Meeting Title: Brainforge x Client Change Management Sync Date: 2025-11-11 Meeting participants: Robert Tseng, Elizabeth Young, Anmol Singh
WEBVTT
1 00:01:25.330 ⇒ 00:01:27.019 Elizabeth Young: Hi, Robert, are you there?
2 00:01:28.510 ⇒ 00:01:29.630 Robert Tseng: Hey!
3 00:01:30.270 ⇒ 00:01:31.499 Robert Tseng: Liz, I’m here.
4 00:01:31.830 ⇒ 00:01:36.700 Elizabeth Young: Oh, great, and let me just check, my product manager.
5 00:01:51.490 ⇒ 00:01:54.820 Elizabeth Young: Okay, I will get started.
6 00:01:54.820 ⇒ 00:01:55.134 Robert Tseng: Sure.
7 00:01:55.450 ⇒ 00:02:07.899 Elizabeth Young: main reason, you know, was to connect him, but let me see if he can join. So, the major question that he had is, you know, we’re a company that,
8 00:02:07.980 ⇒ 00:02:16.310 Elizabeth Young: our product can change pretty drastically, you know, within the course of, like, a week or two weeks.
9 00:02:16.400 ⇒ 00:02:21.000 Elizabeth Young: And I’m just wondering how you’re… you guys,
10 00:02:21.340 ⇒ 00:02:32.120 Elizabeth Young: you know, deal with that, as I remember you saying that, you know, you kind of give us a template, really, to work on, but yeah, if you could just speak to that a bit.
11 00:02:32.830 ⇒ 00:02:41.179 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so I think, yeah, I kind of was stressing that, when we’re doing this tracking, I mean, there’s…
12 00:02:42.400 ⇒ 00:02:55.229 Robert Tseng: This… this event data design process is important because we help to define… even if, like, the features change, like, the milestones don’t change as much, unless you’re eliminating entire workflows.
13 00:02:55.230 ⇒ 00:03:03.180 Robert Tseng: So obviously we’d start with something that’s pretty evergreen, like your onboarding or experience, or whatever that looks like.
14 00:03:03.770 ⇒ 00:03:09.929 Robert Tseng: Yeah, that way, if your features change, like, it’s not something that, you know, everything we’ve set up just becomes obsolete.
15 00:03:09.930 ⇒ 00:03:25.220 Robert Tseng: That said, like, when we do kind of set it up for those initial workflows, you will get the template for, like, how… if you, you know, if the product team wanted to inherit it and run it themselves, they could… they could continue to do that for… as… as you’re expanding your tracking spec.
16 00:03:25.560 ⇒ 00:03:35.320 Robert Tseng: So I think that’s… that’s kind of how we deal with change management on the event data side. And there’s… you’re not gonna lose much data,
17 00:03:35.520 ⇒ 00:03:51.729 Robert Tseng: Well, I guess it depends on, like, what you decide to implement. If you do the SDK, the Amplitude or Mixpanel SDK out of the box, then it’s basically just an auto-tracker, and every page view click and, you know, form submission button press is all kind of be recorded.
18 00:03:51.730 ⇒ 00:04:01.500 Robert Tseng: It just won’t… it’ll be kind of just messy. So, without you kind of going in and actually, once again, like, picking out, like, the important
19 00:04:01.520 ⇒ 00:04:18.680 Robert Tseng: milestones, it would be hard to… it’d be hard to navigate. So, it is kind of always just gonna be… like, the way that we set it up is supposed to not change as much, but as your product evolves, or we expand tracking, like, this is meant to be, like, an iterative process.
20 00:04:18.990 ⇒ 00:04:31.019 Anmol Singh: How do we… sorry about… sorry about being late, also. Pleasure meeting you. I have a quick question in regards to that. So, the expectation, actually, with us is our product is going to evolve pretty quickly.
21 00:04:31.020 ⇒ 00:04:31.430 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
22 00:04:31.430 ⇒ 00:04:33.210 Anmol Singh: I would even say, like.
23 00:04:33.710 ⇒ 00:04:40.609 Anmol Singh: On… sometimes even, like, 2-3 weeks down the line, there’s a lot of changes that are made to our product, just because we’re such a young company.
24 00:04:40.760 ⇒ 00:04:53.160 Anmol Singh: And we’re a data platform, so there’s requirements that are always evolving. So, if it is a template that’s iterative, that allows for iteration, how do we go about coordinating that with your team? Is that…
25 00:04:53.810 ⇒ 00:04:58.710 Anmol Singh: So how does that process work? Is it an extra charge? How does that all… how does that all work?
26 00:04:59.060 ⇒ 00:05:18.039 Robert Tseng: Yeah, well, this initial kind of, like, sprint, we do a fixed price, just to kind of… we know that this is, like, the minimum amount of work for you to see the returns that we are fairly confident you can get. And then after that, it’s kind of, whatever the ongoing, we prefer retainers, so we do work with other… I don’t know exactly what stage you’re at, but
27 00:05:18.040 ⇒ 00:05:20.039 Robert Tseng: you know, post-Series A startups that are
28 00:05:20.040 ⇒ 00:05:34.790 Robert Tseng: You know, we work on, you know, two-week sprints with them. So, sometimes they’re launching features every week, and we’ve pretty much… how product analytics evolves is that it becomes an experimentation motion. So every time we launch a new feature, you are able to see, kind of, like.
29 00:05:35.110 ⇒ 00:05:46.440 Robert Tseng: The, the, you know, whether or not it drove engagement, whether it drives revenue, whatever we end up deciding are to be, like, the major, like, signals that you want to see from a feature launch.
30 00:05:46.440 ⇒ 00:06:08.029 Robert Tseng: And, like, we kind of work in parallel with your product team to be able to… to launch that. So that’s… that’s… those are the relationships that, you know, we… are… are the ones that are thriving. You know, I… I think obviously there’s a range of, like, what that looks like with other… with other clients, but, that’s… that’s, like, we… I… I do think that that’s not a…
31 00:06:08.090 ⇒ 00:06:09.030 Robert Tseng: like a…
32 00:06:09.160 ⇒ 00:06:14.139 Robert Tseng: bug to this process, it’s more of, like, this is why… this is why we do it this way.
33 00:06:17.290 ⇒ 00:06:26.690 Elizabeth Young: Yeah, great. And Amal, since, this is your first time meeting Robert, do you have any questions for him? Do you have.
34 00:06:28.370 ⇒ 00:06:35.779 Anmol Singh: No, I think I got a good brief from Liz, Robert, and I think the main concern I had was what we’re addressing right now, is…
35 00:06:36.200 ⇒ 00:06:45.770 Anmol Singh: when our product evolves, how do we coordinate with your team? It sounds like that’s something that you guys are… it’s not a roadblock in the process and partnership, it’s something that you guys can provide support for.
36 00:06:46.040 ⇒ 00:06:47.100 Robert Tseng: Totally, yeah.
37 00:06:47.750 ⇒ 00:06:49.210 Elizabeth Young: Understood.
38 00:06:49.670 ⇒ 00:06:57.290 Anmol Singh: And actually, can I… like, I don’t know if I’ve seen the template itself, but Liz, did you forward that over to me, just so I can see how that looks like from…
39 00:06:57.570 ⇒ 00:06:59.840 Anmol Singh: From that templatized perspective?
40 00:07:00.250 ⇒ 00:07:05.200 Elizabeth Young: Yeah, well, we would make the template, essentially, and Robert, correct me if I’m wrong, but .
41 00:07:05.200 ⇒ 00:07:05.860 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
42 00:07:05.860 ⇒ 00:07:08.050 Elizabeth Young: We would spend most time with…
43 00:07:08.050 ⇒ 00:07:31.760 Elizabeth Young: brain forge the agency to, kind of really make sure we’re doing one user flow correctly with them, so we would really ideate around that, kind of QA and, and, you know, change and stuff, and then once we get that first user flow to a good place, then that itself would be the template for future.
44 00:07:32.430 ⇒ 00:07:33.600 Anmol Singh: I got it, okay.
45 00:07:33.600 ⇒ 00:07:34.220 Elizabeth Young: Yeah.
46 00:07:34.220 ⇒ 00:07:35.030 Anmol Singh: Makes sense.
47 00:07:35.620 ⇒ 00:07:43.759 Robert Tseng: And I guess if you haven’t sent Animal the link to our call, I guess there’s… you could… you could see… I did flash a couple of the artifacts that, like.
48 00:07:44.160 ⇒ 00:07:46.769 Robert Tseng: It’s… it’s something fancy, it’s like a…
49 00:07:46.890 ⇒ 00:08:06.329 Robert Tseng: it’s like a fig jam kind of exercise that we do to really workshop through what the… designing what that… what those workflows should be, and what… what we will… what we will just… will track, and then we turn it into a tracking spec that your engineering team can then implement, or if you decide to, you know, use my team to implement, like, we build off of the same thing. So, yeah.
50 00:08:06.980 ⇒ 00:08:13.979 Elizabeth Young: Yeah, maybe if you have them handy, Robert, if not, that’s fine, but just, like, one of those, like, tracking, spreadsheets that you had, or, like.
51 00:08:13.980 ⇒ 00:08:14.790 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
52 00:08:14.790 ⇒ 00:08:16.850 Elizabeth Young: Jam kind of thing, just to show them all.
53 00:08:16.990 ⇒ 00:08:18.110 Robert Tseng: Sure.
54 00:08:18.570 ⇒ 00:08:20.490 Robert Tseng: So…
55 00:08:25.400 ⇒ 00:08:33.130 Anmol Singh: And if we do proceed, do you start off with, like, a discovery first to learn more about what our needs are, or how does it work from an initiation standpoint?
56 00:08:33.270 ⇒ 00:08:35.780 Robert Tseng: I think this is part of our discovery, yeah.
57 00:08:37.690 ⇒ 00:08:38.419 Anmol Singh: Awesome.
58 00:08:39.970 ⇒ 00:08:46.020 Robert Tseng: Sorry, I need to pull it up. We have this one, and…
59 00:08:53.480 ⇒ 00:09:12.120 Robert Tseng: Okay, so, yeah, I’ll pause this real quick, two things. So, this is, like, the event data. It’s just, like, a stickies kind of exercise, where we break down every kind of activity in… we call events activities, because that’s ultimately what you’re trying to do, finding the intent behind, like, the actual action.
60 00:09:12.350 ⇒ 00:09:21.440 Robert Tseng: And so if we picked, like, this sample one we built for Miro, it’s like, okay, like, their core feature is, like, creating boards. And so,
61 00:09:21.440 ⇒ 00:09:33.469 Robert Tseng: yeah, there’s a lot of… it’s a pretty complicated platform, but, you know, you’re joining… you’re joining a project, you’re creating a board, you’re updating a board, viewing it, sharing it, and then deletion. So, that’s, like, that full board workflow.
62 00:09:33.470 ⇒ 00:09:42.410 Robert Tseng: And so those are the… those are all disparate events that you would be tracking. The… the next layer for that are kind of the properties, or…
63 00:09:42.410 ⇒ 00:09:56.609 Robert Tseng: pretty much just metadata that you would be attracting along with these buttons, or with these events. So whether those are highlighting the buttons, the form submissions, you know, and I guess every… every product has its own kind of unique.
64 00:09:56.940 ⇒ 00:10:08.059 Robert Tseng: thing, what they want to log on an event. But yeah, we would kind of build out something like this for your product. We’ll map out as much as we can in the session, but really focus on, like, what are, like, the one or two
65 00:10:08.480 ⇒ 00:10:12.679 Robert Tseng: Like, core, evergreen things that are most unlikely to change.
66 00:10:12.930 ⇒ 00:10:28.069 Robert Tseng: We’ll build that out, translate that into a tracking spec here, which basically is kind of like a more structured view of what we have here, with clear definitions and kind of an implementation plan for your engineers.
67 00:10:28.070 ⇒ 00:10:40.690 Robert Tseng: And, like, then, you know, we… they would implement it, we would test it, like, my team would QA it, make sure that it’s flowing in through Mixpanel correctly, and then we would build out the reporting, from there.
68 00:10:40.690 ⇒ 00:10:47.620 Anmol Singh: Okay, this is really helpful. So, there’s, like, something that we could do in this format is take each tool, break down.
69 00:10:47.780 ⇒ 00:10:50.559 Robert Tseng: Each activity that you can perform in the tool.
70 00:10:50.560 ⇒ 00:10:55.430 Anmol Singh: And then those are what can be logged in Mixed Fanel individually. My question for you, Robert, is…
71 00:10:55.530 ⇒ 00:11:06.740 Anmol Singh: Let’s say one of those activities… so, we have about 7 tools, 7 or 8, and each of those would have roughly, I want to say, 10 to 15 activities.
72 00:11:07.180 ⇒ 00:11:07.500 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
73 00:11:07.500 ⇒ 00:11:20.699 Anmol Singh: And most of them are evergreen, but like I said, we can see it evolving to where some of them get combined, some of them get removed, but if we were to make any changes to those activities, we could just simply
74 00:11:22.080 ⇒ 00:11:27.150 Anmol Singh: We can just simply coordinate with you to make sure that they get tracked accordingly, correct? Or get updated accordingly.
75 00:11:27.260 ⇒ 00:11:31.320 Anmol Singh: And it would just be, like, updating this data design that we have here to mimic that.
76 00:11:31.890 ⇒ 00:11:49.360 Robert Tseng: Yeah, we would make sure that this tracking plan is the source of truth for all live events. Anything that gets archived, we would kind of, like, get rid of. Like, yeah, this is, like, you know, even within Mixpanel, they have their own kind of… I forgot what they call it within their product, but every one of these tools has, like, their own version of a tracking plan.
77 00:11:49.440 ⇒ 00:12:03.629 Robert Tseng: I think that, you know, you just have the most control and flexibility if you kind of just build your own spreadsheet, and it’s no… it’s just better than what these products have built. So, I would recommend just continuing to maintain it yourself.
78 00:12:04.450 ⇒ 00:12:19.289 Elizabeth Young: Yeah, it might get to the point when, our engineering team implements enough of these that they kind of get it, and can update the tracking plan on their own, and yeah, kind of continue, yeah, flow.
79 00:12:19.640 ⇒ 00:12:19.960 Robert Tseng: Yep.
80 00:12:20.070 ⇒ 00:12:25.750 Elizabeth Young: Okay, cool. Any other questions, Amal? Otherwise, I think, yeah.
81 00:12:25.750 ⇒ 00:12:26.859 Anmol Singh: I think I’m good for mine.
82 00:12:26.860 ⇒ 00:12:31.450 Elizabeth Young: Yeah, yeah, thanks for hopping on again with us, Robert. Like I said, we’ll make…
83 00:12:31.450 ⇒ 00:12:32.149 Anmol Singh: Store notice as well.
84 00:12:32.150 ⇒ 00:12:35.620 Elizabeth Young: end of the week, but, yeah, we were Yeah.
85 00:12:35.620 ⇒ 00:12:46.900 Robert Tseng: I know you’re trying to make a decision this week, so any other questions, let me know, I’ll jump on. I think it’d be great to work with your team. So, good to meet you as well, and Mole. Sorry I didn’t really introduce myself at the start.
86 00:12:46.900 ⇒ 00:12:48.889 Anmol Singh: Oh, you’re gonna be late, so thank you.
87 00:12:49.080 ⇒ 00:12:52.489 Elizabeth Young: Yeah, yeah, and stay warm, I know you’re in New York as well, so…
88 00:12:52.490 ⇒ 00:12:54.390 Robert Tseng: Yeah, yeah, I’m,
89 00:12:54.800 ⇒ 00:13:00.950 Robert Tseng: I like to work with the windows open, but it’s also cold, so I’m wearing a beanie, but… Cold right now.
90 00:13:00.950 ⇒ 00:13:05.609 Elizabeth Young: cold right now. Yeah, okay. We’ll take care. I’ll talk to you soon. Bye.
91 00:13:05.610 ⇒ 00:13:06.650 Robert Tseng: Okay, thank you, bye.