Meeting Title: PM Planning／Retro Date: 2025-03-24 Meeting participants: Aakash Tandel, Uttam Kumaran, Amber Lin
WEBVTT
1 00:01:02.330 ⇒ 00:01:03.590 Uttam Kumaran: Hello!
2 00:01:04.158 ⇒ 00:01:06.429 Amber Lin: Oh, you did so
3 00:01:06.430 ⇒ 00:01:07.030 Uttam Kumaran: Hi! How are you?
4 00:01:07.770 ⇒ 00:01:09.810 Amber Lin: I’m good trying to
5 00:01:09.810 ⇒ 00:01:10.740 Uttam Kumaran: What?
6 00:01:10.740 ⇒ 00:01:12.560 Amber Lin: You did so much today
7 00:01:13.197 ⇒ 00:01:21.720 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, I know I had a wonderful afternoon like sitting in notion sitting in linear. It’s been great. I’m like locked in
8 00:01:21.940 ⇒ 00:01:22.680 Amber Lin: That’s great.
9 00:01:24.710 ⇒ 00:01:43.549 Amber Lin: Yeah. I’ve been in the ABC linear. I’ve been trying to figure out what works best, because for me, I’ve been trying to start from the client request. So, starting from the user stories of what did they want? And then breaking it down to tasks. But now that I’ve done that I’ve ran into the problem as you commented
10 00:01:43.980 ⇒ 00:01:48.919 Amber Lin: this. The individual tests are not great.
11 00:01:49.240 ⇒ 00:02:03.299 Amber Lin: So I was just wondering what you think is the best, like hierarchies formatting. It’s just anything you can have to say a little little bit trying to piece things together. So it’s a little bit chaotic.
12 00:02:06.240 ⇒ 00:02:09.876 Uttam Kumaran: That’s fine I have. I feel like I have all the answers
13 00:02:10.479 ⇒ 00:02:16.520 Uttam Kumaran: for you in general. Let me let me just move to a new area.
14 00:02:34.660 ⇒ 00:02:36.930 Uttam Kumaran: Can you still hear me
15 00:02:37.310 ⇒ 00:02:37.930 Amber Lin: Yeah.
16 00:02:41.341 ⇒ 00:02:50.630 Uttam Kumaran: So for the most part, I feel like you did a pretty good job. I mean our initial, our my initial ask is just like make sure everything.
17 00:02:51.190 ⇒ 00:02:54.189 Uttam Kumaran: Yep, everything, you know. One form
18 00:02:54.190 ⇒ 00:02:55.999 Amber Lin: Now I can’t hear you
19 00:02:56.160 ⇒ 00:03:01.490 Amber Lin: oops if if your audio is still there, but it it trickles in and out
20 00:03:03.300 ⇒ 00:03:04.709 Uttam Kumaran: Okay. Wait. One second.
21 00:03:28.330 ⇒ 00:03:29.399 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, how about now?
22 00:03:29.590 ⇒ 00:03:31.010 Amber Lin: Yes, I can.
23 00:03:31.160 ⇒ 00:03:31.930 Amber Lin: Yep.
24 00:03:35.260 ⇒ 00:03:40.939 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, just tell me if it’s like gets louder. So
25 00:03:42.190 ⇒ 00:03:59.589 Uttam Kumaran: let me let me just share my screen. And yeah, so I spent a lot of time thinking about how things are organized. The nice, all these Pm tools like will give you, like several options. The number one thing that I want us to focus on is alignment across teams. And making sure that
26 00:03:59.840 ⇒ 00:04:04.900 Uttam Kumaran: for Pm’s, you guys are not spending hours in linear
27 00:04:05.060 ⇒ 00:04:07.449 Uttam Kumaran: like, I actually want to start to
28 00:04:07.760 ⇒ 00:04:18.980 Uttam Kumaran: reduce the time that everybody spends in linear to it’s like lowest amount possible, because linear is not work like linear is just tracking the work, and like
29 00:04:18.980 ⇒ 00:04:19.490 Amber Lin: Villain!
30 00:04:21.000 ⇒ 00:04:21.999 Uttam Kumaran: I was thinking
31 00:04:22.000 ⇒ 00:04:29.090 Amber Lin: Yeah, I was like, if it as long as it works, we can function with the almost bare minimum
32 00:04:29.450 ⇒ 00:04:30.170 Uttam Kumaran: Exit
33 00:04:30.760 ⇒ 00:04:53.175 Uttam Kumaran: exactly. But also it’s like a it’s a home for accountability for me, right? Like, if someone puts that they’re going to take on a piece of work, and it’s gonna be due on a certain date. And it’s gonna have Xyz in it. That’s our expectation, right? This is our group expectations. And so that’s sort of like what I’m trying to go for, even on, even on on my end. Let me
34 00:04:57.300 ⇒ 00:05:04.079 Uttam Kumaran: share cool. So you can see this
35 00:05:07.730 ⇒ 00:05:11.284 Uttam Kumaran: So basically, what I look at is one
36 00:05:12.250 ⇒ 00:05:38.330 Uttam Kumaran: I haven’t worked on templated issues. But the AI team is pretty good, like, I’m not worried about them knowing what to do. They’re pretty good. So the data team is like struggling a lot with that. So I spent as much today as like getting their stuff together. But basically what I want, what I the 1st thing I did is I just just broadly look at all the tickets and a couple of things I’m looking for, one is I’m trying to see who has. You know the most
37 00:05:38.520 ⇒ 00:05:41.500 Uttam Kumaran: stuff. So if I slice by like a signee.
38 00:05:41.790 ⇒ 00:05:46.910 Uttam Kumaran: I noticed one. There’s a lot of stuff like unassigned right? So if I go ahead and like filter
39 00:05:47.658 ⇒ 00:05:51.819 Uttam Kumaran: unassigned, it looks like your you have a lot of tasks.
40 00:05:53.270 ⇒ 00:05:56.059 Uttam Kumaran: which is fine. I think that’s fine. Casey is not
41 00:05:58.000 ⇒ 00:06:00.309 Amber Lin: A lot of them are done, though, so
42 00:06:00.310 ⇒ 00:06:02.922 Uttam Kumaran: A lot of them are done, so I can even filter
43 00:06:11.880 ⇒ 00:06:12.610 Amber Lin: Hmm!
44 00:06:13.170 ⇒ 00:06:16.149 Amber Lin: Does it, Count Dantas? I don’t know
45 00:06:17.520 ⇒ 00:06:19.220 Uttam Kumaran: Their status.
46 00:06:19.480 ⇒ 00:06:22.330 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. So like, you have a lot of these that are done.
47 00:06:22.460 ⇒ 00:06:24.409 Uttam Kumaran: and I can even go here. And I can say
48 00:06:25.470 ⇒ 00:06:34.099 Amber Lin: Show none completed issues on the drop. Down there we go.
49 00:06:34.360 ⇒ 00:06:34.870 Uttam Kumaran: Cool.
50 00:06:35.330 ⇒ 00:06:39.800 Uttam Kumaran: So, oh, I think, okay, so it won’t show up here. But this is fine
51 00:06:41.710 ⇒ 00:06:42.750 Uttam Kumaran: So
52 00:06:43.050 ⇒ 00:06:47.900 Uttam Kumaran: what I’m looking to see here is like, okay, let me just get a broad overview. If I’m like fresh. This team
53 00:06:47.900 ⇒ 00:06:48.430 Amber Lin: That would be
54 00:06:48.430 ⇒ 00:06:49.419 Uttam Kumaran: Who’s doing what
55 00:06:50.110 ⇒ 00:06:57.125 Uttam Kumaran: I I my initial thing is, I’d be surprised if Casey’s working all 4 of these, and they’re all in progress
56 00:06:57.670 ⇒ 00:06:58.570 Amber Lin: Bye.
57 00:06:58.570 ⇒ 00:07:01.830 Uttam Kumaran: So my number, my number 1 point is, gonna be
58 00:07:01.990 ⇒ 00:07:11.960 Uttam Kumaran: one. What is he actually like? What is he actually working on? The only thing I saw come out today. Is this so these all truly like still in progress? If they are, then I’m looking at like, okay, what
59 00:07:12.780 ⇒ 00:07:30.839 Uttam Kumaran: like, what’s what it. What is this? So it’s part of a dashboard task. He probably has to make a Pr to make sure this is in the dashboard, or create the data. So I I don’t see any updates from him on here. Additionally, I don’t see any due dates, right? So of course, we have cycles, which means everything in a cycle should get done by Friday
60 00:07:31.330 ⇒ 00:07:46.169 Uttam Kumaran: So so my assumption here is all this stuff is going to be done by Friday. That’s what I want to make sure is the assumption across everybody that Casey knows that all this stuff is due Friday, but I will be surprised if he’s actually working on all these 4 in parallel
61 00:07:46.170 ⇒ 00:07:48.210 Amber Lin: Not all of them not in parallel.
62 00:07:49.420 ⇒ 00:07:51.140 Amber Lin: Some of them are work
63 00:07:51.140 ⇒ 00:07:51.779 Uttam Kumaran: No, I don’t.
64 00:07:51.780 ⇒ 00:07:52.700 Amber Lin: Paused.
65 00:07:52.830 ⇒ 00:07:56.379 Amber Lin: Yeah, I can. I can run through all of them. So
66 00:07:56.913 ⇒ 00:08:07.899 Amber Lin: expected answer is, bring to us this one we talk about in the morning. That’s the 1st 2. Yes, 3, rd one is pause to focus on the 1st 2. The 4th is
67 00:08:08.250 ⇒ 00:08:12.469 Amber Lin: is also important, but not started.
68 00:08:14.630 ⇒ 00:08:17.300 Uttam Kumaran: Okay. Then I’m just gonna move this back here
69 00:08:22.060 ⇒ 00:08:25.110 Uttam Kumaran: And then the Google Chat integration like, what are we?
70 00:08:25.630 ⇒ 00:08:26.520 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, what are we waiting
71 00:08:26.520 ⇒ 00:08:37.850 Amber Lin: For the trainer bought. It’s paused because I I think he’s working on the real dashboard for the Csr Bot. But he was working on this. So it is in progress. But it’s not
72 00:08:38.059 ⇒ 00:08:39.039 Amber Lin: today.
73 00:08:39.570 ⇒ 00:08:40.929 Amber Lin: If that makes sense
74 00:08:41.429 ⇒ 00:08:42.029 Uttam Kumaran: Okay?
75 00:08:42.869 ⇒ 00:08:51.309 Uttam Kumaran: So then, so then, it seems like all 3 of these. So I I guess my question is, has he made any? Has he made any progress on this item
76 00:08:53.550 ⇒ 00:08:54.490 Amber Lin: Don’t know
77 00:08:56.280 ⇒ 00:09:03.699 Uttam Kumaran: Okay? So that’s a question that’s a question to ask and stand up is like, are all these truly active? Right? Similarly, for this one.
78 00:09:04.574 ⇒ 00:09:07.730 Uttam Kumaran: This is a sub issue of this broader.
79 00:09:07.830 ⇒ 00:09:19.539 Uttam Kumaran: this broader ticket, which I feel like, yeah, we have. We have one piece here that’s optimized response. Time and accuracy improve average response time. These 2 seem like duplicates
80 00:09:19.540 ⇒ 00:09:24.429 Amber Lin: Oh, yeah, I yeah, I haven’t cleaned them. I’m sorry I moved in under the same task
81 00:09:24.430 ⇒ 00:09:25.010 Uttam Kumaran: Fine.
82 00:09:25.010 ⇒ 00:09:25.550 Amber Lin: Fine.
83 00:09:26.010 ⇒ 00:09:28.259 Uttam Kumaran: So how about I? Go ahead and just I’ll just delete this one
84 00:09:28.260 ⇒ 00:09:29.550 Amber Lin: Yeah, just delete that.
85 00:09:31.646 ⇒ 00:09:37.420 Amber Lin: The lead, the delete you have to click in linear, which sometimes gets a little annoying.
86 00:09:38.530 ⇒ 00:09:39.220 Amber Lin: But
87 00:09:39.220 ⇒ 00:09:45.219 Uttam Kumaran: And then this one like, if it’s just one sub issue, you might as well
88 00:09:50.430 ⇒ 00:09:54.609 Uttam Kumaran: Next slide like you might as well just have one ticket
89 00:09:55.010 ⇒ 00:09:56.970 Amber Lin: That’s true. That’s true.
90 00:09:57.660 ⇒ 00:10:19.420 Amber Lin: Yeah, I was working down from the user what they want ultimately. And then I split them down to a few user stories, but I do realize some of them are just directly one task. So I suppose for them we can make them more just one ticket in general. But I was wondering.
91 00:10:20.350 ⇒ 00:10:28.250 Amber Lin: how are we going to determine the hierarchies? Because, as you said, some of them are just really big, that it could be a project.
92 00:10:28.900 ⇒ 00:10:30.930 Amber Lin: But technically, our project is just
93 00:10:30.930 ⇒ 00:10:37.830 Uttam Kumaran: So when so, yeah, so project you could should consider that will span multiple cycles
94 00:10:41.742 ⇒ 00:10:47.480 Uttam Kumaran: So if you have tasks that will span multiple cycles they should be, they should definitely be a project
95 00:10:48.210 ⇒ 00:10:53.740 Uttam Kumaran: Because something that spans multiple cycles or you should break it down into sub issues, meaning
96 00:10:54.190 ⇒ 00:10:58.739 Uttam Kumaran: Like, you can either go one level lower. But for one of the examples is like, integrate
97 00:10:58.840 ⇒ 00:11:05.110 Uttam Kumaran: integrate the phone data like that. If that’s that’s gonna be like several tickets. Right? So
98 00:11:05.110 ⇒ 00:11:05.580 Amber Lin: Hello!
99 00:11:05.580 ⇒ 00:11:14.030 Uttam Kumaran: Break it down into sub issues. But more than likely you should just create a project around it, because it looks like it’s probably going to span multiple cycles to do that
100 00:11:17.190 ⇒ 00:11:27.839 Uttam Kumaran: But I think this is something we could probably talk to the whole Pm. Team about. How do we want to define projects for my teams. I haven’t really needed to use it for Eden and for Eden and Joby. There.
101 00:11:27.950 ⇒ 00:11:29.440 Uttam Kumaran: They’re using it for sure.
102 00:11:30.610 ⇒ 00:11:31.120 Amber Lin: I see.
103 00:11:31.120 ⇒ 00:11:32.519 Aakash Tandel: Yes, I’m on the call. By the way.
104 00:11:33.130 ⇒ 00:11:33.530 Amber Lin: Hey!
105 00:11:33.930 ⇒ 00:11:34.450 Amber Lin: Gosh!
106 00:11:34.450 ⇒ 00:11:34.765 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
107 00:11:40.370 ⇒ 00:11:40.930 Amber Lin: Yeah.
108 00:11:40.930 ⇒ 00:11:52.779 Uttam Kumaran: So one of the things that I’m I’m also gonna do here is like I wanna make. I I assume you created a lot of these, one of the things that I went and told the engineering team. And I’m talking every bit about it, especially Miguel, is like
109 00:11:53.390 ⇒ 00:11:57.020 Uttam Kumaran: again, like I reiterated. This to them today is that they’re not.
110 00:11:57.150 ⇒ 00:12:06.230 Uttam Kumaran: You’re not their manager, meaning they need to collaborate with you on creating my act. My expectation for Miguel is that he knows what every ticket in here is about.
111 00:12:06.490 ⇒ 00:12:15.349 Uttam Kumaran: and he knows what needs to get done for all these. I guarantee that’s not the case right. He’s probably focused on just these 3. As soon as you probably start talking about these, he was like.
112 00:12:15.910 ⇒ 00:12:16.920 Uttam Kumaran: sure whatever.
113 00:12:17.220 ⇒ 00:12:21.619 Uttam Kumaran: So as him as the engineering leader on the AI side like I’m gonna require
114 00:12:21.880 ⇒ 00:12:23.809 Uttam Kumaran: that he knows all these
115 00:12:24.020 ⇒ 00:12:37.710 Amber Lin: Okay, cause I I created and groomed all of them. Today I could let me schedule a meeting with him to go through that. I think that’ll help to get him to know all of these better
116 00:12:38.530 ⇒ 00:12:41.770 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t think you need a meeting. Just send it to him. I don’t think you need a meeting
117 00:12:41.770 ⇒ 00:12:42.640 Amber Lin: Okay.
118 00:12:45.940 ⇒ 00:12:48.929 Uttam Kumaran: Like he should be able to go in here and make sure
119 00:12:49.200 ⇒ 00:12:55.869 Uttam Kumaran: he should be able to go in here and make sure that all these tickets are have like, very clear like, what needs to happen
120 00:12:56.350 ⇒ 00:12:58.480 Amber Lin: And who, and who the best
121 00:12:58.480 ⇒ 00:13:03.760 Uttam Kumaran: Assignment is right. Like example of
122 00:13:03.760 ⇒ 00:13:13.620 Amber Lin: Of a ticket that’s clearly defined with goals. I bet we have a few of them, maybe not in not in ABC, but maybe in, say, Eden or Javi
123 00:13:14.590 ⇒ 00:13:24.890 Uttam Kumaran: Let’s take a let’s take a look at this one. Right? Integrate into Google chat this, this is like for the trainers, this spot, right? So you you can have simply, like you have the goal here that make the
124 00:13:25.010 ⇒ 00:13:32.870 Uttam Kumaran: train trainer assist bot available chat.
125 00:13:33.050 ⇒ 00:13:37.296 Uttam Kumaran: So here’s where you kind of have to start thinking about like, what are the
126 00:13:38.400 ⇒ 00:13:41.509 Uttam Kumaran: What are the what are the tasks for? This
127 00:13:42.100 ⇒ 00:13:44.210 Uttam Kumaran: So part of this is like.
128 00:13:45.331 ⇒ 00:13:50.800 Uttam Kumaran: create the python file sent to Tim
129 00:13:51.872 ⇒ 00:14:09.180 Uttam Kumaran: Sent to Tim with list of access to login to brainforge@coanteater.com test. The next thing is send test validation
130 00:14:10.070 ⇒ 00:14:12.770 Uttam Kumaran: to product owner.
131 00:14:12.990 ⇒ 00:14:18.690 Uttam Kumaran: There we go, and that’s it. That’s all. This is.
132 00:14:18.860 ⇒ 00:14:22.210 Uttam Kumaran: But right now it’s not clear when this is done.
133 00:14:23.560 ⇒ 00:14:26.620 Uttam Kumaran: and so every ticket needs to have a very clear.
134 00:14:26.980 ⇒ 00:14:36.039 Uttam Kumaran: If you do this, this is marked as done. Another example, optimized response, time and accuracy. This is an endless ticket. Right?
135 00:14:36.180 ⇒ 00:14:40.419 Uttam Kumaran: Meaning, Patrick is, can just work on this for a month. He can work on this for 2 years
136 00:14:40.420 ⇒ 00:14:42.250 Amber Lin: See, and then, and we can’t
137 00:14:42.250 ⇒ 00:14:42.970 Uttam Kumaran: This needs.
138 00:14:44.300 ⇒ 00:14:59.200 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, you can’t track it. So you need to work with Patrick or Miguel to basically say, here’s what an optimized response time and accuracy means right? Maybe this is like too much for one ticket. Maybe these have to be separate tickets, but maybe it’s like cool. We want to hit.
139 00:14:59.530 ⇒ 00:15:02.240 Uttam Kumaran: We want to hit the goal. The ticket should instead be
140 00:15:02.805 ⇒ 00:15:17.899 Uttam Kumaran: average response time of 3 seconds. And then you need the engineering team to tell you what specific tasks they will do that will then mark. This is done within one cycle, right and one cycle for your team at the moment is one week
141 00:15:18.690 ⇒ 00:15:19.420 Amber Lin: Huh!
142 00:15:22.220 ⇒ 00:15:24.339 Uttam Kumaran: See, everything is about constraints.
143 00:15:24.340 ⇒ 00:15:31.149 Amber Lin: I see. So a ticket should just last a cycle, and if it has task
144 00:15:31.150 ⇒ 00:15:31.580 Uttam Kumaran: A month.
145 00:15:31.580 ⇒ 00:15:32.480 Amber Lin: And
146 00:15:32.750 ⇒ 00:15:43.979 Amber Lin: across different cycles. There should be 2 tickets. I I was wondering, should I just keep it as a task, or should I make it a sub issue, but then it will also appear as a ticket. What do you think
147 00:15:47.470 ⇒ 00:15:52.599 Uttam Kumaran: I. It does not matter to me, because at the org level I’m looking at tickets completed.
148 00:15:52.870 ⇒ 00:16:12.063 Uttam Kumaran: so I don’t care if you do as a project. But, like again, this could be a project as long as you know that it’s gonna span multiple cycles, which, if I think it’s pretty comfortable to do that. But again, if it’s like one ticket per cycle, it’s probably not worth creating a project for this.
149 00:16:13.240 ⇒ 00:16:19.670 Uttam Kumaran: like, I would just say like, Hey, Patrick? Patrick’s gonna work on one or 2 tickets related to optimizations
150 00:16:19.960 ⇒ 00:16:23.290 Uttam Kumaran: like what what the optimizations are and the breakdown
151 00:16:23.460 ⇒ 00:16:34.749 Uttam Kumaran: he has to basically fill out. And if you ask if you’ll fill this out with what he’s gonna do. And basically the outcome needs to be proving that the response times hit your expectation, or the accuracy
152 00:16:35.480 ⇒ 00:16:36.210 Amber Lin: Right.
153 00:16:36.972 ⇒ 00:16:39.999 Uttam Kumaran: So they that needs to be done via the dashboard. Most likely.
154 00:16:41.350 ⇒ 00:16:45.420 Uttam Kumaran: So you can create sub issues. You can create just multiple tickets
155 00:16:46.010 ⇒ 00:16:47.960 Uttam Kumaran: that’s up to you guys that’s up to your team.
156 00:16:48.620 ⇒ 00:16:49.280 Amber Lin: Okay.
157 00:16:50.730 ⇒ 00:16:54.389 Uttam Kumaran: To to give you an example of what I did for marketing.
158 00:16:56.450 ⇒ 00:17:08.404 Uttam Kumaran: We have a we have a a default like promotion going on with
159 00:17:09.780 ⇒ 00:17:18.729 Uttam Kumaran: with with default. Right? And so, as part of this, I created this ticket, which is like around actually, this is.
160 00:17:19.430 ⇒ 00:17:43.009 Uttam Kumaran: it’s like A for AI services, one pager. So all of our design assets go through these processes. Requirements. Lo-fi, Mid 5 hi-fi copy, internal user feedback external user feedback accessible for each of these to be done. They have to go through approvals from the design team or from me. And so every single time we do a design asset. It’s gonna go through this process, no matter what.
161 00:17:43.460 ⇒ 00:17:55.019 Uttam Kumaran: So I this. But these don’t need to be projects, because they have 5 of these at a time, and these get crushed in less than one week or 2 weeks. So creating a project for this is too much.
162 00:17:55.580 ⇒ 00:18:13.660 Uttam Kumaran: If we have a if we have, like a partnership where there’s like multi, for example, if we’re like, Hey, expand into new vertical, we need one. Pagers decks marketing. Then it probably warrants a project. But for me, like I’m trying to just keep it simple. This is something that can be accomplished in one cycle. All of these subtasks
163 00:18:13.660 ⇒ 00:18:14.360 Amber Lin: One or 2.
164 00:18:15.640 ⇒ 00:18:16.500 Amber Lin: Okay.
165 00:18:21.270 ⇒ 00:18:22.890 Uttam Kumaran: And the other thing is.
166 00:18:23.010 ⇒ 00:18:31.300 Uttam Kumaran: there are tasks here that may go between Hannah and and ann, for example, Hannah may do Lo-fi that pass to Ann
167 00:18:31.610 ⇒ 00:18:40.039 Uttam Kumaran: for higher, higher fidelity stuff. So you I I but Hannah, is ultimately the person who, I will ask, Is this done?
168 00:18:40.963 ⇒ 00:18:56.939 Uttam Kumaran: And then we have very clear here, like what the acceptance criteria is. So these are, this is like, actually like, really what I’m gonna be looking for, as like. We all agree. When something is done, all of these things should be checked
169 00:18:57.330 ⇒ 00:18:58.230 Amber Lin: I see.
170 00:19:03.890 ⇒ 00:19:05.236 Aakash Tandel: Yeah. Typically,
171 00:19:06.040 ⇒ 00:19:13.920 Aakash Tandel: yeah. So the acceptance criteria amber, I think, is the main thing on a lot of these tickets. That’s probably the main main thing to highlight
172 00:19:14.449 ⇒ 00:19:19.200 Aakash Tandel: because the engineers won’t know when something’s done. And they are looking to
173 00:19:20.230 ⇒ 00:19:25.480 Aakash Tandel: criteria as once I check those boxes that then the ticket is quote, quote, unquote, done.
174 00:19:30.210 ⇒ 00:19:32.400 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I think a big
175 00:19:33.790 ⇒ 00:19:56.109 Amber Lin: blocker, I’m feeling here is that a lot of times? I don’t know what the breakdown is or know what should be done, so I think it’s really helpful that I talk with the engineers. And now that I have Janice on the team, I could directly talk directly, talk to the client about. Okay, what do you accept? Yeah. For the engineers. Okay, what are you going to do? So that’s that’s helpful.
176 00:19:56.110 ⇒ 00:20:11.520 Uttam Kumaran: And and your counterpart. Your counterpart on the AI. Side should be Miguel. You should. It’s again the 3 legged stool. It should be Miguel, and it should be Janice. And then you right, because Janice will tell you the user story.
177 00:20:12.010 ⇒ 00:20:20.209 Uttam Kumaran: Miguel will tell you what how it needs to get done, and who should do it, and then your job is to get it all ticketed and organized, and then
178 00:20:21.030 ⇒ 00:20:24.260 Uttam Kumaran: Accountable for and moving forward. Right? So those are.
179 00:20:25.210 ⇒ 00:20:32.429 Uttam Kumaran: That’s who you should be going for, because even on the AI side, for a lot of these. I don’t. I don’t know all the steps. Miguel is really the
180 00:20:32.800 ⇒ 00:20:36.669 Uttam Kumaran: leader there. He should be working with you on creating
181 00:20:37.130 ⇒ 00:20:37.530 Amber Lin: Okay.
182 00:20:37.530 ⇒ 00:20:43.399 Uttam Kumaran: Understanding the amount of time they should take, understanding the step by step. Breakdown
183 00:20:44.026 ⇒ 00:20:49.189 Uttam Kumaran: and then Janice should be the one also. Janice should most likely be the one verifying the solution.
184 00:20:49.330 ⇒ 00:20:53.359 Uttam Kumaran: So, for example, the trainer assist, it shouldn’t go to Tim
185 00:20:54.010 ⇒ 00:21:04.219 Uttam Kumaran: and get like launched until Janice is able to play around with it, or at least meet in a meeting. Play around with Miguel because you know what’s gonna happen. You’re gonna send it to Tim. It’s gonna get released. It’s gonna get sent back to the kitchen.
186 00:21:04.620 ⇒ 00:21:10.972 Uttam Kumaran: So that’s why you have sort of like multiple steps of alright of like checks.
187 00:21:11.870 ⇒ 00:21:15.400 Uttam Kumaran: so very similarly to marketing team.
188 00:21:15.550 ⇒ 00:21:31.039 Uttam Kumaran: I told them not to run anything by other people in the company without it going through me first, st because I’m gonna take care of all the small stuff grammar, does it? The copy even make sense? Then, when it gets to like someone on the sales team or broader
189 00:21:31.080 ⇒ 00:21:51.959 Uttam Kumaran: people aren’t distracted by focusing on like some small things they can focus on broadly the overall solution. So you have like multiple checkpoints. Right? So one of the checkpoints should be you, then it should be, maybe, Miguel, then it should be Janice. Then it should be broader client, right that way. You’re you’re making sure that everything we ship goes through multiple layers of like accountability.
190 00:21:52.390 ⇒ 00:21:58.540 Uttam Kumaran: and if there is an issue in retro, you can trace it back to one of those steps failing.
191 00:22:01.160 ⇒ 00:22:14.160 Uttam Kumaran: And that’s why you know, one of the things that I worked on for the engineering side, just maybe the last thing I’ll say is on the engineering side one of the things that I worked on for I I put this down in one of these ABC tickets, which is,
192 00:22:15.010 ⇒ 00:22:16.920 Uttam Kumaran: let’s see.
193 00:22:21.690 ⇒ 00:22:24.735 Amber Lin: Yeah, basically, you, it’s it on slack, too.
194 00:22:25.080 ⇒ 00:22:49.799 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, basically, we have steps where we have, like, they need to push a Pr and then the Pr needs to get tested in staging meaning like there has to be some sort of screenshot or some someone has to test and staging. The Pr has then get reviewed by an engineer. Then the data has to get sent to the client. Right? So there’s like 4 or 5 steps between things coming off the stove to like getting to the
195 00:22:49.950 ⇒ 00:22:50.460 Uttam Kumaran: okay
196 00:22:50.460 ⇒ 00:23:06.609 Amber Lin: I see I was. I didn’t think of that before, because I was just thinking, okay, we got we for me. It was like, okay, get this done and then get it out. So knowing the different steps in the approval and having multiple checks to get it, it’s really helpful
197 00:23:06.610 ⇒ 00:23:23.439 Uttam Kumaran: And there’s multiple stakeholders that check right like. And I can review code all day but telling you whether, like the code resulted in the right thing. How I can’t like I don’t know. Like I could look at your code and be like this works. And it’s it’s checked right. And it’s it’s on standard.
198 00:23:23.560 ⇒ 00:23:32.330 Uttam Kumaran: But like, ultimately, you need, you need a you need a product owner to look at like, okay, it’s actually like doing what we requested. Not just that. The code is clean and it’s tested.
199 00:23:32.730 ⇒ 00:23:35.608 Uttam Kumaran: So you have, like, you have, like multiple angles
200 00:23:36.350 ⇒ 00:23:41.100 Amber Lin: I see. Okay, sounds good. I think my last question is.
201 00:23:41.100 ⇒ 00:23:41.910 Uttam Kumaran: I also
202 00:23:42.230 ⇒ 00:23:42.870 Amber Lin: Go ahead!
203 00:23:42.870 ⇒ 00:23:43.979 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, go ahead.
204 00:23:44.480 ⇒ 00:23:45.389 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, my God.
205 00:23:45.390 ⇒ 00:23:51.380 Amber Lin: Is, where do I put the user story? Should the user story be a ticket, or should it be under
206 00:23:52.110 ⇒ 00:23:57.279 Amber Lin: a ticket or under a project like, where should the user story be
207 00:23:57.620 ⇒ 00:23:58.970 Uttam Kumaran: Like this one
208 00:24:00.590 ⇒ 00:24:04.279 Amber Lin: Kind. Yeah, like that one’s
209 00:24:04.280 ⇒ 00:24:06.399 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I mean, I don’t know. Akash. Are you like
210 00:24:06.400 ⇒ 00:24:07.080 Aakash Tandel: Are you super?
211 00:24:07.080 ⇒ 00:24:10.290 Uttam Kumaran: And you needed about like, like ticket.
212 00:24:10.740 ⇒ 00:24:24.159 Uttam Kumaran: like ticket descriptions. I mean, I’ve not, really. I mainly. I’m like, if you can have a goal, a user story, acceptance criteria and notes that’s usually like that’s usually like what I, the 4 things that I expect
213 00:24:24.760 ⇒ 00:24:49.690 Aakash Tandel: Yeah, I’m not super stringent on what we need. But typically I like to provide like a couple. The main things are like the background. So like the anything that kind of brought us up to here. Maybe that’s linking to another ticket. The user story is usually helpful just in the description. So yeah, honestly could be with the goal. Could be somewhere there. And then acceptance criteria kind of the main things
214 00:24:53.170 ⇒ 00:24:54.369 Amber Lin: Okay, should I?
215 00:24:54.760 ⇒ 00:25:02.739 Amber Lin: Because I, when I was using other software a lot of times, the Pm team keeps the user story in a backlog.
216 00:25:02.960 ⇒ 00:25:14.189 Amber Lin: Is that gonna be the cases? Or is the user story just gonna nest in all all our different tickets? Because it does get a little bit confusing when you have both going on as tickets
217 00:25:14.930 ⇒ 00:25:17.409 Aakash Tandel: I’m used to seeing them in the ticket, but
218 00:25:17.410 ⇒ 00:25:18.210 Amber Lin: Okay. Okay.
219 00:25:18.210 ⇒ 00:25:18.779 Aakash Tandel: Yeah, but
220 00:25:18.780 ⇒ 00:25:19.110 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
221 00:25:19.110 ⇒ 00:25:29.679 Aakash Tandel: I don’t think we need to be super prescriptive of it, like if the engineers are all like, Hey, this isn’t helpful, then we don’t need to include that. But I think, for now we can start with stuff like that
222 00:25:30.140 ⇒ 00:25:31.060 Amber Lin: Sounds good
223 00:25:33.310 ⇒ 00:25:38.419 Aakash Tandel: Yeah. And the and the other thing, I think I’ll reiterate that bottom is saying, here is
224 00:25:38.940 ⇒ 00:25:47.552 Aakash Tandel: I think we definitely want to make sure that we have, like an engineering lead on all their projects and sounds like Miguel is the one for ABC,
225 00:25:47.940 ⇒ 00:26:09.350 Aakash Tandel: and that’s just like that’s just gonna be a constant. It’ll be like project manager engineering lead. And then the main client point of contact. And again, that’s your 3 legged stool, your triforce, or whatever you want to call it. But yeah, we definitely want those 3 people to help the the client might not always help group tickets. But the engineering lead should definitely be looking at most of the tickets that are generated as well.
226 00:26:09.360 ⇒ 00:26:18.060 Aakash Tandel: and Robert’s kind of acting as that person on Javi and Eden. So that’s why I kind of didn’t talk about it. But yeah, that is something that’s already kind of happening on those projects.
227 00:26:18.380 ⇒ 00:26:30.170 Amber Lin: I see. For the AI team was pretty clear for pool parts. I would like it to be paused, but I just don’t know how much time he has to be fully aware of all the tickets going on
228 00:26:33.150 ⇒ 00:26:38.499 Aakash Tandel: Yeah. Do you have a a lead or a theoretical lead for that one with him?
229 00:26:40.390 ⇒ 00:26:41.250 Uttam Kumaran: Like I know
230 00:26:41.560 ⇒ 00:26:43.879 Amber Lin: Involved, and Beau only does
231 00:26:43.880 ⇒ 00:26:45.280 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I don’t.
232 00:26:46.060 ⇒ 00:27:11.471 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. It’s like, so basically, like on the data side, right now, the most senior folks are, gonna be me, Robert demolade and aish so I’m pushing away to sort of start to work as engineering leads on everything they touch. I like. I think pious can probably
233 00:27:12.220 ⇒ 00:27:15.070 Uttam Kumaran: do that for a certain type of work
234 00:27:15.653 ⇒ 00:27:23.586 Uttam Kumaran: like on like, in terms of like any sort of thing that goes through analysis, maybe, but the same time, like I don’t know. I feel like
235 00:27:24.560 ⇒ 00:27:28.639 Uttam Kumaran: I feel like it’s it’s probably still gotta be me
236 00:27:30.010 ⇒ 00:27:30.690 Amber Lin: Okay.
237 00:27:30.690 ⇒ 00:27:32.440 Aakash Tandel: Yeah, I was gonna say, for pool parks.
238 00:27:32.440 ⇒ 00:27:38.840 Uttam Kumaran: It also depends. Because because Demo Lade and demote and a data modelers like they’re not.
239 00:27:39.230 ⇒ 00:27:42.989 Uttam Kumaran: They’re not. Gonna give a lot of feedback on like the analysis. That’s not where
240 00:27:42.990 ⇒ 00:27:43.310 Amber Lin: That’s good.
241 00:27:43.310 ⇒ 00:27:44.600 Uttam Kumaran: That is.
242 00:27:45.780 ⇒ 00:27:47.588 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, yeah, sorry. Go ahead. Akash.
243 00:27:47.890 ⇒ 00:28:05.140 Aakash Tandel: Oh, no, I was gonna say, it sounds like on pool parts. The workload is a little slow. So maybe like I mean, you can probably be the project or the engineering lead on that I’m assuming that the workloads light. And then, as we get more work, we can rework allocations and and find someone else who might be a better fit
244 00:28:05.920 ⇒ 00:28:06.700 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
245 00:28:09.430 ⇒ 00:28:24.299 Aakash Tandel: Yeah. And I, I mean, it’s it’s also like Robert is not should not be the engineering lead on anything, either, like neither of you guys should be, but in the in the moment for Javi and for Eden, he’s kind of acting as that. So eventually we’ll pull him off those as well
246 00:28:25.930 ⇒ 00:28:32.030 Uttam Kumaran: Do you? Do you see him more as like product owner there on those 2 clients like.
247 00:28:32.160 ⇒ 00:28:36.059 Uttam Kumaran: because I would say, he’s probably I mean, yeah, go ahead
248 00:28:36.530 ⇒ 00:28:41.970 Aakash Tandel: Yeah, yeah, I can definitely see that. I think with Eden they have so many different people that we
249 00:28:42.280 ⇒ 00:28:46.049 Aakash Tandel: probably have to use Robert as the like, funneler or
250 00:28:46.400 ⇒ 00:28:55.265 Aakash Tandel: person keeping our team on track on what’s like the overall goals, because we just get pinged by so many different people on their end.
251 00:28:56.260 ⇒ 00:29:05.850 Aakash Tandel: and then, yeah, Javi, I have less of. I mean, I would like the I can’t remember the guy’s name. The person he he keeps inviting to the stand ups who doesn’t come
252 00:29:06.120 ⇒ 00:29:10.559 Aakash Tandel: autumn. Ottman. No, I can’t remember his name.
253 00:29:12.110 ⇒ 00:29:19.479 Aakash Tandel: but anyway, that guy, I think he would be great long term product owner. But yeah.
254 00:29:21.090 ⇒ 00:29:26.769 Aakash Tandel: I think, for right now it’s fine as it is, but we’ll likely want to change that. And I know that
255 00:29:27.370 ⇒ 00:29:31.970 Aakash Tandel: demolade and Oish are both on
256 00:29:32.150 ⇒ 00:29:34.740 Aakash Tandel: Jabby and Eden, so we’ll we’ll try to
257 00:29:35.350 ⇒ 00:29:41.480 Aakash Tandel: divvy up there like maybe leadership roles in in whatever way seems the most like natural
258 00:29:44.840 ⇒ 00:29:48.283 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, like, kind of the way I’m thinking about it is like,
259 00:29:48.770 ⇒ 00:29:49.210 Aakash Tandel: Yeah.
260 00:29:49.210 ⇒ 00:29:53.790 Uttam Kumaran: They’re gonna be able to. They’re they’re gonna be able to dictate anything around
261 00:29:54.070 ⇒ 00:30:02.140 Uttam Kumaran: like, what’s the acceptance criteria for like data modeling or data engineering related tasks on the analysis side. It still may come from me or or
262 00:30:02.320 ⇒ 00:30:04.189 Uttam Kumaran: a robber. But, like
263 00:30:04.630 ⇒ 00:30:32.349 Uttam Kumaran: you guys know me like, I’m trying to just shift as much responsibility off as possible. So like I think I spoke with them a lot in a way, too, and I think they’re both down for it. I think, for now it’s okay, like my time spent grooming. This stuff is great, cause I can do this all Async and it helps me sort of give a view of like what we’re all working on. I think over time again, like I think Robert is probably the best pro. I think Robert is, is honestly probably gonna
264 00:30:32.360 ⇒ 00:30:42.920 Uttam Kumaran: be the product owner for Eden for a bit. Here, I think on Javi like, I I wonder if, like we can make that person into a mon.
265 00:30:43.040 ⇒ 00:30:46.739 Uttam Kumaran: and that way it sort of removes Robert from the equation
266 00:30:47.090 ⇒ 00:30:47.780 Aakash Tandel: Yeah. That was
267 00:30:47.780 ⇒ 00:30:53.779 Uttam Kumaran: Janice to the fold already. Yeah, bringing Janice into the fold. Already today I saw close some loops.
268 00:30:54.185 ⇒ 00:31:03.929 Uttam Kumaran: And so like, I want to just double down on as many of those bets as possible where we have someone who is from their side. But that can make the ultimate decision
269 00:31:04.507 ⇒ 00:31:20.559 Uttam Kumaran: that way again, like me and Robert aren’t going anywhere. We’ll just assist, but like we’ll be on more critical stuff versus like waking up and going and like having to manage a lot of this. And then, in terms of like being the engineering lead, like, I still feel comfortable doing that across
270 00:31:20.690 ⇒ 00:31:29.992 Uttam Kumaran: it. It’s gonna be hard for me to request that from away and across all of our clients, because there’s they’re still executing work.
271 00:31:30.500 ⇒ 00:31:56.860 Uttam Kumaran: But over time I think one of them, you know, we’ll start to move more into like management and helping a lot with grooming. But in the meantime, again, if you have any questions on data stuff you should ping them. Their their pass is gonna be at least a 1st pass before it gets to me. Will should get us enough of what we need. They’re both real. They’re both can work under like any constraints and can roll with the punches. Really. Well, of course, our Junior Forks folks is where I’m more concerned.
272 00:31:57.000 ⇒ 00:32:03.580 Uttam Kumaran: or the folks that are sort of disengaged. I like the word disengaged. That’s how we describe it.
273 00:32:03.580 ⇒ 00:32:04.060 Amber Lin: Oh!
274 00:32:04.375 ⇒ 00:32:09.419 Uttam Kumaran: They’re gonna have trouble. They’re always gonna have trouble with tickets. It’s like a very common.
275 00:32:10.040 ⇒ 00:32:36.079 Uttam Kumaran: It’s just a very common sort of like character arc going from Junior to senior is you start to care less about tickets, more about output? And so one of the things I’m doing with all the junior folks is having them take more ownership of things, ask questions, early work with others that way. The blame is not gonna go on the tickets. Tickets is a proxy of like, I just don’t understand what I need to do.
276 00:32:36.405 ⇒ 00:32:40.749 Uttam Kumaran: And you need to just get reps, you know, in the game to kind of see that?
277 00:32:41.124 ⇒ 00:32:45.699 Uttam Kumaran: Because again, as I mentioned, like, we hadn’t didn’t have any tickets for like like 2 years. So
278 00:32:45.830 ⇒ 00:32:48.619 Uttam Kumaran: yeah, that’ll get that’ll get solved
279 00:32:49.020 ⇒ 00:33:00.680 Aakash Tandel: I think I don’t wanna make anyone’s job sound like it’s not complicated. But a lot of the analysis, like data analysis pieces are gonna come from a more like straightforward
280 00:33:00.680 ⇒ 00:33:06.730 Aakash Tandel: context. So I feel like amber. You and I should feel a little bit more comfortable like, I know I feel pretty comfortable
281 00:33:07.003 ⇒ 00:33:31.070 Aakash Tandel: troubleshooting that type of stuff, or like kind of creating stuff creating tickets for that work, just because at the end of the day they’re gonna be asking kind of routine questions about their about their company. And it’s less of like the niche like, I gotta know about this weird you know, this 5 train integration, that’s, you know, doing something strange. So hopefully, you feel a little bit more comfortable. And as you scale up, I feel like that’s usually gonna be the
282 00:33:31.070 ⇒ 00:33:33.469 Aakash Tandel: 1st one that you’ll feel more comfortable with
283 00:33:34.110 ⇒ 00:33:35.360 Amber Lin: Totally. I think
284 00:33:35.550 ⇒ 00:33:41.119 Amber Lin: I’m getting to know a lot more about the AI stuff of how the process works. I’m trying to build
285 00:33:41.250 ⇒ 00:33:56.820 Amber Lin: like do it on my own to know the processes, so I feel a lot more comfortable with the AI stuff, and I think once I have more time, I’ll also look at the data stuff because I also do analysis. But I just did not put did not have time to put into understanding that recently
286 00:33:57.860 ⇒ 00:33:59.070 Aakash Tandel: Yup, totally fair
287 00:33:59.070 ⇒ 00:33:59.650 Amber Lin: Hmm.
288 00:34:00.110 ⇒ 00:34:17.420 Aakash Tandel: Yeah, like some of the work for Eden is mixed panel segment stuff. And like, that’s what I do at my current job. So I was able to to wrap my head around that stuff quickly. But you’ll you’ll get some similar type of sets and reps with the with some of the other product lines that you’re working with.
289 00:34:17.429 ⇒ 00:34:18.729 Amber Lin: Yeah, sounds good.
290 00:34:22.820 ⇒ 00:34:26.013 Uttam Kumaran: So I’m probably just gonna continue spending a little bit more time.
291 00:34:27.090 ⇒ 00:34:29.470 Uttam Kumaran: spending a little bit more time in
292 00:34:29.980 ⇒ 00:34:40.650 Uttam Kumaran: in linear, just making sure through all the tickets. I just went through ABC a little bit. But I’m gonna go through Javi, and Eden right after this.
293 00:34:41.115 ⇒ 00:34:50.574 Uttam Kumaran: Just sort of make sure everything is at least in a like an assigned space. I just want to share one thing while we’re still on topic here. I created
294 00:34:54.000 ⇒ 00:34:55.899 Uttam Kumaran: I created.
295 00:34:57.190 ⇒ 00:35:04.710 Uttam Kumaran: So I created these 6 sort of templates like work templates.
296 00:35:05.426 ⇒ 00:35:13.730 Uttam Kumaran: I think for the most part a lot of stuff will just come into this, and then it sort of can get triaged.
297 00:35:14.565 ⇒ 00:35:15.230 Uttam Kumaran: Again.
298 00:35:16.170 ⇒ 00:35:40.270 Uttam Kumaran: I think this is a kind of like. I think this is probably where I will stop sort of like. I think this is. This is already kind of a lot to do with. I don’t want all of our 3 time to be just all spent in linear, because, again, like, it’s pretty common for that to happen. But I do think that these 6 kind of cover most of the types of data problems that we see. Business question is sort of like.
299 00:35:40.740 ⇒ 00:36:00.659 Uttam Kumaran: like, what like, what are my Amazon subscribe and save numbers? Right. We may not have any clue where to even start. So this is probably like by default. Everything should go into this this way, if someone, anyone, and also anyone on the team should be able to take this. So this is where, on the engineering side, I want to push that
300 00:36:00.850 ⇒ 00:36:24.190 Uttam Kumaran: anyone on the team should be able to at least take any question that lands into here. You know that way. It’s not just like only analysts on these things, like anyone from the team should be able to take these. And it’s pretty clear like what the acceptance criteria is. Again, like this is. This should be enough for people to start going through. And then you’re able to check okay, data. Is there
301 00:36:24.690 ⇒ 00:36:31.220 Uttam Kumaran: build queries validate with stakeholder? I’ll let you guys think through. If these are the right ones.
302 00:36:31.810 ⇒ 00:36:52.429 Uttam Kumaran: I think roughly, that should be fine dashboard request data model request. Basically, once this goes into the analytics workflow, you may say, Okay, cool. We don’t have a subscribe and save data coming in. We have it somewhere in Amazon. We need a model that shows it cool. Then a resulting ticket from a resulting ticket needs to get created. That’s called data model request.
303 00:36:52.520 ⇒ 00:37:08.619 Uttam Kumaran: you know, and it could be related to that one. But it’s a net new ticket. This will solve a lot of the stuff that, like I was talking about, which again, like I, I was pretty clear this morning that I don’t think any of his questions like those are all questions. Those are all questions that he should ask and answer
304 00:37:08.720 ⇒ 00:37:25.350 Uttam Kumaran: within our team like I don’t think those are like you shouldn’t come back to the, to the Pm’s for it. It should either go to the product owner. But a lot of those were questions about tables. So those should go to the to the team or the engineering lead. You know. And so I pushed back a lot on that, because
305 00:37:25.550 ⇒ 00:37:48.329 Uttam Kumaran: it’s like, okay, you have questions about if what this table is, ask someone, the team like, just look left to right and ask. So we’re we’re we’re sort of helping everybody realize that a little bit discrepancy. Investigation. I I don’t know. These may be a lot of like what’s on Eden. But again, we should think about like what needs to happen here. Pipeline requests. This is like all like data, engineering related stuff.
306 00:37:48.420 ⇒ 00:37:58.180 Uttam Kumaran: And then access requests. Again. This is just like someone needs access to something. I’m not sure if we’re gonna track these. But like, I think this is fine.
307 00:37:58.280 ⇒ 00:38:07.109 Uttam Kumaran: I feel like. For the most part we should be good with all these like and anything else you can create like an ad hoc bucket.
308 00:38:07.390 ⇒ 00:38:33.520 Uttam Kumaran: and or just not just not tag it with, not. Don’t use an issue template. I’m not using any labels right now, but I think because I haven’t sort of figured out how to measure the whole org across all teams, and like try to create some like labeling that works. So I just deleted all labeling for now and as soon as I decide, like what I want to measure start to add those. But I think this should cover everything. So in case you have any questions, let me know
309 00:38:34.950 ⇒ 00:38:43.120 Aakash Tandel: No, this looks good, I think. Yeah, if anything is outside of this realm, then it’s probably not something. We’re gonna come across a lot, and then we can just write an ad hoc ticket
310 00:38:48.460 ⇒ 00:38:55.420 Uttam Kumaran: The other thing I’ll share is cycles. And I’ll again. I’m gonna I’ll cherry pick on marketing because I just sort of set things up.
311 00:38:55.780 ⇒ 00:38:59.220 Uttam Kumaran: I’m gonna do 2 week cycles for Ops and for marketing
312 00:38:59.710 ⇒ 00:39:04.729 Uttam Kumaran: 2 week cycle sprints same thing. The goal is to sort of
313 00:39:05.040 ⇒ 00:39:11.040 Uttam Kumaran: throw everything into the sprint that you know you’re going to accomplish in the sprint. So commonly
314 00:39:11.270 ⇒ 00:39:17.919 Uttam Kumaran: people throw too much, and then they only get certain amount done. So our thing over time is to figure out what is our capacity? Right?
315 00:39:18.386 ⇒ 00:39:28.009 Uttam Kumaran: So that’s part of like wanting to work with them with the team is, I went to marketing today, and I and I said, Cool, let me let’s 1st go and look at everything that’s that we’re working on.
316 00:39:28.140 ⇒ 00:39:42.020 Uttam Kumaran: So right now everything on ready for dev in progress to do this is all stuff we’re working on right now. And 1st I went. I went in, made sure that everything, all the tickets, everybody knows what everything is.
317 00:39:42.170 ⇒ 00:39:43.130 Uttam Kumaran: We have
318 00:39:43.790 ⇒ 00:39:48.199 Uttam Kumaran: the right sub issues for each of them. They’re all tracked. Then what I did is say, cool
319 00:39:48.940 ⇒ 00:39:52.960 Uttam Kumaran: is all the stuff here due by the end of next Friday.
320 00:39:53.470 ⇒ 00:39:57.620 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, some of them we kicked out with these. I was like, I don’t care if these are done
321 00:39:58.870 ⇒ 00:40:04.270 Uttam Kumaran: by next Friday. These are lower. Prior, let’s kick them out. So right now everything here
322 00:40:04.830 ⇒ 00:40:10.669 Uttam Kumaran: is in is in this cycle. And then, so what I can do is
323 00:40:10.830 ⇒ 00:40:15.960 Uttam Kumaran: make sure that these are all in the cycle. 2.
324 00:40:27.340 ⇒ 00:40:32.582 Uttam Kumaran: So then what we can do is I can actually go into this cycle here
325 00:40:33.930 ⇒ 00:40:42.689 Uttam Kumaran: here. And I could take a look at like what we, what we scoped. Which is this much? We scope 31 tickets.
326 00:40:42.980 ⇒ 00:40:47.420 Uttam Kumaran: We started 13, and there’s there’s 8 done right.
327 00:40:48.019 ⇒ 00:40:57.790 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know I haven’t. I don’t know what capacity is. Necessarily. Maybe that’s something to do with the employees, but it’s a nice view of like cool. We took on X amount of work.
328 00:40:58.270 ⇒ 00:41:02.399 Uttam Kumaran: So by around by next Monday we got we should be around halfway.
329 00:41:03.002 ⇒ 00:41:08.109 Uttam Kumaran: And so that’s sort of like what I’ll be looking at. What this is showing on your left is showing, pacing right?
330 00:41:08.230 ⇒ 00:41:10.680 Uttam Kumaran: It’s it. Basically because we started
331 00:41:10.780 ⇒ 00:41:14.209 Uttam Kumaran: today. And some like a bunch of stuff got done today.
332 00:41:14.350 ⇒ 00:41:18.779 Uttam Kumaran: It’s like, Oh, cool. We’re like, we, we started
333 00:41:19.010 ⇒ 00:41:27.899 Uttam Kumaran: 13. And it’s basically trying to show that like somewhere around here, we should, we should hit them all our like starting. Basically.
334 00:41:28.070 ⇒ 00:41:55.509 Uttam Kumaran: I mean, meaning we started everything and then completed, should drag behind it. But this is what I want to look at across the whole team, which, with all teams which is like we take on a certain amount of work. The thing with marketing and operations is, we’re not going to have a we may not have as much ad hoc as you guys do on the data side or the AI side meaning on Eden and Javi, you may see that like 20 to 40% of your work comes mid sprint.
335 00:41:55.710 ⇒ 00:42:18.790 Uttam Kumaran: so the goal is not to say nothing comes in mid sprint, although that is like part of the initiative is, think about what you can kick to the following cycle. But you want to make sure that you have breathing room for those. So. And again, Akash, I’m telling you a bunch of stuff, you know, but I think for Amber, it’s helpful to know that you need to know that, like not everybody’s booked to the gills like people. People need to have a couple like
336 00:42:18.970 ⇒ 00:42:27.960 Uttam Kumaran: of like at least a day. 20%. Which of of a of 10 days is 2 days. So they need to have like 2 days worth of just like
337 00:42:28.290 ⇒ 00:42:47.080 Uttam Kumaran: unbooked time, meaning, if something comes up, you can slot it in and it can get executed same week data. This is a constant problem, right? Because Javi or someone will have a red, alert thing. The 1st job is to understand is this a red alert. If it is, then it needs to get triage assigned and and done.
338 00:42:47.690 ⇒ 00:42:51.460 Uttam Kumaran: The problem with both those clients is, we’ve been sort of running every day as red, alert.
339 00:42:51.860 ⇒ 00:43:02.110 Uttam Kumaran: So one of the things we want to measure is when you create an issue, you can actually go and create an issue, and we’ll be able to measure inter cycle new tickets, meaning tickets that came up
340 00:43:02.290 ⇒ 00:43:04.970 Uttam Kumaran: and were created within a cycle due in the cycle.
341 00:43:05.800 ⇒ 00:43:12.329 Uttam Kumaran: That way we’ll get a measure of that? True? Is it? 20% is a 40%. And like, is that good or bad? Right?
342 00:43:13.490 ⇒ 00:43:16.430 Uttam Kumaran: So that’s kind of everything around around cycles.
343 00:43:18.690 ⇒ 00:43:23.900 Aakash Tandel: Yeah, that that all makes sense to me. And yeah, I think it’s it’s a good way to
344 00:43:24.160 ⇒ 00:43:51.029 Aakash Tandel: kind of organize our work. I think. The one thing that will help this along is gonna be some roadmap stuff. So we kind of know what group of work should be coming up next to what should be waited. You know. What should we wait for in like a month, or you know the next 2 sprints, or whatever? So amber as we build out roadmaps that’ll be helpful for this type of thing. But yeah, I definitely feel like on Javi and Eden. I feel like right now.
345 00:43:51.394 ⇒ 00:43:59.590 Aakash Tandel: We’re just doing everything all at once. So it’s kind of complicated to see what’s happening. But yeah, this is a good good thing to kind of keep track of
346 00:44:01.540 ⇒ 00:44:08.799 Uttam Kumaran: And is, does the roadmap happen like? Is that here? And you have projects, and then you sort of see the oh, okay, like timeline
347 00:44:08.800 ⇒ 00:44:17.440 Aakash Tandel: Yeah, if you look at Eden’s project timeline, that one is what we pulled from.
348 00:44:18.130 ⇒ 00:44:18.940 Aakash Tandel: Didn’t?
349 00:44:22.560 ⇒ 00:44:32.129 Aakash Tandel: yeah, this is what we pulled from Robert’s figma. So it’s kinda a lot of existing stuff. But this is probably the
350 00:44:32.590 ⇒ 00:44:43.109 Aakash Tandel: the way that it’ll make sense for us to pull in like issues. And maybe even just buckets. Or maybe you can pull a full project in if it’s just a 2 week project
351 00:44:43.512 ⇒ 00:44:46.337 Aakash Tandel: but I’ll I’ll yeah. We’ll have to figure that out.
352 00:44:47.620 ⇒ 00:44:48.870 Aakash Tandel: But yeah, building out
353 00:44:48.870 ⇒ 00:44:53.259 Uttam Kumaran: We should agree on like, okay, like, what constitutes a project? Basically
354 00:44:53.920 ⇒ 00:44:59.549 Aakash Tandel: Yeah, I I agree. I think it’s very. It’s kind of vague, and it’s I guess it’s probably left vague on purpose, so that you
355 00:45:00.560 ⇒ 00:45:02.445 Aakash Tandel: define it as you want it.
356 00:45:03.930 ⇒ 00:45:11.779 Aakash Tandel: I think I yeah. I ported over all the stuff that was in the existing stuff. I think this breakdown makes sense. It’s like fairly distinct, like
357 00:45:12.070 ⇒ 00:45:15.197 Aakash Tandel: at like buckets of work.
358 00:45:16.090 ⇒ 00:45:20.150 Aakash Tandel: I don’t know what all those, if like this level of
359 00:45:21.090 ⇒ 00:45:31.620 Aakash Tandel: splitting it out is available on the other projects like these are all pretty distinct things where our other projects might have stuff that’s like more related than this. So we’ll have to break out projects differently.
360 00:45:33.520 ⇒ 00:45:35.069 Aakash Tandel: but that I’m not sure about yet.
361 00:45:36.720 ⇒ 00:45:37.170 Amber Lin: Yeah, yeah.
362 00:45:37.170 ⇒ 00:45:37.780 Uttam Kumaran: I mean I
363 00:45:37.780 ⇒ 00:45:40.469 Amber Lin: Referring to this as an example to try
364 00:45:40.470 ⇒ 00:45:40.890 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah.
365 00:45:40.890 ⇒ 00:45:50.819 Amber Lin: I had to split things up. So I’ll look more into that. I do think ABC needs some more projects, because I only I only have 2, and it’s kind of how to manage with just 2
366 00:45:53.500 ⇒ 00:45:59.249 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I mean, I I think the I think the projects should line up with the with the sow, basically
367 00:45:59.750 ⇒ 00:46:04.430 Uttam Kumaran: or like the works. The high level work streams like it should be one. It should either match
368 00:46:04.630 ⇒ 00:46:09.100 Uttam Kumaran: the sow eventually, or it should
369 00:46:09.510 ⇒ 00:46:17.890 Uttam Kumaran: be like one degree from that. Like, for example, where we’re for for ABC, we have a couple of workshops around optimization on speed, the 2 bots.
370 00:46:18.460 ⇒ 00:46:24.284 Uttam Kumaran: And so that those should all be projects. Those are all multi cycle initiatives.
371 00:46:25.140 ⇒ 00:46:28.709 Uttam Kumaran: and then, ideally, what we should be presenting on is.
372 00:46:28.820 ⇒ 00:46:31.890 Uttam Kumaran: what’s what are the projects coming up next that we’re doing?
373 00:46:32.000 ⇒ 00:46:38.939 Uttam Kumaran: The projects, then, can break into several issues that can span multiple cycles.
374 00:46:39.160 ⇒ 00:46:44.010 Uttam Kumaran: I mean for me, just looking at this. It’s like so much right? So that’s why I’m interested in like what Josh
375 00:46:44.640 ⇒ 00:46:47.559 Uttam Kumaran: of them are thinking about when they see this, because
376 00:46:47.820 ⇒ 00:46:53.479 Uttam Kumaran: this is quite a bit. But again, it’s like, unless we have a strict. They may think that. Oh, this is like one thing.
377 00:46:54.339 ⇒ 00:47:01.680 Uttam Kumaran: You know. So it’s up to each client team to break down pro projects is going to be esoteric, based on what? What’s
378 00:47:02.760 ⇒ 00:47:22.285 Uttam Kumaran: What? Your what? Your client maybe likes it to see things because some people may want to see 1, 1 dashboard, one dashboard, one dashboard like for Javi. We only have 10 h. We only have 20 HA week, so for me, I’m interested in seeing, and I don’t know if there’s any projects. Yeah. So there are some projects here, like, I, I think this this granularity is fine.
379 00:47:23.350 ⇒ 00:47:30.770 Uttam Kumaran: but there are. So there may be clients where it’s like a project is a milestone which is like lower cost.
380 00:47:30.980 ⇒ 00:47:35.910 Uttam Kumaran: Xyz. So this is where I think each team you have kind of free reign
381 00:47:36.120 ⇒ 00:47:45.269 Uttam Kumaran: ultimately like, I want this to be able to match, though what we present to the to the end client, you know, I think this is a really really great view
382 00:47:46.090 ⇒ 00:47:46.769 Aakash Tandel: Yeah, I think.
383 00:47:46.770 ⇒ 00:47:47.880 Uttam Kumaran: The statuses.
384 00:47:48.760 ⇒ 00:48:05.210 Aakash Tandel: Yeah, definitely, I yeah, I think, your default answer, for what a product is. It should definitely be like a line item in the sow that we’re promising, that that sounds like the good default. And then, if you know, if that feels often you go from there. But that should be. Probably the main starting point makes sense to me
385 00:48:05.490 ⇒ 00:48:08.170 Aakash Tandel: is we’re Con. That’s what we’re contracted to do right
386 00:48:09.630 ⇒ 00:48:10.723 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, exactly.
387 00:48:12.560 ⇒ 00:48:20.119 Amber Lin: So just to summarize, I think the project view is essentially what the client wants to see. And
388 00:48:20.360 ⇒ 00:48:35.629 Amber Lin: for the issues, the views, essentially, how we’re gonna run daily standups. And we’re gonna look at all the issues every morning to say, Okay, this is what we’re doing. How’s the progress on each one. So that’s essentially the 2 main views, right
389 00:48:35.630 ⇒ 00:48:37.349 Aakash Tandel: Yeah, actually, can we
390 00:48:37.350 ⇒ 00:48:40.640 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I I would say, Yeah, go ahead.
391 00:48:41.230 ⇒ 00:48:44.760 Aakash Tandel: No, I was just gonna explain how I run stand ups to make them a little bit more
392 00:48:44.760 ⇒ 00:48:47.549 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I would say the like. Probably one thing.
393 00:48:49.040 ⇒ 00:48:52.334 Uttam Kumaran: sorry. Sorry. It’s probably my Internet. Go ahead. Akash.
394 00:48:53.210 ⇒ 00:48:55.482 Aakash Tandel: No, you go for, and then I’ll I’ll speak afterwards.
395 00:48:57.580 ⇒ 00:49:09.719 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, yeah. So I think the biggest, probably the one thing I said is like, I’m gonna I’m gonna start running standups from the cycle view because it’s not. People are gonna see stuff and done. People are gonna see stuff in the backlog
396 00:49:09.840 ⇒ 00:49:18.649 Uttam Kumaran: and like they may see like too much. Here. I’m gonna run marketing standups by just clicking here on cycle and be like. This is what we all agreed to get done.
397 00:49:19.180 ⇒ 00:49:37.917 Uttam Kumaran: And so I better see this line sort of like tracking. Right? We’re we’re on the 1st day here, probably 5 days in. I’ll get a sense of if we’re on track, and that’s how I’m gonna I’m gonna hammer that like everybody wakes up and like you look at your issues right wherever that is here. And then you look at
398 00:49:38.800 ⇒ 00:49:39.950 Uttam Kumaran: the cycle view.
399 00:49:40.818 ⇒ 00:49:53.079 Uttam Kumaran: And I think that’s probably if you were to limit it for your teams, I would say, that’s how you do it when we’re working on like grooming, or you’re showing the client definitely, I think, using the project views or the issues, maybe
400 00:49:53.510 ⇒ 00:49:54.930 Uttam Kumaran: more important.
401 00:49:55.830 ⇒ 00:50:09.390 Uttam Kumaran: and then for me broadly, like at the company level, I’m gonna start looking at. Okay, how many overall tickets are we taking per team? Who’s taking the most tickets? How many projects are in flight? Yeah, go ahead, Akash.
402 00:50:10.460 ⇒ 00:50:18.199 Aakash Tandel: I accidentally raised my hand. But yeah, I was gonna just walk amber through like, how I do stand up real quick. If that if that works for you.
403 00:50:18.960 ⇒ 00:50:20.090 Amber Lin: Yes, please.
404 00:50:20.960 ⇒ 00:50:46.940 Aakash Tandel: Cool. Let me share my screen, because the the thing I’m noticing a lot of stand ups is they’re taking a long time where I kind of want them to be faster. And then, if if you have questions or you need to collaborate with someone, you can do that at the end of stand up. But everyone needs to be giving their update, and we can’t. We can’t stop mid stand up for 2 people to have a conversation that they should be having either offline or as like the 16th minute, or like something like that. So
405 00:50:48.060 ⇒ 00:50:53.539 Aakash Tandel: let me. So yeah. So for Joby, for instance, you see this, you see my screen. I think you do
406 00:50:57.680 ⇒ 00:50:59.830 Amber Lin: Do either of you guys see? Javi? Yes.
407 00:50:59.830 ⇒ 00:51:00.680 Uttam Kumaran: I do?
408 00:51:00.680 ⇒ 00:51:23.800 Aakash Tandel: Alright. Okay, I’m just making sure. Yeah. So like the way I would say that I started off with is, I would just go down the alphabet and filter. So if you’re looking at our current or for ABC home, you can do this, too, with the cycle and then you can filter it, and then just pick your assignee and you can say, Hey, I’m gonna look at Miguel. Just start with Miguel. What do you? What are you working on where you block?
409 00:51:24.970 ⇒ 00:51:36.000 Aakash Tandel: How are we moving things in progress? You can also move it to this view if you want with. It’s just Miguel’s work. He talks to this, then Miguel’s done, and then you go, hey? All right. Now we’re going to look at Casey’s
410 00:51:36.350 ⇒ 00:51:40.850 Aakash Tandel: Casey. This is how you’re doing. Oh, keeps! Miguel’s.
411 00:51:40.980 ⇒ 00:52:04.029 Aakash Tandel: There it goes now, just cases. And then, after Casey’s done, then we go to Patrick, and then just Patrick, and then we see Patrick’s only got something in progress. Okay, cool. So like that kind of keeps it faster. And we’re just focusing on one person’s thing at a time and then at the end, if someone has like a collaboration thing, then there’s time to do that type of thing. So yeah, that’s 1 thing I wanted to kinda share. I noticed
412 00:52:04.030 ⇒ 00:52:05.170 Amber Lin: So helpful.
413 00:52:05.830 ⇒ 00:52:06.520 Aakash Tandel: Cool.
414 00:52:06.790 ⇒ 00:52:16.299 Aakash Tandel: And then the other thing, yeah, it’s just you want to make sure that everyone in the in the thing is participating. So it definitely kind of forces them by calling on them. So, yeah.
415 00:52:18.950 ⇒ 00:52:25.410 Amber Lin: Oh, awesome. On the since we talked about this, just a few notes on our team members.
416 00:52:26.880 ⇒ 00:52:31.600 Amber Lin: I think patrick doesn’t really have time to do much work is what I noticed
417 00:52:32.520 ⇒ 00:52:34.220 Amber Lin: like last week. I don’t think
418 00:52:34.220 ⇒ 00:52:35.160 Uttam Kumaran: That’s right.
419 00:52:35.630 ⇒ 00:52:42.130 Amber Lin: Yeah. And then this week. He wasn’t at the stand at the weekly planning
420 00:52:42.980 ⇒ 00:52:46.919 Uttam Kumaran: And I don’t know how much you would be doing. Okay, wanna check on that.
421 00:52:49.050 ⇒ 00:52:52.989 Uttam Kumaran: I mean, I’m gonna text them like, I, this is where, like, I don’t think
422 00:52:53.430 ⇒ 00:52:58.560 Uttam Kumaran: the optimization work is like a priority, because we’re already pretty like, has Janice said.
423 00:52:58.740 ⇒ 00:53:01.150 Uttam Kumaran: So that’s yeah. So that’s gonna be same thing for the
424 00:53:01.150 ⇒ 00:53:10.919 Uttam Kumaran: voice like, those are 2 things in my mind. Yeah, yeah. So it’s fine, like, I don’t. There’s not another person we have on the team right now that can take that work.
425 00:53:11.040 ⇒ 00:53:13.000 Uttam Kumaran: So we’re a little bit beholden to
426 00:53:13.830 ⇒ 00:53:16.590 Uttam Kumaran: just whenever Pat get spare sometime.
427 00:53:16.920 ⇒ 00:53:19.459 Uttam Kumaran: Just keep annoying him. I mean. It’s just that’s just
428 00:53:19.460 ⇒ 00:53:21.259 Amber Lin: Okay, that works
429 00:53:29.250 ⇒ 00:53:29.860 Aakash Tandel: Cool.
430 00:53:30.530 ⇒ 00:53:33.380 Amber Lin: What are some other items you want us to talk about?
431 00:53:36.670 ⇒ 00:54:04.600 Aakash Tandel: I wanted to. Just see amber. If you’ve had a chance to look through the sows for your clients I’m gonna do that for Joby and Eden in more detail on, just so that I kinda know what we’re contracted to do. And just so I have a grasp of, hey? When when this thing ends like, what are we? What are we doing? That’s outside the scope. I feel like right now. For Eden, we’re doing a lot of things that, as Robert has talked about is like, I don’t think
432 00:54:04.780 ⇒ 00:54:13.390 Aakash Tandel: we’re. We’re just like we’re we’re flying by the seat of our pants by client requests. And so like, we kind of need to pull them in a little bit like, Hey, look! These are the things we’re planning on doing
433 00:54:13.710 ⇒ 00:54:31.240 Aakash Tandel: other stuff can come in behind. Or if you need this immediately, it’s gonna take precedent, and then it moves this item out of the way. And this item gets backlogged. So I just want to say, Yeah, if you have time, just review the sows for your projects and just make sure. Yeah.
434 00:54:31.510 ⇒ 00:54:34.300 Amber Lin: No, I was able to look at that. And I think
435 00:54:35.200 ⇒ 00:54:39.969 Amber Lin: and I think for me it’s more of how do I convert that into a project. So I have to
436 00:54:40.110 ⇒ 00:54:42.490 Amber Lin: look into that a little bit more
437 00:54:43.350 ⇒ 00:54:53.609 Aakash Tandel: Yeah, and that’s where Miguel will help for ABC. And that’s where you know Robert and Utam and
438 00:54:54.150 ⇒ 00:54:54.730 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
439 00:54:54.730 ⇒ 00:55:09.819 Aakash Tandel: Can help with. You know, even that type of thing. So definitely don’t feel like you had to diagnose that type of stuff on your own. The converting an sow into like kind of a project plan or roadmap type of thing definitely involves the kind of people who are on the sales side. So, Robert with them
440 00:55:10.780 ⇒ 00:55:11.959 Aakash Tandel: so like that that makes
441 00:55:11.960 ⇒ 00:55:14.579 Amber Lin: That’s that’s helpful to know
442 00:55:19.140 ⇒ 00:55:22.180 Aakash Tandel: Sweet. Yeah. And as and as we get more like
443 00:55:22.810 ⇒ 00:55:26.839 Aakash Tandel: into the weeds on these clients, and we’ll kind of talk through, like.
444 00:55:26.970 ⇒ 00:55:55.999 Aakash Tandel: you know there. There’s other things in Project Manager that we can kind of bring in. We can talk about like, Hey, how are our like our our actuals related to our projected. So if you look in like our roadmap stuff, are we using more or less hours? For, you know, for this type of project? If so, maybe we need to increase the price of this one just because this thing costs more, vice versa. So there’s definitely lots of stuff for us to dive into but we still kinda at the moment have to get our
445 00:55:56.000 ⇒ 00:56:02.430 Aakash Tandel: ducks in a row on these like existing projects, and then we can kind of get to the more tactical stuff later
446 00:56:03.330 ⇒ 00:56:04.330 Amber Lin: Sounds good
447 00:56:04.330 ⇒ 00:56:07.330 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, to give you the to give you the like
448 00:56:07.870 ⇒ 00:56:14.580 Uttam Kumaran: the end of the movie on that one. I’m pretty sure we’re gonna try to propose more budget for Javi and for Eden
449 00:56:16.180 ⇒ 00:56:20.259 Uttam Kumaran: And so like, we’re definitely like over billing there, meaning
450 00:56:20.660 ⇒ 00:56:25.230 Uttam Kumaran: like, we’re looking at the allocation stuff looking at the amount of work we’re doing.
451 00:56:25.340 ⇒ 00:56:35.620 Uttam Kumaran: I’m basically gonna tell Robert as the engineering leader, I can’t like we are like we are over billing. We’re we’re like, basically, we’re we’re losing money
452 00:56:36.170 ⇒ 00:56:43.210 Uttam Kumaran: as our benchmarks on some of these projects. So my job is either tell tell our engineers to
453 00:56:43.640 ⇒ 00:56:47.889 Uttam Kumaran: like work less, or you get us more budget. And so
454 00:56:48.150 ⇒ 00:56:53.919 Uttam Kumaran: we’ll have. We’ll we’ll make the calls on both of them again. It’s hard to have that conversation anecdotally.
455 00:56:54.280 ⇒ 00:57:06.580 Uttam Kumaran: I want to show linear. I want to be like Yo. You have us working on 10 things in parallel. Here’s how many hours our engineers are spending. I can’t afford this. So what do you want to do? Either cut you cut our scope
456 00:57:07.640 ⇒ 00:57:36.710 Uttam Kumaran: or you increase you. You keep it going, and we need to charge you more. This is where Robert is. Gonna go and be like cool. Let’s get another 5 10 K, you know. And that’s why I think we’ll. I basically said, I think we’re sitting on another like 15 to 20 K, just on existing clients. Which is great. That’s like one entire new client, and we’re already doing the work for it. So this is where this sort of work directly goes to hit our revenue, not just in making the client happy. But in us being able to put data behind our upsells.
457 00:57:37.520 ⇒ 00:57:38.070 Aakash Tandel: Yep.
458 00:57:38.450 ⇒ 00:57:42.249 Aakash Tandel: Sounds good. Yeah. It’s always with client work. It’s always like a
459 00:57:43.760 ⇒ 00:57:53.910 Aakash Tandel: You you are always balancing like the work versus how much you’re being paid for it. And that’s obviously that rate is really important. So we want to make sure. Eventually, we start tracking that rate
460 00:57:54.310 ⇒ 00:58:05.329 Aakash Tandel: just so we can kinda know that, hey? If this project comes in, it’s definitely be profitable at this number, and it’s really profitable. If our team gets this done in like 20 h as opposed to like.
461 00:58:05.330 ⇒ 00:58:08.360 Aakash Tandel: yeah, is projected for? So yeah, that makes no sense
462 00:58:11.730 ⇒ 00:58:12.280 Uttam Kumaran: Cool.
463 00:58:12.530 ⇒ 00:58:16.919 Uttam Kumaran: Okay? So I’m gonna I mean, I I’m not running standups for
464 00:58:17.412 ⇒ 00:58:33.440 Uttam Kumaran: marketing or ops. I’m running like on Wednesdays, most likely. And then for urban stems. We meet with them every day, but it’s they’re running. Stand up so we may bring in one of y’all sort of towards the end of next month.
465 00:58:33.965 ⇒ 00:58:49.060 Uttam Kumaran: But yeah, I mean, I’m not. Gonna I’m most likely not gonna attend. Continue to not attend stand ups. My time is actually best leveraged like just going into linear and just making sure everything’s cozy. And then I sort of snipe threads here and there as I see stuff happening.
466 00:58:49.484 ⇒ 00:58:57.739 Uttam Kumaran: But just let me know if I can. If I can be helpful. And then yeah, I’ll we. We have our daily sync starting tomorrow at 3
467 00:58:57.900 ⇒ 00:59:00.139 Uttam Kumaran: Eastern, so that’ll be perfect.
468 00:59:01.010 ⇒ 00:59:01.610 Aakash Tandel: Yup.
469 00:59:01.950 ⇒ 00:59:09.479 Aakash Tandel: That sounds good to me. Yeah. The short term pain of just put re removing you, I think, will pay off in the end of like. Eventually, people will just get used to it.
470 00:59:09.890 ⇒ 00:59:10.640 Aakash Tandel: See
471 00:59:11.810 ⇒ 00:59:19.990 Uttam Kumaran: I think the biggest thing is just don’t get bullied by engineers, and it’s not that they bully you. It’s just they’ll just. They’re just late. They’re just like, naturally
472 00:59:20.400 ⇒ 00:59:24.260 Uttam Kumaran: lazy and perfectionist kind of the same time, which is a tough combo
473 00:59:24.510 ⇒ 00:59:26.959 Uttam Kumaran: against. You’re kind of fighting against speed.
474 00:59:27.759 ⇒ 00:59:34.250 Uttam Kumaran: you know, and so we want speed and quality. Sometimes we can get it. Sometimes you have to sort of make a trade off so
475 00:59:34.560 ⇒ 00:59:43.299 Aakash Tandel: I don’t want to say all engineers the same. But like this is the same like kind of behavior, or like work pattern that’s similar like at every place I’ve worked in, every project I’ve worked on. So yeah.
476 00:59:43.620 ⇒ 01:00:02.730 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, it’s just something we have to fight like. Sometimes we’ll get it right, sometimes we won’t. It’s but like your relationship with your engineers will solve everything like if they know you’re not like just throwing tickets at them. No context, then they will. They’ll like, be more understanding a lot of times where this breaks down is. It’s just a Pm. Who’s like
477 01:00:03.080 ⇒ 01:00:08.520 Uttam Kumaran: this ticket’s yours. Where is this ticket? Where is this ticket? And then it’s sort of it’s like very impersonal. And then it becomes like a
478 01:00:08.990 ⇒ 01:00:20.746 Uttam Kumaran: like a sweatshop. And so that’s what we. But that’s again, that’s like just having good interpersonal relationship with everybody and make sure that everybody trusts you. That like, okay, if you say something needs to get done, it needs to get done.
479 01:00:25.040 ⇒ 01:00:28.050 Aakash Tandel: Sounds good. That sounds awesome.
480 01:00:28.880 ⇒ 01:00:32.195 Uttam Kumaran: Good meeting, and then, yeah, slack me. If you guys need anything
481 01:00:32.450 ⇒ 01:00:32.810 Aakash Tandel: Sounds good
482 01:00:32.810 ⇒ 01:00:46.910 Amber Lin: Yeah, I will work more on fleshing out the ABC tickets and making projects. Staff was I haven’t been able to touch yet, so I don’t know if you looked at them, or I will probably have some time later, today or tomorrow to look at that
483 01:00:48.830 ⇒ 01:00:55.539 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, we can probably work on it. I’ll probably choose how much of a dent I can make in Javi needed 1st today, and then I’ll move on.
484 01:00:55.680 ⇒ 01:00:56.999 Uttam Kumaran: It’s other stuff. Yeah.
485 01:00:57.000 ⇒ 01:00:59.710 Amber Lin: Are we meeting with Dan at all today? Did he
486 01:00:59.710 ⇒ 01:01:04.630 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, he texted me, saying that he’s like back in meeting. So I may just send the deck.
487 01:01:05.030 ⇒ 01:01:06.920 Uttam Kumaran: I think I’m just gonna send. I’ll
488 01:01:07.410 ⇒ 01:01:12.070 Uttam Kumaran: I think we should just write up a little short email and send them all the deck over
489 01:01:12.460 ⇒ 01:01:12.830 Amber Lin: Okay.
490 01:01:13.137 ⇒ 01:01:14.059 Uttam Kumaran: If that’s fine.
491 01:01:14.610 ⇒ 01:01:19.260 Amber Lin: Sounds good. I I can do that. I know you’re lost in. You’re in linear stone.
492 01:01:19.260 ⇒ 01:01:21.650 Uttam Kumaran: If you just want to send a draft to
493 01:01:21.650 ⇒ 01:01:22.350 Amber Lin: Yeah. Totally.
494 01:01:22.350 ⇒ 01:01:25.315 Uttam Kumaran: 4 parts thing. Then, yeah, that’s perfect.
495 01:01:27.710 ⇒ 01:01:34.010 Aakash Tandel: Sweet. Alright! Y’all let me know if you need anything, Amber, if you need anything, just you want a second set of eyes, just feel free to slack me
496 01:01:34.500 ⇒ 01:01:38.070 Amber Lin: Okay, thank you so much. This has been really helpful for me.
497 01:01:38.070 ⇒ 01:01:38.770 Aakash Tandel: Thank you.
498 01:01:38.890 ⇒ 01:01:39.970 Aakash Tandel: See y’all, bye.
499 01:01:40.190 ⇒ 01:01:40.740 Amber Lin: Bye.
500 01:01:40.740 ⇒ 01:01:41.350 Uttam Kumaran: I,