Meeting Title: PMO-Delivery Review Date: 2025-09-12 Meeting participants: Justin Breshears, Amber Lin, Uttam Kumaran, Rico Rejoso
WEBVTT
1 00:02:30.310 ⇒ 00:02:31.780 Amber Lin: Hello!
2 00:02:33.510 ⇒ 00:02:34.700 Justin Breshears: Hey, hey!
3 00:02:35.050 ⇒ 00:02:35.580 Justin Breshears: How’s it going?
4 00:02:35.580 ⇒ 00:02:38.360 Amber Lin: I mean, pretty good, Friday.
5 00:02:38.820 ⇒ 00:02:40.609 Amber Lin: But pretty early.
6 00:02:40.750 ⇒ 00:02:45.590 Amber Lin: Just gonna check if Utam and Rico’s gonna join.
7 00:02:46.190 ⇒ 00:02:48.109 Amber Lin: I think they should be free.
8 00:02:49.640 ⇒ 00:03:02.950 Amber Lin: Mostly in these meetings, I just check with Rico, okay, have we wrote updates for clients this week, and any, any items that were blocked on, and also, I know this week we wanted to talk about
9 00:03:03.220 ⇒ 00:03:06.469 Amber Lin: two things, so I’m just waiting for him to show up.
10 00:03:07.540 ⇒ 00:03:09.160 Justin Breshears: Sounds like a plan to me.
11 00:03:10.340 ⇒ 00:03:14.920 Justin Breshears: How are y’all currently doing updates? Just putting them in the Slack channels for each client, and…
12 00:03:16.030 ⇒ 00:03:25.429 Amber Lin: Actually, we try to send emails, but a few clients that just default prefer to be in Slack, so we send it via Slack, and I…
13 00:03:25.770 ⇒ 00:03:32.149 Amber Lin: Depends on the client. So we can do email, can do Slack, I don’t think it matters too much to the client.
14 00:03:33.210 ⇒ 00:03:36.789 Justin Breshears: What do the status updates look like? Is there a format that you use?
15 00:03:37.160 ⇒ 00:03:40.430 Amber Lin: Yeah, let me show you…
16 00:03:40.780 ⇒ 00:03:41.390 Justin Breshears: Nope.
17 00:03:52.870 ⇒ 00:03:59.109 Amber Lin: Yeah, so… Utam added some templates, so I’ll share this doc with you.
18 00:03:59.840 ⇒ 00:04:01.030 Justin Breshears: like that.
19 00:04:01.760 ⇒ 00:04:07.319 Justin Breshears: All four templates and documentation, right, makes sense.
20 00:04:09.270 ⇒ 00:04:14.550 Amber Lin: Yeah, and then we have, at the bottom, a database of previous updates we made.
21 00:04:15.970 ⇒ 00:04:16.640 Justin Breshears: Nice.
22 00:04:27.130 ⇒ 00:04:32.919 Justin Breshears: So we’re just sending this in the body of the email. We don’t have, like, a status report template or anything that we use?
23 00:04:33.740 ⇒ 00:04:35.299 Amber Lin: What do you mean by that?
24 00:04:36.060 ⇒ 00:04:40.649 Justin Breshears: Like, a document that is, like, a status report that we fill out each week.
25 00:04:41.080 ⇒ 00:04:48.050 Amber Lin: We could do that. We could have a running document that we show our clients. Usually, right now, we just send the message or send the email.
26 00:04:48.450 ⇒ 00:04:49.050 Justin Breshears: Right.
27 00:04:50.040 ⇒ 00:04:52.500 Justin Breshears: Which is, I think, sufficient.
28 00:04:52.640 ⇒ 00:04:54.440 Justin Breshears: For now, I’m just trying to think.
29 00:04:55.400 ⇒ 00:05:03.420 Justin Breshears: As we scale in the future, we get, like, bigger clients, a lot of them probably either appreciate or be used to
30 00:05:03.920 ⇒ 00:05:06.910 Justin Breshears: Like, the formalized status report.
31 00:05:06.910 ⇒ 00:05:15.499 Amber Lin: Yeah, that makes sense. Do you want to send that in the project management channel so that they know what we want to do, and then if they agree, we can just switch over?
32 00:05:15.780 ⇒ 00:05:22.950 Justin Breshears: Yeah, that’s… I’m putting it on my ideas list. As I, like, go through and learn everything, I’m, like, writing down ideas for the future.
33 00:05:22.950 ⇒ 00:05:23.330 Amber Lin: Hmm.
34 00:05:23.510 ⇒ 00:05:26.059 Justin Breshears: Try to, like, prioritize the…
35 00:05:26.450 ⇒ 00:05:27.110 Amber Lin: Yeah.
36 00:05:29.580 ⇒ 00:05:41.400 Justin Breshears: But yeah, obviously, always run by y’all, everything before anything’s done. For example, my proposal on the project management channel of changing the way we story point, what do you think about that?
37 00:05:41.820 ⇒ 00:05:44.870 Amber Lin: I haven’t checked it yet.
38 00:05:45.180 ⇒ 00:05:46.100 Justin Breshears: What?
39 00:05:46.100 ⇒ 00:05:46.689 Amber Lin: was true.
40 00:05:46.690 ⇒ 00:05:51.169 Justin Breshears: I just think it’s kind of interesting that we story .1 to 2 ratio right now. I’m like.
41 00:05:51.580 ⇒ 00:05:57.710 Justin Breshears: Yeah, I agree. I think we started originally because we did 1, 5, 8, and it was…
42 00:05:57.710 ⇒ 00:06:05.069 Amber Lin: It was not even a 1 to 2, it was, like, 1 point… was, like, 2 hours, and a 3-point became, like…
43 00:06:05.370 ⇒ 00:06:12.000 Amber Lin: 2-point was 2 hours, and then 3-point became, like, 6 hours. It was just not even a linear scale, so I did…
44 00:06:12.100 ⇒ 00:06:19.440 Amber Lin: it to 1 to 2. I would love to change it to 1 to 1, I just don’t know how that’s gonna impact the previous cycles.
45 00:06:19.870 ⇒ 00:06:26.900 Justin Breshears: Sure. So… Yeah, it may be a situation where it’s changed for, like, future… projects…
46 00:06:27.020 ⇒ 00:06:30.090 Justin Breshears: And, like, whatever is existing, like, stays…
47 00:06:30.740 ⇒ 00:06:37.269 Justin Breshears: Yeah. If it’s gonna, like… I don’t want to mess anything up, but it might just be, like, any new projects that I start, like, we start quarantining.
48 00:06:37.750 ⇒ 00:06:44.379 Justin Breshears: But, yeah, it just makes sense in my head, because I’m like, I’m sitting here, even though it’s just dividing it by 2, I’m like.
49 00:06:44.930 ⇒ 00:06:49.519 Justin Breshears: I’m sitting here doing math in my head every time I’m looking at story points to hours is just silly to me.
50 00:06:53.280 ⇒ 00:06:56.070 Justin Breshears: So yeah, that was one thing I wanted to propose to everybody.
51 00:06:56.440 ⇒ 00:07:00.279 Justin Breshears: The way I point at my other job is, by days.
52 00:07:00.430 ⇒ 00:07:05.420 Justin Breshears: But I think that our task, especially with people being partially allocated.
53 00:07:06.200 ⇒ 00:07:08.239 Justin Breshears: It might make more sense to do hours.
54 00:07:09.100 ⇒ 00:07:18.170 Amber Lin: Yeah, I agree. I’ll send it in… I think mostly just sign off from…
55 00:07:18.280 ⇒ 00:07:30.689 Amber Lin: sign off from Utam, and then… Awish already agrees, because he raised that as well. So, as long as they agree, and maybe also Rico, then we can go change that.
56 00:07:30.890 ⇒ 00:07:37.900 Justin Breshears: And I talked to Alex this morning, and so he was on board too, so I think it seems like… seems like a no-brainer to me.
57 00:07:38.050 ⇒ 00:07:38.720 Amber Lin: Okay.
58 00:07:39.680 ⇒ 00:07:40.740 Amber Lin: Awesome.
59 00:07:41.220 ⇒ 00:07:41.920 Amber Lin: Hmm…
60 00:07:42.870 ⇒ 00:07:45.119 Justin Breshears: Do we know if Rico and Utom are gonna make it?
61 00:07:46.800 ⇒ 00:07:50.590 Amber Lin: Doesn’t seem like it. Let me check with him.
62 00:07:54.310 ⇒ 00:07:56.429 Justin Breshears: It would be good to have their input on some things.
63 00:08:00.880 ⇒ 00:08:03.280 Justin Breshears: Had a lot of coffee today, so I’m wearing it.
64 00:08:07.790 ⇒ 00:08:09.829 Justin Breshears: Have any fun plans this weekend?
65 00:08:10.370 ⇒ 00:08:25.429 Amber Lin: I haven’t yet. We just moved recently, so this week has been a lot of, oh, I need a chair, I need a table, I need this, so maybe this weekend we’ll relax, but not sure yet.
66 00:08:28.450 ⇒ 00:08:29.100 Justin Breshears: Fair enough.
67 00:08:30.710 ⇒ 00:08:32.590 Justin Breshears: Another thing I need to propose to.
68 00:08:33.070 ⇒ 00:08:38.310 Justin Breshears: Tom is, getting a Brainforge Zoom background.
69 00:08:38.850 ⇒ 00:08:41.509 Amber Lin: Oh, I thought we already… we had it.
70 00:08:41.620 ⇒ 00:08:43.370 Amber Lin: We had it before.
71 00:08:43.370 ⇒ 00:08:45.460 Justin Breshears: Oh, where is it? I wanna…
72 00:08:45.750 ⇒ 00:08:53.390 Amber Lin: I don’t know where it is. Let’s ask in the design channel. They made it before, but nobody really used.
73 00:08:53.390 ⇒ 00:08:56.560 Justin Breshears: I’m like, I need a branded Zoom background.
74 00:08:57.040 ⇒ 00:08:58.670 Uttam Kumaran: I’ll get you one, I’ll get you one.
75 00:08:58.670 ⇒ 00:09:00.359 Justin Breshears: Yeah, I was just talking.
76 00:09:00.360 ⇒ 00:09:01.080 Amber Lin: I was like, weird.
77 00:09:01.080 ⇒ 00:09:03.470 Justin Breshears: I need that. I need a… need a representative.
78 00:09:03.470 ⇒ 00:09:21.590 Uttam Kumaran: Nobody uses it, and then, I don’t know, I used to live in New York, and I never had, like, any background worth showing. Now I have, like, an office room, and it makes us look like we’re, like, loaded, and, like, we’re… like, the company’s doing really well, so I’m like, I might as well show the real background.
79 00:09:21.730 ⇒ 00:09:22.750 Justin Breshears: Yeah, oh, man.
80 00:09:22.750 ⇒ 00:09:29.870 Uttam Kumaran: Brainforge, like, we did a Christmas background, and yeah, we can ask… they’ll make you a custom one if you wanted.
81 00:09:30.280 ⇒ 00:09:45.259 Justin Breshears: Yeah, that’d be great. I mean, I just want, like, a black one with Brain Forge on it or something. Yeah, my room is just, like, a shared office-slash-guest room, so it’s just, like, a bed behind me, and I’m like, I don’t want to show that. Yeah. So, I usually have it…
82 00:09:45.330 ⇒ 00:09:50.759 Justin Breshears: Blocked out. My goal is to have a house one day where I have my own dedicated office. That would be really nice.
83 00:09:50.760 ⇒ 00:10:02.749 Uttam Kumaran: This is just, like, a little room near the front door. It’s so… it’s just, like, nice, because I can leave, and it’s not, like, in my bedroom, or, like, in the kitchen table, you know, or…
84 00:10:03.440 ⇒ 00:10:04.190 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
85 00:10:04.190 ⇒ 00:10:09.659 Justin Breshears: Yeah, I got kicked out of my old one that was a dedicated office by my son, so as long as I keep adding kids.
86 00:10:09.790 ⇒ 00:10:14.019 Justin Breshears: I’m probably gonna get kicked out of the office rooms right now.
87 00:10:17.070 ⇒ 00:10:32.919 Amber Lin: Usually, we use this meeting to do, one, make sure that we write project updates for each client, two, note down anything that’s blocked or anything that is at risk, and then I know also today, we wanted to talk about the default renewal and any opportunities.
88 00:10:33.090 ⇒ 00:10:46.390 Amber Lin: So, I’ll share the… let me share this document. I’m using the same delivery document. I want us to just take 2 minutes, jot down any notes that we want to talk about, and then we can start.
89 00:10:56.570 ⇒ 00:10:58.760 Justin Breshears: Or was there something I missed?
90 00:10:58.760 ⇒ 00:11:01.010 Amber Lin: Yeah, I sent it in the Zoom chat.
91 00:11:01.410 ⇒ 00:11:02.420 Justin Breshears: Oh, okay, so…
92 00:12:21.370 ⇒ 00:12:30.739 Amber Lin: Okay. Did everyone get a chance to put down, concerns and risks on the projects, or just overall that you see?
93 00:12:36.170 ⇒ 00:12:45.519 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I guess in this doc, are we… oh, down here, okay. Okay, yeah. I can… let me just put down a couple things, so…
94 00:13:04.470 ⇒ 00:13:07.699 Uttam Kumaran: I would say for…
95 00:13:12.600 ⇒ 00:13:13.690 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, and then…
96 00:15:30.930 ⇒ 00:15:33.670 Uttam Kumaran: And then let’s, make a decision today on the pointing thing.
97 00:15:35.440 ⇒ 00:15:40.639 Amber Lin: I agree, no, we’ll just do it later. We’ll do it in the meeting.
98 00:15:41.320 ⇒ 00:15:42.600 Amber Lin: Or how…
99 00:15:44.110 ⇒ 00:15:46.600 Uttam Kumaran: Finally, someone’s opinionated on points.
100 00:15:46.600 ⇒ 00:15:47.410 Amber Lin: I was coming.
101 00:15:47.410 ⇒ 00:15:48.920 Uttam Kumaran: one. I don’t know.
102 00:15:48.920 ⇒ 00:15:57.940 Justin Breshears: like, I just… I don’t like having to do math in my head every time I’m trying to calculate capacity, so I’m like, why don’t we just make it easy? It’s just a new world, because…
103 00:15:57.940 ⇒ 00:16:10.410 Justin Breshears: I point at my other job, I point by days, because usually the tasks are, like, bigger and, like, take multiple days, but it seems like, and especially with the partial allocations on everybody.
104 00:16:10.470 ⇒ 00:16:15.060 Justin Breshears: Seems like the tasks here are broken out more hourly, so I think a one-on-one just makes sense.
105 00:16:18.830 ⇒ 00:16:22.460 Justin Breshears: I don’t think you’re gonna find any problem with getting opinions out of me.
106 00:16:22.460 ⇒ 00:16:24.210 Uttam Kumaran: Tom.
107 00:16:34.880 ⇒ 00:16:37.889 Justin Breshears: Yeah, so, I mean, how do these go? Do we usually…
108 00:16:38.450 ⇒ 00:16:41.590 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, Amber, whenever we’re ready, we can start.
109 00:16:41.590 ⇒ 00:16:45.749 Amber Lin: Yeah, we’re ready, so let me share screen and we can run through.
110 00:16:46.310 ⇒ 00:16:56.709 Amber Lin: So, first, on the weekly updates side, I’m writing it for Eden. Urban Stems, I’ll write it after or in the meeting that we’ll have, actually.
111 00:16:56.960 ⇒ 00:17:00.650 Amber Lin: In 30 minutes, Utam, would you be able to go to that meeting?
112 00:17:01.080 ⇒ 00:17:02.580 Uttam Kumaran: the Urban Stems thing?
113 00:17:02.580 ⇒ 00:17:03.670 Amber Lin: Yeah, yeah.
114 00:17:03.850 ⇒ 00:17:04.640 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I’ll be clear.
115 00:17:04.640 ⇒ 00:17:12.290 Amber Lin: Okay, sounds good. I will write the ABC one, and Sonya, I wrote an internal update, I’ll translate that.
116 00:17:12.410 ⇒ 00:17:17.139 Uttam Kumaran: Justin, you’re not familiar with, like, what we’re doing for, like, weekly updates at all, or no?
117 00:17:17.380 ⇒ 00:17:22.140 Justin Breshears: I was just talking to Amber about it before we all hopped on, so yes, and I have thoughts on it.
118 00:17:22.140 ⇒ 00:17:23.119 Uttam Kumaran: Cool, okay.
119 00:17:23.410 ⇒ 00:17:23.970 Amber Lin: Yeah.
120 00:17:24.040 ⇒ 00:17:26.840 Justin Breshears: Awesome, and then confirming…
121 00:17:27.099 ⇒ 00:17:30.049 Amber Lin: On default and interlude, okay.
122 00:17:30.220 ⇒ 00:17:33.309 Amber Lin: And then, are we writing any updates for Interlude?
123 00:17:36.290 ⇒ 00:17:44.400 Uttam Kumaran: I think we should go ahead and send. I… Rico, matt sent, an email on the contract.
124 00:17:45.030 ⇒ 00:17:48.559 Uttam Kumaran: Did you get a chance to see that?
125 00:17:49.420 ⇒ 00:17:51.839 Rico Rejoso: I have it. Let me see.
126 00:17:53.750 ⇒ 00:17:55.180 Rico Rejoso: Yeah, I saw it.
127 00:17:55.800 ⇒ 00:17:59.739 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, cool. Yeah, if we can make that change, and then we can get that signed.
128 00:17:59.930 ⇒ 00:18:03.589 Uttam Kumaran: And then, yeah, we did some… I think Mustafa did some updates this week.
129 00:18:03.940 ⇒ 00:18:21.370 Uttam Kumaran: But I still want to find… I still… we still need to book, like, two recurring weekly meetings. The one with Micah and Sam and whoever, and then the one with me and Matthew, so… those are still outstanding. I wanted to wait until this contract gets signed to, like, start to, like.
130 00:18:21.900 ⇒ 00:18:24.999 Uttam Kumaran: push some of those. It looks like it’ll get signed today, so…
131 00:18:27.360 ⇒ 00:18:30.540 Uttam Kumaran: For everyone’s context, this is a renewal contract.
132 00:18:30.840 ⇒ 00:18:36.649 Uttam Kumaran: The client was just, like, dragging their feet a little bit on, like, signing a 3-month versus something month-to-month.
133 00:18:36.860 ⇒ 00:18:41.759 Uttam Kumaran: And so, like, we’re not, like, officially signed on the next piece.
134 00:18:42.070 ⇒ 00:18:46.300 Uttam Kumaran: But we’ve probably done, like, 1 or 2 hours of work, since it’s just, like, carryover work.
135 00:18:47.940 ⇒ 00:18:58.619 Uttam Kumaran: But I kind of wanted to wait until they sign to start to book some recurring meetings, actually spend more time, just in case things fall out. So, looks like that should get close to…
136 00:18:59.160 ⇒ 00:19:00.590 Amber Lin: Okay.
137 00:19:01.960 ⇒ 00:19:14.259 Amber Lin: Ellie, not much happening, so I’ll just send a quick note in the client Slack. And the insomnia, I sent to the internal channel for review, and then we’ll send it to the clients later.
138 00:19:18.350 ⇒ 00:19:25.420 Amber Lin: That’s all the weekly update, just want to make sure those get sent. I think my f-
139 00:19:25.670 ⇒ 00:19:32.420 Amber Lin: Just any new clients that’s confirming coming in next week that need any initiation processes?
140 00:19:33.110 ⇒ 00:19:35.189 Amber Lin: Any of these confirming?
141 00:19:36.500 ⇒ 00:19:39.590 Uttam Kumaran: Can you scroll up again? Sorry.
142 00:19:39.590 ⇒ 00:19:40.150 Amber Lin: Yeah.
143 00:19:43.380 ⇒ 00:19:50.849 Uttam Kumaran: No… these are still, like, in process. Like, we sent them… Okay. Yeah, these are all still in process.
144 00:19:51.080 ⇒ 00:19:51.730 Amber Lin: Okay.
145 00:19:52.600 ⇒ 00:19:54.020 Amber Lin: Sounds good.
146 00:19:54.710 ⇒ 00:19:55.490 Amber Lin: Nope.
147 00:19:55.740 ⇒ 00:20:00.019 Amber Lin: Alright, concerns and risks. Justin, I’ll let you start.
148 00:20:00.360 ⇒ 00:20:05.919 Justin Breshears: Yeah, I got a few. This is just stuff that I’ve noticed, this week, digging in.
149 00:20:06.240 ⇒ 00:20:08.709 Justin Breshears: So, like, on Insomnia,
150 00:20:09.100 ⇒ 00:20:21.360 Justin Breshears: there was, I think, there could be… there’s an opportunity for a better handoff from, like, sales to delivery on, you know, hey, here’s contract signed, like.
151 00:20:21.580 ⇒ 00:20:41.290 Justin Breshears: here… here’s what we’re looking at. Here’s the deliverables we’re held to, here’s what the client wants, like, here’s the… even the sentiment, the temperature of the client, like, how it’s been to work with them, like, whatever. I understand this was a renewal, so, like, we have a little bit of a relationship there, but, like, especially for brand new clients, brand new client comes in, delivery has no idea, like, anything about them.
152 00:20:41.440 ⇒ 00:21:04.119 Justin Breshears: I want to set up a process for sales to hand off strongly so that then delivery can take it and then have a really good roadmap backlog initiation phase and plan out. And to Utam’s point about estimations, instead of just asking the specific, you know, assignees of those tickets, like, hey, how long do you think? It’d be good to have, like, the whole team involved and a tech lead involved.
153 00:21:04.120 ⇒ 00:21:08.290 Justin Breshears: To give opinions on estimations and backlog creation at the beginning, so…
154 00:21:09.340 ⇒ 00:21:28.290 Justin Breshears: That is… so how I’m looking at, like, trying to think about process and documentation here is I’m trying to look at the whole project life cycle, and I want to start from, like, step one. So, for delivery, step one is the handoff from sales. So, that’s kind of where I want to start over the weekend, is developing, like, here’s my thoughts on how a sales delivery handoff should go.
155 00:21:28.290 ⇒ 00:21:38.000 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, whether that’s a meeting, or, like, we fill out a form, or whatever, I’ll totally guide towards whatever you think that is. Things like this can start as a meeting, and then if this is something we can…
156 00:21:38.110 ⇒ 00:21:41.049 Uttam Kumaran: It’s, like, something to process, or yeah, I’m open to that.
157 00:21:41.510 ⇒ 00:21:50.469 Justin Breshears: I think that it actually could start as not a meeting and use a combination of AI and a form or, like, a.
158 00:21:50.470 ⇒ 00:21:56.489 Uttam Kumaran: What’s really easy for us, if you’re like, hey, there’s these… we have these 10 questions, it’s actually so easy for me to, like.
159 00:21:56.930 ⇒ 00:22:06.669 Uttam Kumaran: record a voice, like, record speech of, like, what it is, and also link, like, relevant meetings for you to pull transcripts from, and then that just gets into, like, a notion.
160 00:22:07.100 ⇒ 00:22:24.050 Justin Breshears: That’s what I want. That’s what I want, because I don’t want to take up more of y’all’s time in meetings on this than necessary, and I don’t think this has to be a meeting if we have that. So, that’s what I… I’m going to spend some time this weekend, like, creating… putting all that down on paper, and what I think about that, and then send it to y’all for review.
161 00:22:24.280 ⇒ 00:22:32.530 Justin Breshears: Okay. And so that, that’s kind of tied together as, like, SUD and then, what I call an engagement strategy meeting, which is build up backlog, like.
162 00:22:32.530 ⇒ 00:22:52.529 Justin Breshears: you know, get the team together on, like, hey, how are we gonna tackle this? Like, you know, get allocations set. I think that’s one thing down a couple of bullet points, I have capacity planning, like, we need to have, like, strong ideas of, like, how much time are you devoting to this project versus your other priorities, so I know, you know, how much workload can I, you know, put on you versus other stuff, because…
163 00:22:52.550 ⇒ 00:22:56.539 Justin Breshears: We ran into that with another, you know, person this week that…
164 00:22:56.540 ⇒ 00:23:13.969 Justin Breshears: there was just too much on its plate, right? So, I think that’s gonna be super important with just how we allocate things, and there’s always gonna be, like, more work than we can do, I think. So, we gotta make sure that we’re capacity planning right. So, having that strong planning and initiation up front, I think, will help with all that stuff.
165 00:23:13.970 ⇒ 00:23:16.460 Justin Breshears: Just knowing, like, what we’re… But…
166 00:23:16.740 ⇒ 00:23:28.549 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, on the capacity planning, it’s like, it’s very easy for engineers to, like, be like, this is gonna take this long. If there’s no challenge to that, or no basis by which people estimate.
167 00:23:29.040 ⇒ 00:23:40.440 Uttam Kumaran: estimating your own work is very difficult. People do not do a good job of that. So, for me, I’m always biased towards, like, if there can be a subject matter expert or tech lead, that person does it. At minimum, it goes back to, like.
168 00:23:40.790 ⇒ 00:23:48.149 Uttam Kumaran: the PM to be like, it has to get, like, because of our constraint, my recommendation is it to get done in this
169 00:23:48.300 ⇒ 00:23:58.919 Uttam Kumaran: amount of time, so we hit our goal. Like, having an individual person estimate we’ve not succeeded. I don’t know any company that really does a great job, or any engineers that end up
170 00:23:59.070 ⇒ 00:23:59.900 Uttam Kumaran: like…
171 00:24:00.250 ⇒ 00:24:10.700 Uttam Kumaran: it’s either an ego thing, or a lack of, like, understanding how much work it actually takes. Like, people really fail to estimate their work well, so it’s something that I don’t know whether we’re, like.
172 00:24:11.130 ⇒ 00:24:14.679 Uttam Kumaran: Gonna innovate much on, so we have to have these, like, other voices.
173 00:24:15.360 ⇒ 00:24:23.680 Justin Breshears: Agreed, agree. And then… and then we need to hold people to the work that’s committed. That was one of the things that I talked to Rico about yesterday, is
174 00:24:23.810 ⇒ 00:24:27.230 Justin Breshears: When you’re sprint planning, or planning for a whole backlog.
175 00:24:27.480 ⇒ 00:24:36.200 Justin Breshears: the work that’s put in for your, you know, capacity, let’s say, 10 hours a week, okay, so you’re putting 20 hours worth of work on a cycle.
176 00:24:36.370 ⇒ 00:24:39.279 Justin Breshears: you’re committing to that work, and if it doesn’t get done.
177 00:24:39.420 ⇒ 00:24:48.860 Justin Breshears: that needs to be called out on, like, hey, this didn’t get done, or hey, we’re ahead of it, what else… where can we pull forward into this sprint? You know, stuff like that, so…
178 00:24:48.860 ⇒ 00:24:49.260 Uttam Kumaran: connect.
179 00:24:49.260 ⇒ 00:25:01.339 Justin Breshears: I think we gotta start at the beginning and make sure that those estimations are spot on, and that we have the proper capacity planned, and then we can really track philosophy throughout, and then we can get better at, from there, on how to do it.
180 00:25:01.610 ⇒ 00:25:02.210 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
181 00:25:02.610 ⇒ 00:25:03.940 Amber Lin: That’s my focus at this point.
182 00:25:03.940 ⇒ 00:25:05.390 Justin Breshears: Yeah.
183 00:25:05.390 ⇒ 00:25:09.960 Amber Lin: That sounds great, that’s exactly what we’re not great at, and that’s what we need.
184 00:25:10.400 ⇒ 00:25:23.449 Justin Breshears: Yeah, yeah, and I mean, y’all are doing a great job, like, where you are, it’s just… I want to come in and try to help make it better, is all. So, that’s where I’m starting there. So Story Points 101, like, that…
185 00:25:23.540 ⇒ 00:25:34.440 Justin Breshears: That just makes sense in my mind. Amber brings up a good point about it affecting existing projects, maybe. So if there’s not a way that we can implement it for existing projects, maybe we just
186 00:25:34.750 ⇒ 00:25:41.990 Justin Breshears: When we… every project we set up new, we now do one-to-one estimation, or… Easy way to switch, whatever.
187 00:25:42.320 ⇒ 00:25:55.949 Amber Lin: On that, I think my point was, when we do tracking, or when we look at it in our real dashboard of, okay, we just need to know before this date, or before this date, every point estimate was done, one.
188 00:25:55.950 ⇒ 00:25:57.330 Uttam Kumaran: So, I’ll go… I can actually…
189 00:25:57.330 ⇒ 00:25:57.670 Amber Lin: Me too.
190 00:25:57.670 ⇒ 00:26:02.870 Uttam Kumaran: I’ll just go edit past, like, we can bulk edit using the API, and I’ll change…
191 00:26:02.870 ⇒ 00:26:03.230 Justin Breshears: There you go.
192 00:26:03.230 ⇒ 00:26:07.769 Amber Lin: Oh, that would be… that would be awesome. That’s my only concern. I would love to switch it, just we have.
193 00:26:07.770 ⇒ 00:26:11.190 Uttam Kumaran: Did you put a comment there, and then just,
194 00:26:11.620 ⇒ 00:26:13.619 Uttam Kumaran: This is something that the AI team will do.
195 00:26:13.910 ⇒ 00:26:18.430 Amber Lin: Okay, let me note down the action items, give me a second.
196 00:26:18.430 ⇒ 00:26:18.960 Uttam Kumaran: Yo.
197 00:26:18.960 ⇒ 00:26:24.440 Justin Breshears: I feel like everybody I’ve talked to has been like, no, one-to-one’s better, so I think we just need to do this.
198 00:26:24.440 ⇒ 00:26:27.650 Uttam Kumaran: That’s fine, yeah, yeah, yeah, and so I don’t… yeah, no problem there.
199 00:26:27.650 ⇒ 00:26:29.389 Amber Lin: Can I go to…
200 00:26:29.390 ⇒ 00:26:35.489 Uttam Kumaran: We create a ticket that’s just, like, what is the old, what is the new, and then they’ll bulk… they’ll run a bulk update.
201 00:26:35.490 ⇒ 00:26:44.500 Justin Breshears: Yeah, and then I don’t know if it’s the right time to bring up this, maybe this is a future thing, but I would suggest we move to one-week sprints, but that might be a future conversation.
202 00:26:44.720 ⇒ 00:26:53.220 Amber Lin: I… I would… I would… I’m very open to it. Eden’s essentially on one-week sprints. It doesn’t matter if we’re on one week or two weeks.
203 00:26:53.220 ⇒ 00:26:59.519 Uttam Kumaran: I’m open to it, too, I just don’t think we had the PM, like, organization around the rituals. It made it a little bit difficult.
204 00:26:59.520 ⇒ 00:27:13.979 Justin Breshears: Yeah, that’s where I’m trying to help, because if we can get these rituals down, and get it, like, clockwork, then I think one-week sprints could be really beneficial, because I see less variance between planned and actual work getting done in a one-week sprint versus a two-week.
205 00:27:13.980 ⇒ 00:27:21.099 Justin Breshears: Yeah. Because you just have tighter controls over it, and so it’s a lot… you can get off track a lot more in a longer sprint.
206 00:27:21.100 ⇒ 00:27:22.130 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I agree on that.
207 00:27:22.130 ⇒ 00:27:29.490 Justin Breshears: So, that’s a future, yeah, future discussion, but if we can get all of our rituals in place.
208 00:27:29.490 ⇒ 00:27:30.639 Amber Lin: And I think…
209 00:27:30.640 ⇒ 00:27:32.479 Uttam Kumaran: Then we can have that conversation.
210 00:27:32.480 ⇒ 00:27:33.350 Amber Lin: Gotcha.
211 00:27:35.410 ⇒ 00:27:36.750 Justin Breshears: This is so exciting, almost.
212 00:27:36.750 ⇒ 00:27:38.090 Uttam Kumaran: stuff.
213 00:27:38.090 ⇒ 00:27:38.930 Amber Lin: Yeah, I love it.
214 00:27:38.930 ⇒ 00:27:46.669 Uttam Kumaran: Because, like, I also, I think we should, like, ultimately, even sprints, like, everything is sort of a downstream of just, like, people can’t…
215 00:27:46.760 ⇒ 00:27:59.819 Uttam Kumaran: make it simple to do and, like, get their stuff done. So, it’s like, how do we, like, wrap… how do we just help people do that? And I also think two-week sprints is, like, there’s too much variance, and it just leaves… it’s, like, too open. Like.
216 00:27:59.930 ⇒ 00:28:07.110 Uttam Kumaran: coming in on Monday, being like, what I had to get on Friday, is a great, like, thing to hear as, like, a business owner and, like, for our clients, you know?
217 00:28:07.340 ⇒ 00:28:09.270 Justin Breshears: Oh, for sure, and you’re estimating…
218 00:28:09.420 ⇒ 00:28:11.700 Uttam Kumaran: The what… what we’re gonna do anyways, you know?
219 00:28:12.040 ⇒ 00:28:23.769 Justin Breshears: Yeah, you’re estimating tasks hourly, and so the big gap between an hourly estimated task and, like, what I’m getting done in 2 weeks is just… it’s too big. Like, it’s… there’s… it would be better to… to…
220 00:28:23.850 ⇒ 00:28:33.479 Justin Breshears: pare down the time frame that we’re estimating, you know, for, like, a week versus the hourly tasks that we have. So, yeah, that… we’ll get there, actually.
221 00:28:33.480 ⇒ 00:28:43.959 Amber Lin: Okay. Action items so far, one for the AI team, and also, Justin, you said to have sales to deliver…
222 00:28:44.110 ⇒ 00:28:45.270 Amber Lin: Delivery, I…
223 00:28:45.270 ⇒ 00:28:46.579 Justin Breshears: call it S2D,
224 00:28:46.910 ⇒ 00:28:53.610 Justin Breshears: Start there, have some documents built out this weekend for review. Yeah, okay, so we can review a Monday meeting.
225 00:28:53.970 ⇒ 00:28:54.520 Justin Breshears: Yeah.
226 00:28:55.150 ⇒ 00:28:55.930 Amber Lin: Okay.
227 00:28:56.230 ⇒ 00:28:58.580 Amber Lin: Review Monday…
228 00:28:59.070 ⇒ 00:29:01.880 Justin Breshears: Alright, I feel like I’m taking up all the meeting, but I just…
229 00:29:01.880 ⇒ 00:29:11.830 Amber Lin: No, all good. We… I have until, like, 9.45, so it’s 28 right now. And then decision… discussion for next week, we’ll talk about the one-week sprint.
230 00:29:12.950 ⇒ 00:29:24.020 Justin Breshears: Yeah, status report template. So, I know you’re doing, like, I was just talking to Amber, you have, like, a little, you know, template that you send out in the email. I think, and this might be a future discussion, too, it’s not, like.
231 00:29:24.020 ⇒ 00:29:48.850 Justin Breshears: necessary, but I think it would be good to build out a doc that was, like, a more formal status report, and then, you know, base it on that, and then that’s another AI opportunity, is can we then build an AI integration to automatically populate that doc every single week from, like, linear tickets? Like, if we can get linear tickets cleaned up, and we were really good on our velocity reporting, then we can have, yeah, automated charts coming in from, you know, velocity reports
232 00:29:48.850 ⇒ 00:29:50.350 Justin Breshears: Sprint reports, burndown charts.
233 00:29:50.350 ⇒ 00:30:01.600 Uttam Kumaran: One of our clients, we just built a Slack to Notion thing, so if you guys want this, like, to come into Slack or whatever, just need to know what the form factor is.
234 00:30:01.600 ⇒ 00:30:10.550 Uttam Kumaran: And then, yeah, like, the better the tickets, and we have all the transcripts, the higher quality this output is gonna be, right? You know, we will also add, like.
235 00:30:10.550 ⇒ 00:30:19.560 Uttam Kumaran: We can also add the ability for you to just add in additional context before generating that, but again, even if it’s, like, 80% right, like, I feel like it’s… it’s fine, you know?
236 00:30:19.560 ⇒ 00:30:25.120 Justin Breshears: It’s how I currently do it, and, like, most of it is automated, and week over week, I don’t have to touch, but…
237 00:30:25.510 ⇒ 00:30:43.940 Justin Breshears: then you just kind of add in your blurbs, which is more on, like, the high-level business side, so it’s, like, highlights, or, you know, here’s how we’re tracking towards your key business objectives, or, like, whatever. And I think it’s going to be especially important with the variability in capacity for a lot of these contracts, so, like, some of them are hourly, and, like.
238 00:30:43.940 ⇒ 00:30:57.020 Justin Breshears: So you need to be reporting on your budget, your spend, and, like, what costs, you know, or… There’s so much to a report that, like, would look really daunting in an email that I think would be better if we could just, like, build out a doc. And then you have…
239 00:30:57.020 ⇒ 00:31:03.710 Justin Breshears: PDFs, you know, that represent, you know, the project over time, so that if you’re 6 months into it, and they’re like.
240 00:31:03.790 ⇒ 00:31:10.539 Justin Breshears: complaining about something we did 3 months ago, like, you have a snapshot of, like, where it was at that point, so…
241 00:31:10.760 ⇒ 00:31:11.989 Amber Lin: That’s a great point.
242 00:31:12.330 ⇒ 00:31:17.269 Justin Breshears: I would like to take that on and build out a template for that at some point. It doesn’t have to be right now, but…
243 00:31:17.800 ⇒ 00:31:36.920 Amber Lin: Okay. Yeah, right now we have something that… we have some AI automations around that that does already take linear tickets and create an update. That’s something that the AI team built, and we can give them comments on how we want that to be formatted. It’s in the project management channel. If you want to scroll a little bit, they just sent it in at night.
244 00:31:36.920 ⇒ 00:31:37.370 Justin Breshears: Love that.
245 00:31:37.370 ⇒ 00:31:42.609 Amber Lin: MPSD today, and then we can give them comments, and that should be a starting point on…
246 00:31:42.780 ⇒ 00:31:44.730 Amber Lin: how we do the Notion talk.
247 00:31:47.820 ⇒ 00:31:50.150 Justin Breshears: We could just get that into a Google Doc, that wouldn’t.
248 00:31:50.150 ⇒ 00:31:51.490 Amber Lin: Yeah.
249 00:31:52.350 ⇒ 00:31:53.150 Amber Lin: Yeah.
250 00:31:53.400 ⇒ 00:32:11.510 Justin Breshears: And then, last thing for me is just, identifying a next project that I can take. I know I’m gonna take Insomnia full-time starting next week for Amber. Don’t know if there’s another existing client that we want me to take over, or if there’s somebody new, or a renewal, or whatever. I’m open to what’s the next target.
251 00:32:11.510 ⇒ 00:32:12.180 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
252 00:32:13.460 ⇒ 00:32:15.949 Uttam Kumaran: What do you think, Amber, while you go?
253 00:32:16.100 ⇒ 00:32:16.870 Amber Lin: Well…
254 00:32:17.280 ⇒ 00:32:25.410 Amber Lin: Ellie just started… I just took Ellie on 2 weeks ago, and we’ve been stuck, so there’s really nothing that I…
255 00:32:25.610 ⇒ 00:32:32.080 Amber Lin: been helping them on, on Ellie, like, I think that’s a good thing. It’s a 10K per month,
256 00:32:32.700 ⇒ 00:32:37.909 Amber Lin: It’s… I took it from Rico to just help out, but…
257 00:32:38.100 ⇒ 00:32:43.919 Amber Lin: This is Zoran and Treya, so… That, that way…
258 00:32:44.230 ⇒ 00:32:53.959 Amber Lin: I think, Justin, it’ll be easier for you to judge Shreya’s availability as well, because you’ll just be working with her on the same projects. I think Ellie’s a good… Sure.
259 00:32:53.960 ⇒ 00:32:58.020 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I agree. Yeah, like, default, I feel like I’m… I’m… it’s…
260 00:32:58.170 ⇒ 00:33:03.039 Uttam Kumaran: I feel pretty good I’m handling with Rico. I think Ellie would be a good one.
261 00:33:03.740 ⇒ 00:33:06.099 Justin Breshears: Where we gotta ultimately get you out of handling.
262 00:33:06.470 ⇒ 00:33:07.870 Uttam Kumaran: No, I know, I just, like…
263 00:33:07.870 ⇒ 00:33:08.230 Justin Breshears: Yes.
264 00:33:08.230 ⇒ 00:33:12.690 Uttam Kumaran: I, yeah, I… That one, there is… it’s…
265 00:33:13.250 ⇒ 00:33:16.349 Uttam Kumaran: it’s, like, a similar level of complexity to eat in, like.
266 00:33:16.480 ⇒ 00:33:20.800 Uttam Kumaran: Not as tense, but multiple walkthroughs and, like, pretty technical.
267 00:33:21.040 ⇒ 00:33:25.370 Uttam Kumaran: So… I could throw you in there if you want to come with me, but it’s…
268 00:33:26.000 ⇒ 00:33:28.419 Justin Breshears: Sorry, that’s whatever y’all think. I think Ellie’s great.
269 00:33:28.420 ⇒ 00:33:36.700 Uttam Kumaran: I think Ellie would be good, just because Robert is gonna struggle. Like, Robert is also doing so much on the sales side, like, I want to support him with PM resources. Also, like.
270 00:33:36.980 ⇒ 00:33:48.710 Uttam Kumaran: a lot of the… I think he needs a good balance of our… of the delivery team to help him, like, get organized and… and also run some of the, like, meetings with the client directly, so…
271 00:33:48.960 ⇒ 00:33:52.680 Justin Breshears: Yeah, I was gonna ask, Amber, are you, like, introduced to the client on that one?
272 00:33:53.250 ⇒ 00:33:53.860 Amber Lin: No.
273 00:33:54.650 ⇒ 00:34:03.240 Amber Lin: I am… I can’t join the client meetings, but I haven’t yet, because I always had a conflict at that time.
274 00:34:03.590 ⇒ 00:34:10.450 Amber Lin: And they skipped the meeting this week, so I’ll onboard you, I’ll send you all the docs, I’ll try to send you all the docs today.
275 00:34:11.480 ⇒ 00:34:13.029 Justin Breshears: Let’s work on that one next, so…
276 00:34:13.030 ⇒ 00:34:14.210 Amber Lin: And then next week…
277 00:34:14.219 ⇒ 00:34:20.699 Justin Breshears: And Ellie will be mine, too, for now, and that’ll be great. And then the rest of my time will be spent on these, like, process and…
278 00:34:20.809 ⇒ 00:34:22.169 Justin Breshears: Look at all those things.
279 00:34:23.980 ⇒ 00:34:25.689 Amber Lin: Okay, on my end…
280 00:34:25.690 ⇒ 00:34:26.480 Justin Breshears: I’ll meet.
281 00:34:27.080 ⇒ 00:34:37.070 Amber Lin: Yay, that was… that was really good points. And then, on my side, I’m just gonna… I’ll work on the hours report this afternoon,
282 00:34:37.830 ⇒ 00:34:47.670 Amber Lin: I think… I have a meeting for that, Rico, with you, but I think I might just cancel that, do that async, I’ll grab some updates from Ville, I’ll ask the finance team,
283 00:34:48.330 ⇒ 00:34:49.590 Amber Lin: on costs.
284 00:34:51.340 ⇒ 00:35:10.230 Amber Lin: And then, part of my update to Urban Stems, I’ll… I’ll tell them that we might need… we will need to push things back based on all the ad hoc and fixes we’ve been doing for them. And then on Eden, I’m just gonna keep watching the hours, watching the velocity and communicating.
285 00:35:10.950 ⇒ 00:35:21.410 Amber Lin: what has been adjusted based on what they have… what their additional requests have… has been. So, just making sure that they know that we’ve been doing good work for them.
286 00:35:23.680 ⇒ 00:35:27.790 Amber Lin: Yeah, and then… that’s all from my side.
287 00:35:30.830 ⇒ 00:35:38.060 Amber Lin: Oh, also any, like… comments on the formats, on the Monday meeting, which I saw that
288 00:35:38.230 ⇒ 00:35:39.779 Amber Lin: What time are you sent?
289 00:35:40.510 ⇒ 00:35:41.290 Amber Lin: Here.
290 00:35:43.180 ⇒ 00:35:47.369 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I, I think we can let Rico go next.
291 00:35:50.480 ⇒ 00:35:54.160 Rico Rejoso: Yeah, for me, I’m just waiting on, Justin’s SOP.
292 00:35:54.370 ⇒ 00:35:57.320 Rico Rejoso: For the sprint activities that we discussed yesterday.
293 00:35:57.530 ⇒ 00:36:01.570 Rico Rejoso: Basically mentioned it a while ago, like.
294 00:36:01.920 ⇒ 00:36:13.309 Rico Rejoso: for the velocity and proper planning of our zones. I think that’s one of the challenges that we experienced on the marketing team. But other than that, I think I’m just waiting for the detailed
295 00:36:13.420 ⇒ 00:36:18.559 Rico Rejoso: SOP, so I can add… Use it and, get it done.
296 00:36:19.010 ⇒ 00:36:19.690 Justin Breshears: Yeah.
297 00:36:19.690 ⇒ 00:36:22.139 Rico Rejoso: Marketing and other client projects.
298 00:36:22.580 ⇒ 00:36:39.139 Justin Breshears: Yeah, to fill Amber and Tom in on our conversation yesterday, that’s mainly gonna be about, like, how do I manage a sprint? Like, that’s what I’m gonna write down and kind of document for Rico, is like, how do I manage it? How do I track velocity throughout it, if velocity is off?
299 00:36:39.270 ⇒ 00:36:45.899 Justin Breshears: How do I, you know, report on that, fix it, solve it, all those things. So I’m gonna try and put all my thoughts on that on paper.
300 00:36:45.900 ⇒ 00:36:47.440 Amber Lin: Okay, awesome.
301 00:36:47.840 ⇒ 00:36:51.219 Amber Lin: And then Utam, on your side.
302 00:36:51.490 ⇒ 00:36:55.739 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so I think, one is…
303 00:36:56.150 ⇒ 00:37:00.360 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I’m, like, not really doing a whole lot in linear, so…
304 00:37:00.380 ⇒ 00:37:20.029 Uttam Kumaran: I’m sort of trusting a lot of what Rico is doing for Interlude and for default. I’m not also, like, the most available person, so going to, like, stand-ups and grooming and all the rituals is, like, hit or miss for me, so I’m… I’m sort of trying to find more ways that, like.
305 00:37:20.780 ⇒ 00:37:37.079 Uttam Kumaran: as I am involved, I want to be helpful, but it has to be more async or ways for me to support. And then I need Rico for you to start to lead those, those ritual meetings and getting updates out, so I think that’s a big flag.
306 00:37:38.350 ⇒ 00:37:48.580 Uttam Kumaran: Second is, like, I’m kind of out on the loop on Ellie and Insomnia, like, about, like, kind of the scope and, like, what we’re doing. Just fine. Again, I’m kind of relying on…
307 00:37:48.580 ⇒ 00:38:00.130 Uttam Kumaran: you, Amber, and you, Justin, on where… if you need me to help. Robert is sort of solutions architecting on these. We have Freya, Zoran, and then…
308 00:38:00.270 ⇒ 00:38:02.090 Uttam Kumaran: Like, to take on work.
309 00:38:02.240 ⇒ 00:38:10.810 Uttam Kumaran: I think, one is I would start to see, like, the different management styles between me and Robert.
310 00:38:11.270 ⇒ 00:38:23.400 Uttam Kumaran: both of us are a solutions architect on things, but I think both of us have different expectations in the way we work, so you may need to mold a little bit of, like, how we do PM to that. I think particularly
311 00:38:23.450 ⇒ 00:38:42.570 Uttam Kumaran: For Robert, again, both of our constraints are time, so as much as you can extract from him on expectations and what needs to be delivered, make sure that’s ticketed, and then that’s handed to the engineers. Like, that’s what I would do. Mondays are a great time for us to get all this context. After Monday, it’s kind of a mess.
312 00:38:42.630 ⇒ 00:38:45.040 Uttam Kumaran: Until today. So…
313 00:38:45.560 ⇒ 00:38:51.080 Uttam Kumaran: One of the challenges is going to be finding time and getting the answers to something, so try to batch those.
314 00:38:53.460 ⇒ 00:38:59.830 Justin Breshears: Along that line, can I ask, like, do y’all have, like, SOWs that are, like.
315 00:39:00.060 ⇒ 00:39:02.050 Justin Breshears: Sign contracts with the clients.
316 00:39:02.050 ⇒ 00:39:02.480 Uttam Kumaran: S.
317 00:39:02.480 ⇒ 00:39:03.370 Justin Breshears: Close everything up.
318 00:39:03.420 ⇒ 00:39:04.729 Uttam Kumaran: Where do those live?
319 00:39:05.120 ⇒ 00:39:11.240 Uttam Kumaran: Those are all in Ricoh, you can get those, they’re all in Google Drive.
320 00:39:12.050 ⇒ 00:39:13.539 Rico Rejoso: I can provide you with all those.
321 00:39:14.080 ⇒ 00:39:20.399 Justin Breshears: Yeah, that’d be… that’d be great, because I think that would really help in that, extraction of requirements of those.
322 00:39:20.400 ⇒ 00:39:34.889 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so… and as part of that, again, like, to even go one step further, all of the meetings we’re having with clients, even as before their clients, are all tracked in the platform, so all those are there, so those transcripts are there. Second, all of our email back and forth.
323 00:39:34.990 ⇒ 00:39:45.179 Uttam Kumaran: is available, like, I can give you my email, whatever. And then second… and then lastly, yes, all the SOWs and signed contracts are all in Drive.
324 00:39:46.110 ⇒ 00:39:46.810 Justin Breshears: Awesome.
325 00:39:46.810 ⇒ 00:39:47.390 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, yeah.
326 00:39:47.390 ⇒ 00:39:52.980 Justin Breshears: Which, I love the BringForge platform that y’all have built. That thing is serious.
327 00:39:52.980 ⇒ 00:39:59.100 Uttam Kumaran: It’s getting there, it’s getting there. It’s so, like, I wish we could spend more time on it now that that team’s busy with client work.
328 00:39:59.230 ⇒ 00:40:09.530 Uttam Kumaran: we haven’t been able, I’m, like, itching, but I started building some stuff, because I was like, I’m not gonna wait, so I’ve been using AI to build some stuff, but yeah, it’s really cool. I just…
329 00:40:09.530 ⇒ 00:40:18.579 Justin Breshears: Do you have a tool that is combining, like, what 3 tools do at my other job for us that I have to switch back and forth with? Like, that is pretty cool.
330 00:40:18.580 ⇒ 00:40:29.310 Uttam Kumaran: at least three. It could be five tools that we’re doing. Yeah, that’s the thing. Also, some of these, there are a lot of vendors that offer this, and I’m like, I’m not gonna pay. Like, we should just bill this. This is easy, so…
331 00:40:29.310 ⇒ 00:40:36.150 Justin Breshears: We pay a stupid amount to Gong for call recording and transcripting, and you got it right there.
332 00:40:36.350 ⇒ 00:40:44.439 Uttam Kumaran: And it’s… and it’s free, because Zoom… we already paid… well, it’s… we already paid for Zoom. Like, why? Yeah. And the… I like the Zoom recording, it’s a lot more, like…
333 00:40:44.790 ⇒ 00:40:47.830 Uttam Kumaran: Seems more professional, and seems, like, less in your face.
334 00:40:48.570 ⇒ 00:40:56.490 Justin Breshears: Gong is a mess. I don’t know why we pay so much for it, but yeah, it’s cool. So, I love that platform.
335 00:40:56.630 ⇒ 00:41:03.250 Uttam Kumaran: And then I think on Mondays, for me, like, this is what would be helpful. I think we’re getting closer to this, but still, the Monday meetings are, like.
336 00:41:03.640 ⇒ 00:41:09.040 Uttam Kumaran: I still feel like it’s a mix of, like, screenshots and, like, walking through every client.
337 00:41:09.190 ⇒ 00:41:11.730 Uttam Kumaran: I really just need to know, like.
338 00:41:12.120 ⇒ 00:41:16.020 Uttam Kumaran: Goals versus actuals on points, tickets, hours per client.
339 00:41:16.230 ⇒ 00:41:25.080 Uttam Kumaran: Naturally, the ones that are… where those are mismatched, we should talk about, and I can help on what we need to change.
340 00:41:25.310 ⇒ 00:41:29.660 Uttam Kumaran: And so, that’s both, like, what is our most profitable customers, and where…
341 00:41:30.060 ⇒ 00:41:48.490 Uttam Kumaran: what are our least profitable, and, like, where do we exceed actual risk goal? This is all I need to see, because for me, what you want… what you need from me is, like, the decision and, like, how to… what to change, right? And so that’s where, like, this team needs to utilize me best, versus, like, yes, I can sit through, like, 100 updates about every company, but
342 00:41:48.910 ⇒ 00:41:57.420 Uttam Kumaran: I’m just gonna clap and move on. Like, I need to be shown where the damage is, and then leverage me to help adjust, or…
343 00:41:57.630 ⇒ 00:41:59.890 Uttam Kumaran: Get approval for adjustments.
344 00:41:59.930 ⇒ 00:42:04.110 Amber Lin: I would like this to happen on a weekly basis, where we can look at the past week.
345 00:42:04.110 ⇒ 00:42:14.329 Uttam Kumaran: So, we should no longer have challenges about, like, data freshness, like, we… of course, like, some people may not… we’re gonna get better and better at getting people to log all their hours.
346 00:42:14.440 ⇒ 00:42:24.550 Uttam Kumaran: But still, even if someone didn’t log hours, you should have a good sense of, like, what they did, and again, not every client will be in the red or the super green, so…
347 00:42:24.620 ⇒ 00:42:42.389 Uttam Kumaran: I’m not, like, super concerned with talking about the middle group, like, people are doing well, they’re doing well. Mostly talking about, like, for example, there’s weeks on Eden where we were burning cash, like, and just… I just… no idea, right? And this is nobody’s fault, but, like, we just didn’t have everything set up. Now that we have
348 00:42:42.550 ⇒ 00:42:47.300 Uttam Kumaran: All those… all those data, you know, in one place, like, it would be great.
349 00:42:47.480 ⇒ 00:42:58.390 Amber Lin: Yeah, I think an action item for me is to create the template based on the feedback that you provided, and then I’ll send it in the project manager channel for
350 00:42:58.390 ⇒ 00:43:13.430 Amber Lin: between you and Justin to review. I’ll prepare… I’ll prepare this Friday, but I’m not gonna have all the hours, because people still need to complete their hours, so I’ll have the template, and I’ll fill things out a little bit more Monday before that meeting.
351 00:43:14.950 ⇒ 00:43:21.370 Justin Breshears: So are you talking about variance between, like, what we expect everybody to work and then the actuals? Is that what you want to see?
352 00:43:21.510 ⇒ 00:43:26.259 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, but… so, for example, like, if we have gold
353 00:43:26.690 ⇒ 00:43:39.879 Uttam Kumaran: hourly, like, billable rates, right? So, for a client, like, let’s say we’re billing them 10K, let’s say we’re building 5K a month, I know that’s roughly, like, to hit 150 an hour, it has to hit 30 hours, like, 33 hours. So, I want to know, we…
354 00:43:40.140 ⇒ 00:43:50.340 Uttam Kumaran: Did we hit that or not? Like, in which direction? So, if we were, like, 35, okay, fine. But if we were, like, 50, then we’re cooked, like, we didn’t make any money on that.
355 00:43:50.580 ⇒ 00:43:51.690 Uttam Kumaran: Right.
356 00:43:51.690 ⇒ 00:43:52.090 Justin Breshears: Yeah.
357 00:43:52.090 ⇒ 00:43:54.610 Uttam Kumaran: I… I want to know whether that was good or bad.
358 00:43:54.760 ⇒ 00:44:02.499 Uttam Kumaran: Like, was it 10 because nobody’s talked to the client in 2 weeks, or was it 10 because we actually just crushed the work really fast, and we just made a bunch of money on that deal?
359 00:44:02.670 ⇒ 00:44:03.470 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
360 00:44:03.710 ⇒ 00:44:05.999 Justin Breshears: And where are we tracking people’s time right now?
361 00:44:06.000 ⇒ 00:44:07.380 Uttam Kumaran: and Clockify.
362 00:44:07.750 ⇒ 00:44:08.330 Justin Breshears: Okay.
363 00:44:08.330 ⇒ 00:44:15.620 Uttam Kumaran: And all of that data is coming into… into Snowflake, and then into our real dashboard.
364 00:44:15.800 ⇒ 00:44:33.749 Amber Lin: Yeah, just so let me show you how to look at people’s hours or team’s hours on Clockify. So quickly, just, you go here into Reports, you usually track your time up there, and then you can filter by team, and then you can filter, by the time. And let me send you the real dashboard link.
365 00:44:34.040 ⇒ 00:44:36.799 Amber Lin: Right now, so you have access.
366 00:44:36.800 ⇒ 00:44:50.339 Justin Breshears: This… this should be something that PMs manage, is time variance, because this is how we get paid, so it’s incredibly important. I think we need to start reporting on, like, what’s expected versus actual time spent on these.
367 00:44:51.020 ⇒ 00:45:01.499 Uttam Kumaran: gold, right? I can tell you, like, for example, our goal hourly billable is $2.50, and, like, the… if, like, at the peak of Brain Forge, everything’s solid, that’s what our, like, North Star is.
368 00:45:01.540 ⇒ 00:45:13.670 Uttam Kumaran: we’re hovering between 100 to 200 at any given moment, so for me, it’s like, I want to know which ones are at the high level, good or bad, and like, what can we learn from, and I want to know which is low level.
369 00:45:13.850 ⇒ 00:45:17.280 Uttam Kumaran: Red alert, like, this is just cash out the door, you know?
370 00:45:17.690 ⇒ 00:45:23.019 Justin Breshears: Is that a blended rate that you’re estimating per roll, or is it you just have one rate to.
371 00:45:23.020 ⇒ 00:45:30.980 Uttam Kumaran: My overall, I mean, dude. Okay. If we get this… once we get these Monday meetings rolling, I’ll have follow-up questions. We’ll see.
372 00:45:30.980 ⇒ 00:45:31.670 Amber Lin: Yeah.
373 00:45:31.670 ⇒ 00:45:50.789 Uttam Kumaran: Because I want to go… yeah, I want to go deeper on role, and kind of get to the point where we’re starting to look at cost for, like, type of work. Because all of our tickets will fall under one or more playbooks, and then within those playbooks, one type of task. So then we can start to get a little bit more advanced.
374 00:45:51.940 ⇒ 00:45:56.220 Uttam Kumaran: I have those questions in the back of my head somewhere, so… yeah.
375 00:45:56.640 ⇒ 00:45:59.350 Justin Breshears: Are PMs billable? Are we tracking our time on projects?
376 00:45:59.350 ⇒ 00:46:00.500 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
377 00:46:00.830 ⇒ 00:46:05.719 Uttam Kumaran: We are tracking time for projects, and then, yeah, time’s billable as well.
378 00:46:06.190 ⇒ 00:46:15.969 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I think eventually, I can see it just broken out by role in the contracts that we signed with them, so… Yeah, so what we’re gonna… what we want to move towards is that, exactly. Like, right now, we aren’t…
379 00:46:16.250 ⇒ 00:46:25.090 Uttam Kumaran: We are… if we’re doing hourly, it’s not rule-based, and then if we’re doing, like, fixed monthly amount, we don’t provide, like, the estimates.
380 00:46:25.290 ⇒ 00:46:27.239 Uttam Kumaran: Partly, it was like a…
381 00:46:28.450 ⇒ 00:46:40.779 Uttam Kumaran: Well, it was just, like, this… we just… that’s what we’re doing. It’s not the right way of doing it. I think as we get more enterprise, we’ll have to break out role-based, and then, I would like to, because I would like to be confident
382 00:46:40.780 ⇒ 00:46:49.739 Uttam Kumaran: sometimes clients are the ones that are, like, pushing back on, like, that, but I want to make sure that we’re confident that, like, hey, for this price, this is how much you get, that’s totally fine.
383 00:46:49.790 ⇒ 00:46:57.799 Uttam Kumaran: for me, the reason I pitched the monthly arrangements is I would rather get guaranteed that we’re gonna get 10K for the next 6 months versus, like.
384 00:46:58.320 ⇒ 00:47:09.109 Uttam Kumaran: maybe we’ll, like… like, how… versus, like, just doing things on an hourly basis. Some… some of our contracts, we… they want to go month-to-month, and I said, I’ll give you a little bit of lower
385 00:47:09.240 ⇒ 00:47:19.269 Uttam Kumaran: We’ll do fixed. It’ll roughly equate to this amount of time. Your net hourly actually ends up lower, and we get the guarantee of, like, 6 months of revenue. That’s the math.
386 00:47:19.720 ⇒ 00:47:21.220 Uttam Kumaran: That we sort of did there.
387 00:47:21.710 ⇒ 00:47:25.729 Justin Breshears: Yeah, that’s smart. And then you can work on your efficiency and increase your margin that way.
388 00:47:25.730 ⇒ 00:47:32.290 Uttam Kumaran: Yes, so then once it’s fixed at 5, our job is to drive down the cost of delivering, which is a great.
389 00:47:32.290 ⇒ 00:47:39.989 Justin Breshears: Which is why we need to report on our variance. We need to report on that for margin purposes. We really don’t have a good handle on margin unless we’re doing that.
390 00:47:39.990 ⇒ 00:47:49.940 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, and then one of the sales… one of the PM OKRs is that 40% margin, right? So, that’s also something is we can talk about the OKRs on Mondays and report out on… on that.
391 00:47:51.470 ⇒ 00:47:52.060 Justin Breshears: Yeah.
392 00:47:52.900 ⇒ 00:47:53.980 Justin Breshears: I’m with you there.
393 00:47:54.680 ⇒ 00:48:01.580 Justin Breshears: All this is good stuff. This all synergizes together, everything that we talked about, because if we can get all this stuff, you know, better, then we can…
394 00:48:01.820 ⇒ 00:48:06.580 Justin Breshears: We can really drive that overall business objective of driving margins.
395 00:48:06.800 ⇒ 00:48:10.389 Amber Lin: Yeah. Oh no, I gotta hop to the Urban Center.
396 00:48:10.390 ⇒ 00:48:14.399 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, maybe, like, let me just talk about one thing. So, for.
397 00:48:14.400 ⇒ 00:48:18.680 Amber Lin: I, I, can I, can I hop to talk to Emily?
398 00:48:18.860 ⇒ 00:48:22.330 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you want to make… oh, do you need this… do you need this meeting?
399 00:48:22.590 ⇒ 00:48:25.839 Amber Lin: I guess so. Can you guys call on Slack?
400 00:48:26.690 ⇒ 00:48:27.699 Justin Breshears: Give me a new one.
401 00:48:27.700 ⇒ 00:48:33.210 Uttam Kumaran: I guess one thing, yeah, for the default renewal, I think let’s just talk in Slack, and maybe we can grab time today to just walk through that.
402 00:48:33.210 ⇒ 00:48:34.590 Amber Lin: Awesome, okay.
403 00:48:34.590 ⇒ 00:48:35.060 Uttam Kumaran: Dude.
404 00:48:35.060 ⇒ 00:48:36.480 Justin Breshears: I’m pretty free today.
405 00:48:37.280 ⇒ 00:48:38.820 Amber Lin: Thanks. Thank you guys.
406 00:48:39.600 ⇒ 00:48:39.960 Rico Rejoso: shares.