Meeting Title: PM - TL Date: 2025-06-17 Meeting participants: Awaish Kumar, Amber Lin, Demilade Agboola
WEBVTT
1 00:01:43.750 ⇒ 00:01:44.990 Amber Lin: Hello!
2 00:01:57.000 ⇒ 00:01:57.640 Awaish Kumar: Hello!
3 00:01:59.030 ⇒ 00:02:07.690 Amber Lin: Alright! Let me check. If Demo is joining, I’ll try and keep this meeting short. I know I schedule for an hour, but probably aim for 30 min.
4 00:02:09.018 ⇒ 00:02:11.570 Amber Lin: Let me ask Damalade.
5 00:03:58.700 ⇒ 00:03:59.570 Amber Lin: Hmm.
6 00:03:59.680 ⇒ 00:04:02.749 Amber Lin: Okay, let’s just get started.
7 00:04:02.860 ⇒ 00:04:08.300 Amber Lin: Let me pull up the oh, Hi, demo, Ade, perfect timing.
8 00:04:09.230 ⇒ 00:04:12.289 Amber Lin: I’m gonna make this meeting short. I’m gonna keep it 30 min.
9 00:04:12.430 ⇒ 00:04:14.229 Amber Lin: Thank you all for joining
10 00:04:14.748 ⇒ 00:04:22.270 Amber Lin: and I know we had a good momentum a week ago, and then last, we didn’t really meet as a team.
11 00:04:22.550 ⇒ 00:04:23.830 Amber Lin: And
12 00:04:24.900 ⇒ 00:04:41.900 Amber Lin: I I guess, first, st like, I want to hear, how’s things been going like, do you feel that our collaboration between you as a tech lead and the Pm. Has been smoother, like what has improved and what like, what we should keep improving on.
13 00:04:48.280 ⇒ 00:04:48.890 Demilade Agboola: Team.
14 00:04:51.410 ⇒ 00:04:54.249 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, for me, like things has been good, like.
15 00:04:55.000 ⇒ 00:04:56.344 Awaish Kumar: We are meeting on
16 00:04:57.060 ⇒ 00:05:03.629 Awaish Kumar: or technical meetings like still for metamor, I I don’t think we have proper rituals.
17 00:05:05.210 ⇒ 00:05:12.120 Awaish Kumar: Waiting for grooming or anything. But yeah, that’s the only thing apart from that. Where, whenever there’s
18 00:05:13.510 ⇒ 00:05:16.860 Awaish Kumar: urgent things critical meeting up and.
19 00:05:18.960 ⇒ 00:05:24.059 Awaish Kumar: Working on blockbusters together. But yeah, only the grooming and the estimation part.
20 00:05:24.490 ⇒ 00:05:25.610 Awaish Kumar: Yeah.
21 00:05:25.610 ⇒ 00:05:26.740 Amber Lin: I agree.
22 00:05:27.130 ⇒ 00:05:28.699 Amber Lin: I think it was
23 00:05:28.910 ⇒ 00:05:38.400 Amber Lin: we should put that in place, I put in. Stand ups now for Madam more and next step for me. I’ll put in the groomings and plannings
24 00:05:42.140 ⇒ 00:05:50.429 Amber Lin: anything on urban stems. How do you feel? It’s been going? What do you think needs to be improved?
25 00:05:51.940 ⇒ 00:05:57.225 Demilade Agboola: Yeah, I think it’s been better. I think the only places I’ll say you can improve is just being
26 00:05:58.422 ⇒ 00:06:02.850 Demilade Agboola: like grooming the tickets like before the meeting. So you know.
27 00:06:04.380 ⇒ 00:06:10.740 Demilade Agboola: Across like you’re just less, maybe setting like less ad hoc things. But for the most part, yeah.
28 00:06:12.080 ⇒ 00:06:13.040 Demilade Agboola: I think we’re fine.
29 00:06:13.500 ⇒ 00:06:29.969 Amber Lin: Okay, yeah, great. I was writing this right before our meeting, and I think this will help all the projects that we’re working on, because I think we often come across that tickets that there are not that groomed.
30 00:06:30.190 ⇒ 00:06:55.610 Amber Lin: And sometimes my brain just can’t keep track of everything. So I think if we have certain checkpoints it’ll be great. So I think a day before grooming. This will just be me and AI. I’ll try to go through everything. I just did that for urban stems. I’ll add all the context that’s needed. I’ll approximate any estimates based on what AI gives me, and then I’ll approximate what we’ll assign for next cycle. And then, when we go to grooming.
31 00:06:55.960 ⇒ 00:06:59.729 Amber Lin: which is all of us, we can confirm on
32 00:06:59.870 ⇒ 00:07:06.830 Amber Lin: the priorities, make sure the SMS are correct, and then confirm what we have for next cycle.
33 00:07:07.390 ⇒ 00:07:27.210 Amber Lin: And then, right before we kick off, which is, with all all the team members, we should have a quick checkpoint. This will be around 10 to 20 min, will, which will be the Pm. And the tech lead to just the final check to make sure that everything is ready. I think if we have this we’ll make sure that
34 00:07:27.740 ⇒ 00:07:32.979 Amber Lin: we’re prepared for the sprint, and we know what’s going on. So what do you guys think about this?
35 00:07:41.770 ⇒ 00:07:48.279 Amber Lin: Is this something that we can implement? Okay? Great. Honestly, it’s it’s the only change is this.
36 00:07:49.550 ⇒ 00:07:52.120 Demilade Agboola: Yeah, I was. I was going to also say that like.
37 00:07:52.120 ⇒ 00:07:52.710 Amber Lin: Hmm.
38 00:07:53.587 ⇒ 00:08:01.389 Demilade Agboola: Being able to meet with the tech lead before the general team grooming might be helpful, even if.
39 00:08:01.390 ⇒ 00:08:04.910 Amber Lin: Oh, okay, I see. Sounds good.
40 00:08:05.050 ⇒ 00:08:11.999 Amber Lin: I I think that it’s true, cause we’ll waste a lot of time here. And then people would just sit there and sit there and listen.
41 00:08:18.530 ⇒ 00:08:22.259 Amber Lin: I wish what do you think? Anything? I should add anything that’s too much.
42 00:08:22.900 ⇒ 00:08:25.829 Awaish Kumar: For the grooming. I was, I was saying, the same man.
43 00:08:27.120 ⇒ 00:08:33.340 Awaish Kumar: Grooming is like Number one, like the Pm. Is
44 00:08:33.549 ⇒ 00:08:38.410 Awaish Kumar: defining the ticket based on clients, priorities, and the
45 00:08:39.330 ⇒ 00:08:43.780 Awaish Kumar: like. So setting up the roadmap like for the 2 weeks, what what tickets are should be there.
46 00:08:45.399 ⇒ 00:08:50.099 Awaish Kumar: And the team give the feedback on estimation and or any.
47 00:08:50.979 ⇒ 00:08:53.799 Awaish Kumar: So you had help filling up any description like.
48 00:08:54.650 ⇒ 00:08:57.540 Awaish Kumar: For the tickets, and then we would.
49 00:08:59.580 ⇒ 00:09:04.079 Amber Lin: Yeah, I I wanted to ask you guys about priority. So
50 00:09:04.920 ⇒ 00:09:21.740 Amber Lin: so sometimes I, I know what it’s important for the client. But when it comes to the technical implementation. I don’t really know what’s important to get that priority done so like when it comes to priorities. I’m not always sure of what’s the top priority.
51 00:09:22.530 ⇒ 00:09:27.470 Awaish Kumar: Like when we are talking about priorities. That means like in terms of client.
52 00:09:28.740 ⇒ 00:09:35.630 Awaish Kumar: For example, we have, we have a we have 3 dashboards which needs to be built.
53 00:09:36.110 ⇒ 00:09:42.059 Awaish Kumar: And but Grant says, like t. 1, they need d 1 1.st
54 00:09:42.920 ⇒ 00:09:46.350 Awaish Kumar: D 2 after that, and d 3 after that like, that’s the
55 00:09:46.740 ⇒ 00:10:05.569 Awaish Kumar: something you are going to like, mention or like describe. And then the deal is going to help with like, okay, what is the priority? Like? Now, let’s break it down into multiple tickets on like action items. What needs to be done to like what needs to be implemented. To get this done.
56 00:10:05.930 ⇒ 00:10:12.620 Awaish Kumar: we might need to, and just some data from some sources. Model it out.
57 00:10:12.930 ⇒ 00:10:13.890 Awaish Kumar: -Oh!
58 00:10:14.280 ⇒ 00:10:21.530 Awaish Kumar: Write some pipeline whatever, 2, 3 more tickets under it, and then we
59 00:10:21.770 ⇒ 00:10:26.880 Awaish Kumar: we we like set the timelines for those, and then at the end we will have a dashboard.
60 00:10:30.780 ⇒ 00:10:36.009 Amber Lin: That’s a really good point. So I think I will. I think these 2 kind of just
61 00:10:36.290 ⇒ 00:10:53.560 Amber Lin: there’s no one before the other, probably we need like Midway. I need to meet with tech lead to confirm, like, okay, these are the priorities. I need you to help me break it down, and then I’ll go like flush it out with the flush, out the tickets after that, and then in the actual grooming.
62 00:10:54.260 ⇒ 00:11:05.670 Amber Lin: So I imagine if we have these 2 things that we do before the grooming with everybody. Then the grooming should be relatively short, and we’re just confirming if team members have any objections.
63 00:11:05.990 ⇒ 00:11:09.730 Amber Lin: So how do you think this grooming
64 00:11:09.860 ⇒ 00:11:15.540 Amber Lin: is best run like? Do we go through each ticket and confirm with the team members
65 00:11:15.690 ⇒ 00:11:22.129 Amber Lin: like, how how do you from your guys experience, how was this best run like in the past?
66 00:11:27.860 ⇒ 00:11:32.449 Awaish Kumar: Like, read, yeah, like it, we go like.
67 00:11:32.720 ⇒ 00:11:35.911 Awaish Kumar: this is the ticket. This is the estimate
68 00:11:37.590 ⇒ 00:11:40.829 Awaish Kumar: like, this is the deadline we set up and
69 00:11:42.330 ⇒ 00:11:48.609 Awaish Kumar: then we can discuss like, if anyone has any feedback on that. Otherwise, like.
70 00:11:48.840 ⇒ 00:11:51.030 Awaish Kumar: we are moving this to this cycle.
71 00:11:51.600 ⇒ 00:11:54.690 Awaish Kumar: If anyone has an objection, or any feedback
72 00:11:54.800 ⇒ 00:11:59.750 Awaish Kumar: they can call out otherwise like this does not get it. The cycle.
73 00:12:04.210 ⇒ 00:12:17.289 Demilade Agboola: Yeah, effectively, that I think the grooming call should not be too long. It should just be like, Hey, these are the tickets we’ve groomed. These are the cycles they’re gonna be in. This is priority, one priority, 2, priority 3.
74 00:12:17.820 ⇒ 00:12:21.059 Demilade Agboola: And this is what has been assigned to this person and this.
75 00:12:21.060 ⇒ 00:12:21.440 Amber Lin: 9, 4.
76 00:12:21.440 ⇒ 00:12:24.250 Demilade Agboola: That, and so the person can, I think
77 00:12:24.650 ⇒ 00:12:29.069 Demilade Agboola: short. I think the prices might not be in order. I think we need, like, you know.
78 00:12:29.370 ⇒ 00:12:30.959 Demilade Agboola: back on those sort of things.
79 00:12:31.070 ⇒ 00:12:35.019 Demilade Agboola: but I don’t. Oh, that’s when we should be doing those that like, I said.
80 00:12:35.380 ⇒ 00:12:36.170 Demilade Agboola: Dot.
81 00:12:36.420 ⇒ 00:12:37.520 Amber Lin: See things.
82 00:12:37.960 ⇒ 00:12:38.570 Demilade Agboola: Feedback.
83 00:12:38.570 ⇒ 00:12:45.580 Amber Lin: Okay, that’s good. Next cycle put.
84 00:12:53.250 ⇒ 00:12:57.060 Amber Lin: So okay.
85 00:13:02.150 ⇒ 00:13:09.309 Amber Lin: should I just assign them to people. And then we debate it in our Pm tech lead prep meeting.
86 00:13:17.270 ⇒ 00:13:19.829 Amber Lin: Okay, I I see that’s a yes
87 00:13:20.892 ⇒ 00:13:34.400 Amber Lin: so we will just confirm with team members on what they and any objections.
88 00:13:36.860 ⇒ 00:13:37.660 Amber Lin: Okay.
89 00:13:44.300 ⇒ 00:13:45.490 Amber Lin: all right.
90 00:13:45.820 ⇒ 00:13:51.390 Amber Lin: And then for, and then I guess
91 00:13:53.920 ⇒ 00:14:11.780 Amber Lin: then this will be an extra extra short meeting after grooming to just before the sprint kick off to make sure that any objections or any changes has been documented. And then we can have a clear goal of, okay, this is what we’re accomplishing. This is just a quick
92 00:14:12.070 ⇒ 00:14:20.009 Amber Lin: checkpoint. If we all, if we do all of these well, then, this should be very short, and the kickoff will also be very short.
93 00:14:23.030 ⇒ 00:14:37.560 Amber Lin: and another point I I wanted to bring up, and I think that a lot of you’ll be pretty happy about this, because you always talk about business outcomes is I do want to have a strategic planning every month, because a lot of times I
94 00:14:37.710 ⇒ 00:14:40.749 Amber Lin: work on sprints and then
95 00:14:41.130 ⇒ 00:14:59.180 Amber Lin: it it like we’re getting work done. But it might not be the most impactful work, and might not relate to our financial outcomes. Say, like we upsell or we achieve more revenue. And so I want us to have a monthly session
96 00:14:59.630 ⇒ 00:15:16.670 Amber Lin: where it’s the Pm. The tech lead, and the account owner, which will either be Robert, and then we can talk about what the end goals are for this account, any opportunities? Any blockers. And that are what we’re doing in sprints actually reflect that end goal.
97 00:15:16.830 ⇒ 00:15:32.820 Amber Lin: and also to look at allocations and how we are in terms of profitability. Like, if your guys, if you guys are okay with that, I can check with Utam. And I can set this up for our different teams because I don’t. I don’t wanna just set the vision without your Input or
98 00:15:33.273 ⇒ 00:15:36.670 Amber Lin: their input. I do think this is something we should do together.
99 00:15:38.460 ⇒ 00:15:39.909 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, it. Sounds good.
100 00:15:41.354 ⇒ 00:15:42.730 Demilade Agboola: Have a good idea.
101 00:15:43.450 ⇒ 00:15:45.225 Amber Lin: Yay, okay, that’s exciting.
102 00:15:46.562 ⇒ 00:15:53.800 Amber Lin: That’s all I have for the planning grooming session. I already feel that now we have
103 00:15:54.030 ⇒ 00:16:06.820 Amber Lin: actual grooming. Session is placed. My life has gotten a lot easier. My standoffs has shrunk to 10 to 15 min instead of 30, so I’m already very happy about that, and I think the more we do this
104 00:16:07.392 ⇒ 00:16:09.990 Amber Lin: all our lives would be easier.
105 00:16:13.270 ⇒ 00:16:15.619 Amber Lin: Any? Yeah, I
106 00:16:16.840 ⇒ 00:16:23.790 Amber Lin: I guess a few things. Just one. Okay, one more thing on when it comes to delivery and execution.
107 00:16:24.130 ⇒ 00:16:28.569 Amber Lin: like what happens when we need to push due dates back.
108 00:16:28.710 ⇒ 00:16:38.259 Amber Lin: or what happens when team members are slower than we expected. Like, what? What do you guys think is the best course of action? There.
109 00:16:49.890 ⇒ 00:16:54.369 Demilade Agboola: I think there’s no like one answer for everything, because it really depends on the scenario.
110 00:16:56.690 ⇒ 00:17:02.710 Demilade Agboola: Sometimes it could be they’re being blocked by something that they can’t control. So like if they’ve been blocked by
111 00:17:03.300 ⇒ 00:17:08.220 Demilade Agboola: access, or someone is just not responding. You can’t really do anything about that.
112 00:17:08.500 ⇒ 00:17:14.899 Demilade Agboola: You have to communicate with the client and be like, hey? If this doesn’t go out the way we can’t meet this, and.
113 00:17:15.560 ⇒ 00:17:15.980 Amber Lin: No.
114 00:17:15.980 ⇒ 00:17:22.619 Demilade Agboola: That’s what. Sometimes it could be like. The actual person is slow. I think if
115 00:17:22.790 ⇒ 00:17:27.580 Demilade Agboola: it happens once, I mean, sometimes these things happen something. Some tickets might go out of view, or whatever.
116 00:17:27.589 ⇒ 00:17:28.339 Amber Lin: Confirmed.
117 00:17:28.974 ⇒ 00:17:38.510 Demilade Agboola: I think you couldn’t if you can happen once. That’s fine, but if it if it’s like a pattern, it’s happened a couple of times. I think it’s important to be able to reach out to
118 00:17:38.940 ⇒ 00:17:46.879 Demilade Agboola: the person I just asked. Like, Are you being overworked? Are you being overwhelmed? Are you like, you may be on multiple projects. Is there something going on
119 00:17:47.543 ⇒ 00:17:53.319 Demilade Agboola: and based off those feedback? We can then try. And you know, make adjustments of that.
120 00:17:54.940 ⇒ 00:17:55.350 Demilade Agboola: 60.
121 00:17:55.350 ⇒ 00:17:55.960 Amber Lin: Yeah.
122 00:17:56.530 ⇒ 00:17:58.219 Demilade Agboola: It’s on the project, like, you know.
123 00:17:58.950 ⇒ 00:18:04.640 Demilade Agboola: do we need to swap team members like that? I think once you get to the point where we know what the issue is.
124 00:18:05.430 ⇒ 00:18:08.110 Demilade Agboola: We can make decisions based off that.
125 00:18:10.230 ⇒ 00:18:15.340 Amber Lin: Great! You summed it up so well always. What do you think.
126 00:18:20.879 ⇒ 00:18:25.600 Awaish Kumar: Like number. One thing is is that like we have to identify.
127 00:18:27.120 ⇒ 00:18:28.870 Awaish Kumar: What? What happened? Right?
128 00:18:29.040 ⇒ 00:18:33.850 Awaish Kumar: So that’s the right. Who’s it
129 00:18:33.960 ⇒ 00:18:43.649 Awaish Kumar: like? Whatever it is like because of the waiting on client response access issues like, what are the issues that they’ve already described?
130 00:18:44.278 ⇒ 00:18:48.360 Awaish Kumar: Was it a wrong estimate could be a wrong estimation?
131 00:18:49.095 ⇒ 00:18:56.200 Awaish Kumar: That we we didn’t take care of all these edge cases, or something beforehand.
132 00:18:58.830 ⇒ 00:19:08.269 Awaish Kumar: And like, yeah, so and like, after that investigation, we can see, okay, what in any
133 00:19:08.780 ⇒ 00:19:19.180 Awaish Kumar: caused the like, the delay? Or was it really the person slow, or things like wrong estimation.
134 00:19:19.520 ⇒ 00:19:20.150 Awaish Kumar: Well.
135 00:19:20.530 ⇒ 00:19:28.330 Awaish Kumar: at landing code, like some sometimes like, if we, if the person is working on some new tool or something like
136 00:19:28.520 ⇒ 00:19:32.040 Awaish Kumar: he. He just learned few things. So yeah.
137 00:19:35.227 ⇒ 00:19:43.860 Awaish Kumar: So like identifications, and then setting up the right deadly.
138 00:19:55.560 ⇒ 00:19:57.319 Awaish Kumar: Yeah. And sometimes it’s just that.
139 00:19:57.320 ⇒ 00:19:57.660 Amber Lin: I want.
140 00:19:58.230 ⇒ 00:20:03.200 Awaish Kumar: Person is like a perfectionist. And because
141 00:20:04.000 ⇒ 00:20:09.880 Awaish Kumar: this is instead of driving a Vp, he’s just working on to
142 00:20:10.120 ⇒ 00:20:15.040 Awaish Kumar: make it like 100% perfect, so that can cause delays as well.
143 00:20:18.770 ⇒ 00:20:19.730 Amber Lin: I see.
144 00:20:20.780 ⇒ 00:20:33.029 Amber Lin: Thank you. I think this this sums it up really nicely, and this prevents us to put blame on people and next time we see that something’s not going as fast we’ll we’ll follow.
145 00:20:33.940 ⇒ 00:20:37.850 Amber Lin: This, we’ll follow this decision tree.
146 00:20:38.700 ⇒ 00:20:42.579 Amber Lin: Okay, that’s that’s all for me, I think.
147 00:20:45.290 ⇒ 00:20:49.680 Amber Lin: Yeah, these communications retros.
148 00:20:51.103 ⇒ 00:21:04.509 Amber Lin: I think next time we meet I think we’ll already have done a retro or 2 together, and then we can talk about what we did for the retros, and what we want to
149 00:21:04.740 ⇒ 00:21:06.479 Amber Lin: like, what we want to improve.
150 00:21:11.510 ⇒ 00:21:12.230 Awaish Kumar: Okay.
151 00:21:12.540 ⇒ 00:21:17.249 Amber Lin: Yeah, thank you. All this was a very efficient meeting. Any more questions we have.
152 00:21:24.970 ⇒ 00:21:28.030 Amber Lin: Okay, that’s a no, thank you. All for joining.
153 00:21:28.730 ⇒ 00:21:29.360 Awaish Kumar: And.
154 00:21:29.750 ⇒ 00:21:31.300 Amber Lin: Thanks, bye.
155 00:21:31.310 ⇒ 00:21:31.970 Awaish Kumar: Boy.