I wanted to understand more, I wanted to be able to be better at my job because I understood, like, what people were talking about more.
307 00:45:51.680 ⇒ 00:46:01.090 Justin Breshears: outside of that, my longer-term goal is I would actually like to be able to be more involved in the technical side of actually, like, doing the work. …
308 00:46:01.750 ⇒ 00:46:08.190 Justin Breshears: Because sometimes, as a PM, my biggest regret is that, like, I can’t actually do
309 00:46:09.160 ⇒ 00:46:19.180 Justin Breshears: anything. You know, I can’t actually, like, push the work along. I can only motivate, inspire, report, like, all of those things. So, like.
310 00:46:19.320 ⇒ 00:46:19.910 Justin Breshears: If yours….
311 00:46:19.910 ⇒ 00:46:26.720 Uttam Kumaran: Very honest perspective, by the way. I don’t think a lot of… I mean, so my… I’m an engineer first, became…
312 00:46:26.760 ⇒ 00:46:46.569 Uttam Kumaran: like, a product manager PM in my career, but you’re right, the… what I didn’t have in traditional PM learning, my superpower was that I could do everything that I was assigning out. So there’s, like, kind of nowhere to hide, and I was just the most organized person. But you’re right, I think it’s… it can be a challenge, so I totally….
313 00:46:46.570 ⇒ 00:47:04.100 Justin Breshears: It’s the opposite track of you, like, I can’t do it, and I want to, like, be able to contribute more than I contribute right now, which PMs contribute a ton, just not… not the actual, like, so anyway, I would love to, like, marry those two things, and eventually have the skills to where, like.
314 00:47:04.130 ⇒ 00:47:24.010 Justin Breshears: hey, my engineer has, like, a technical problem, I can actually help them overcome that technical problem. Or if I needed to, I could hop in and be that swing, you know, that utility player to fill in at the spot if I needed to, and actually have hands-on keyboard. That would be awesome, I just need to have the time and capacity to be able to learn that stuff, because
315 00:47:24.640 ⇒ 00:47:40.040 Justin Breshears: it’s not easy to just pick it up in these entirely different languages and things, so… I’m trying to get there, but that’s why it’s, like, more of, like, a five-year plan at that point, if I can just steadily chip away at that. But I have, like, a roadmap for that, like, I’m starting with Python.
316 00:47:40.040 ⇒ 00:47:46.059 Justin Breshears: I want to do, like, SQL, I want to learn, like, BigQuery and Power BI and, like, all this stuff.
317 00:47:46.060 ⇒ 00:47:53.250 Justin Breshears: I don’t even know if that’s the right way to do it, but ChatGPT helped me figure out that roadmap, and I’m rolling with it right now, so…
318 00:47:53.480 ⇒ 00:47:59.770 Justin Breshears: Yeah, that would be where I would love to head, because I think somebody like you is, like.
319 00:48:00.170 ⇒ 00:48:03.690 Justin Breshears: The ideal situation where, like, you have the technical chops, you have the technical background.
320 00:48:03.690 ⇒ 00:48:05.020 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, but, you know, that’.
321 00:48:05.020 ⇒ 00:48:05.729 Justin Breshears: I have the other.
322 00:48:05.730 ⇒ 00:48:11.200 Uttam Kumaran: It’s not usual, like, I pick the path of most resistance, like… It was, …
323 00:48:11.270 ⇒ 00:48:23.900 Uttam Kumaran: it’s a job where you get less money for way more work. But for me, those are the people with the keys and the actual ability to take a group of people and guide them towards
324 00:48:23.960 ⇒ 00:48:31.639 Uttam Kumaran: a really, really great outcome. So the leverage is super high in project management. And I don’t know, I think engineering…
325 00:48:31.830 ⇒ 00:48:38.669 Uttam Kumaran: There’s a lot of people that can do the engineering work, but very rarely can you organize a group of people and plan and execute and hit it… hit the nail.
326 00:48:38.790 ⇒ 00:48:49.969 Uttam Kumaran: like, I think there’s a big art there, too. But the spectrum of PM is so wide, you know, so there’s a… sometimes if you’re… if you’re… you could be a bad PM, your team just rocks, and you kind of…
327 00:48:50.060 ⇒ 00:48:53.750 Uttam Kumaran: you could be a really good PM, your team sucks, so you… it’s really a…
328 00:48:53.820 ⇒ 00:49:01.920 Uttam Kumaran: it’s a tough… it’s a tough gig, but that’s why I’m also really, you know, I’m really happy we have Alex, and we’ve been investing a lot in PM process, I think.
329 00:49:01.990 ⇒ 00:49:18.690 Uttam Kumaran: A lot of consultants like ours, especially at our age, we’re only just over 2 years, very rarely do we, like, invest in a PMO or think about process so heavily, but for us, we’re so early, and it’s… the only way we scale this business is through adding these processes.
330 00:49:18.690 ⇒ 00:49:28.929 Uttam Kumaran: And it’s incredibly important that our PMs are super enabled to lead client engagements. They’re not just, like, another person on the team, but they’re also not, like.
331 00:49:29.080 ⇒ 00:49:43.140 Uttam Kumaran: people don’t report to them. They are a role on the client, and their job is the organization, the execution, and to kind of, like, call things out, while the engineer’s role is very different, very symbiotic, you know, so we’re thinking a lot about that.
332 00:49:43.540 ⇒ 00:49:55.360 Justin Breshears: That’s the right way to do it. Having those clear definitions of roles and expectations is, like, key, because my company did not have that for a long time, and it’s kind of like, tried to do it retroactively, and there’s.
333 00:49:55.360 ⇒ 00:49:55.720 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
334 00:49:55.720 ⇒ 00:49:57.980 Justin Breshears: A wide range of acceptance on our behalf.
335 00:49:57.980 ⇒ 00:49:58.480 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
336 00:49:58.480 ⇒ 00:50:01.369 Justin Breshears: From, like, the architects and stuff, where they’re like, well.
337 00:50:01.520 ⇒ 00:50:12.950 Justin Breshears: back in, you know, 2 years ago, we didn’t used to have to do that. Well, okay, but now we do, because we’re trying to evolve, right? It’s better to have that up front, and to establish those expectations.
338 00:50:13.880 ⇒ 00:50:17.669 Uttam Kumaran: So tell me what questions I can answer. Completely open mind.
339 00:50:17.670 ⇒ 00:50:19.539 Justin Breshears: Apparently, I don’t have a ton of time.
340 00:50:19.540 ⇒ 00:50:20.569 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, really? Okay.
341 00:50:20.570 ⇒ 00:50:24.480 Justin Breshears: to another meeting, yeah, I have a portfolio health review.
342 00:50:24.890 ⇒ 00:50:26.830 Justin Breshears: jump into, here.
343 00:50:26.830 ⇒ 00:50:34.700 Uttam Kumaran: I’m happy to grab more time, or I can give you my number, we’re happy to… if you want to chat later today, I’m happy to answer anything, so… more than happy to.
344 00:50:34.700 ⇒ 00:50:41.890 Justin Breshears: I appreciate that. Yeah, I mean, I would love to do that, because I would love to just learn more about, kind of, what y’all.
345 00:50:41.890 ⇒ 00:50:42.250 Uttam Kumaran: Sure.
346 00:50:42.250 ⇒ 00:50:55.370 Justin Breshears: It sounds very similar to the world I live in right now, but I would love to hear more about, like, your context of, like, you know, what are the specifics of, like, the type of projects that you’re doing and stuff like that. I just, unfortunately, don’t have the time right now to do it.
347 00:50:55.370 ⇒ 00:50:56.700 Uttam Kumaran: No, that’s totally fine.
348 00:50:56.700 ⇒ 00:51:02.969 Justin Breshears: But yeah, if we could set something else up, like, I would love to dive into that, or whatever the next step is in this process.
349 00:51:03.470 ⇒ 00:51:11.789 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, perfect. So yeah, I think in terms of next steps, we’re hoping to actually make a decision within the next, like, week and a half or so.
350 00:51:11.910 ⇒ 00:51:17.070 Uttam Kumaran: But I definitely want to hop on the phone with you. I mean, I’m… I’m free.
351 00:51:17.360 ⇒ 00:51:25.279 Uttam Kumaran: like, probably towards the end of the day. Even I’m happy to hop on the phone, or if you want to talk tomorrow, I’m happy to carve out time to do that. I want to make.
352 00:51:25.280 ⇒ 00:51:29.079 Justin Breshears: I don’t have meetings after 2 o’clock today, so….
353 00:51:29.080 ⇒ 00:51:30.400 Uttam Kumaran: 2 o’clock Central.
354 00:51:30.590 ⇒ 00:51:31.350 Justin Breshears: Yes.
355 00:51:31.480 ⇒ 00:51:34.080 Justin Breshears: Anytime after that would work for me.
356 00:51:34.260 ⇒ 00:51:43.679 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, cool, then let me send… I’ll send… I’ll send an invite over. Yeah, happy to answer all of your questions. I think we’re, you know, pretty impressed by your background, I think.
357 00:51:43.860 ⇒ 00:52:00.659 Uttam Kumaran: where… kind of what I was telling Alex before this call is, like, I… you know, we’re looking for someone that’s not 10 steps ahead, but is, like, 2 to 3 steps ahead, because that’s where we’re trying to go. If you get someone that’s 10 steps ahead, it’s such a shock.
358 00:52:00.660 ⇒ 00:52:01.280 Justin Breshears: Yeah.
359 00:52:01.280 ⇒ 00:52:17.010 Uttam Kumaran: And if… but if you get someone that’s at our level, like, I need… I need someone to light the way. Like, I’m at, sort of, my peak in, like, how I know how to run a PM org, which I’ve never done. You know, so we’re… we’re… we’re eliciting help, but I think we… we’re impressed by your background, and…
360 00:52:17.010 ⇒ 00:52:22.890 Uttam Kumaran: Your interest in kind of coming back to the ground floor, but you’re right in the… in the…
361 00:52:22.920 ⇒ 00:52:36.760 Uttam Kumaran: the cost of coming all the way back, the benefit is we’re completely open to a ton of, you know, new ways of doing things. Another thing that, you know, I’m happy to share later is, like, how do we use AI in this whole process? You know, how can we eliminate two…
362 00:52:36.840 ⇒ 00:52:42.789 Uttam Kumaran: meetings using AI, or improve deliverability 20%, or improved margins.
363 00:52:42.880 ⇒ 00:52:50.849 Uttam Kumaran: those are the things that I’m, like, so interested in, and so happy to kind of share some ideas about that later, too.
364 00:52:51.400 ⇒ 00:52:58.899 Justin Breshears: Yeah, we can talk through that, because we’ve been doing that in a number of ways, currently. So, I think I am in that, just, like, just 2-3 step ahead.
365 00:52:58.900 ⇒ 00:53:12.510 Justin Breshears: situation right now, because everything you’re talking about is like, man, we just dealt with that problem. We just… we just had this solution to it. None of it’s perfect at this point, but at least we have a couple of ideas of how we’re solving those things.
366 00:53:12.990 ⇒ 00:53:14.090 Uttam Kumaran: Perfect. Okay.
367 00:53:14.090 ⇒ 00:53:22.009 Justin Breshears: Yeah, I appreciate getting a chance to chat with y’all and meet with you. I know you got a lot going on, wearing a lot of hats, but thanks for taking the time.
368 00:53:22.380 ⇒ 00:53:23.960 Uttam Kumaran: Thank you, appreciate it.
369 00:53:24.130 ⇒ 00:53:24.730 Alexander Lubka: Good to meet you.
370 00:53:24.730 ⇒ 00:53:27.269 Justin Breshears: I look forward to seeing you later today, then.
371 00:53:27.270 ⇒ 00:53:28.430 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, talk to you soon.
372 00:53:28.430 ⇒ 00:53:28.960 Justin Breshears: Nope.
373 00:53:29.360 ⇒ 00:53:29.900 Uttam Kumaran: Bye.