Meeting Title: PMO-Delivery Review Date: 2025-09-26 Meeting participants: Justin Breshears, Rico Rejoso, Amber Lin
WEBVTT
1 00:01:03.330 ⇒ 00:01:05.280 Justin Breshears: There we go.
2 00:01:06.930 ⇒ 00:01:09.560 Rico Rejoso: Hey, Justin, how are you? How was the conference?
3 00:01:10.110 ⇒ 00:01:15.950 Justin Breshears: Good. It was great. It was a good chance to hang out with Tom and Justina, so…
4 00:01:16.570 ⇒ 00:01:20.779 Justin Breshears: Learned a lot about AI, I feel like I’m smarter now, so that’s a win.
5 00:01:21.410 ⇒ 00:01:22.640 Rico Rejoso: Break, break.
6 00:01:25.090 ⇒ 00:01:26.340 Justin Breshears: How are you doing today?
7 00:01:27.230 ⇒ 00:01:31.650 Rico Rejoso: Good, I mean, aside from having… Sleep much.
8 00:01:32.480 ⇒ 00:01:35.269 Rico Rejoso: I mean, we were preparing for the typhoon.
9 00:01:37.330 ⇒ 00:01:40.149 Justin Breshears: Oh, yeah. Y’all, everybody okay, though?
10 00:01:41.820 ⇒ 00:01:44.190 Rico Rejoso: We’re just flooded.
11 00:01:46.940 ⇒ 00:01:48.230 Justin Breshears: It was not good.
12 00:01:49.290 ⇒ 00:01:51.150 Rico Rejoso: This stuff is scary.
13 00:01:54.600 ⇒ 00:02:01.269 Justin Breshears: I understand, we’re, I mean, I mean, we’re right off the coast, so we’re definitely, like, hurricane.
14 00:02:01.810 ⇒ 00:02:06.470 Justin Breshears: You know, danger all the time, so… I understand.
15 00:02:09.380 ⇒ 00:02:10.030 Amber Lin: Hello.
16 00:02:11.290 ⇒ 00:02:12.020 Justin Breshears: Hey, Amber.
17 00:02:12.590 ⇒ 00:02:16.460 Amber Lin: Let’s see what we have on the agenda today.
18 00:02:17.180 ⇒ 00:02:28.860 Amber Lin: I think the main thing is to review any SOPs, and then to prepare for… to discuss how we want to structure the Monday meeting.
19 00:02:29.280 ⇒ 00:02:30.040 Rico Rejoso: Yeah.
20 00:02:30.040 ⇒ 00:02:43.369 Amber Lin: That’s the big one. Yeah. Let’s… let’s start there, because the only SOP I won’t review is… is not even done, it’s just the stuff I wrote down for the kickoff, and probably it’s more suitable to have it for next week.
21 00:02:43.910 ⇒ 00:02:50.219 Justin Breshears: Yep, let’s push that. I don’t have anything for that, because this week was crazy, just going to Austin and conference and everything, so…
22 00:02:50.220 ⇒ 00:03:00.310 Amber Lin: Yeah, okay. Let me pull up the template for… that I made, and then we can just directly make edits there, and that will…
23 00:03:00.420 ⇒ 00:03:09.110 Amber Lin: That will reflect, Into the actual meeting. Okay, delivery…
24 00:03:12.510 ⇒ 00:03:13.180 Amber Lin: Okay.
25 00:03:14.770 ⇒ 00:03:19.590 Amber Lin: I’ll send the… Notion page in our chat.
26 00:03:19.740 ⇒ 00:03:20.480 Amber Lin: Here.
27 00:03:20.810 ⇒ 00:03:22.310 Amber Lin: It’s in the Zoom chat.
28 00:03:23.280 ⇒ 00:03:24.530 Amber Lin: Alright.
29 00:03:26.760 ⇒ 00:03:37.249 Amber Lin: So, from my talk with Utam, I know that he wants it to be more high level, and not, to go over each one of these projects.
30 00:03:37.250 ⇒ 00:03:46.850 Amber Lin: He wants a high-level view of, okay, what are the overall for… overall, what’s revenue cost, profit margins, and see where we’re at.
31 00:03:46.890 ⇒ 00:03:57.439 Amber Lin: Compared to our metrics. And then, similarly, I think a high-level overview of, the tickets, because we have another goal of having, say, 80%
32 00:03:57.450 ⇒ 00:04:07.510 Amber Lin: completed within a sprint, and also to have group tickets, so I also created a table to track that. So, on here…
33 00:04:07.930 ⇒ 00:04:24.750 Amber Lin: You can see this overview that we can fill in for our projects, or somebody can do the overall calculations, I can do that. And then we have… I have the table for tickets groomed and completion rate. And lastly.
34 00:04:24.780 ⇒ 00:04:31.290 Amber Lin: for each client. What are some action items? What we’ll do?
35 00:04:31.420 ⇒ 00:04:38.390 Amber Lin: And… that’s what I have for now, and I was thinking we can flesh out this preparation checklist.
36 00:04:40.020 ⇒ 00:04:53.569 Justin Breshears: I like this a lot better than what we were doing. Yeah, I think this is great. We just have high-level reporting on all of the, like, OKRs, and, yeah, our tasks will be to, like, fill them in prior to the meeting each week, so…
37 00:04:53.820 ⇒ 00:04:55.050 Justin Breshears: I like this.
38 00:04:55.180 ⇒ 00:05:00.010 Justin Breshears: Where are we… where are we pulling this margin OKR stuff from?
39 00:05:00.010 ⇒ 00:05:17.469 Amber Lin: Right now, we don’t have margins in Clockify. The only… how I do this is that I pull all of the hours for the past week, and I have the hourly rate, which I can show you guys, and then I plug it into,
40 00:05:17.710 ⇒ 00:05:37.360 Amber Lin: I currently just use AI, I gave AI all the hours and asked it to calculate, but I was working on… I was working on one of these yesterday… these yesterday, and, like, I think I can make something that we copy and paste the hours, and then it gives us the weekly costs.
41 00:05:37.420 ⇒ 00:05:45.320 Amber Lin: But we can also just send it… once I have the hours, I can quickly send it into AI, and it can calculate it for us.
42 00:05:45.510 ⇒ 00:05:47.690 Amber Lin: I just need the hours. Yeah.
43 00:05:48.080 ⇒ 00:05:57.199 Justin Breshears: Yeah, so our focus then is to make sure everybody submits their hours by end of week, right? And then you can pull that on Monday morning and put it.
44 00:05:57.200 ⇒ 00:05:57.920 Amber Lin: Yes.
45 00:05:58.000 ⇒ 00:05:59.049 Justin Breshears: Okay, cool.
46 00:05:59.050 ⇒ 00:06:01.330 Amber Lin: So, I guess we can…
47 00:06:02.210 ⇒ 00:06:25.460 Amber Lin: Let’s assign our responsibilities, then I can pull all the hours and calculate the margins, and then I think each of us should look at our tickets, what was assigned at the start, what’s the number completed, and what’s the number of groomed and ungroomed tickets. Do you want to split this between our teams, or do you… Rico, do you want to just do all of it at once?
48 00:06:25.480 ⇒ 00:06:27.439 Amber Lin: How do we want to divide this?
49 00:06:28.290 ⇒ 00:06:36.949 Justin Breshears: I guess, what’s the best way to, like, pull those metrics, and we can decide from there. So, like, does Linear have, like, reporting that we can easily draw from?
50 00:06:37.490 ⇒ 00:06:54.960 Amber Lin: We tried to make something for it, it’s not the best, because there’s another report here. I know we’re trying to build something in another platform that makes more sense, but this doesn’t… let’s see, can we find…
51 00:06:55.350 ⇒ 00:06:59.340 Amber Lin: Complete… Completed.
52 00:06:59.340 ⇒ 00:07:03.309 Justin Breshears: Because I want to avoid this just being a manually updating task, you know?
53 00:07:03.950 ⇒ 00:07:11.420 Justin Breshears: I would love to just have a way to draw a report out, whether it’s something that, like, we need to build internally.
54 00:07:11.740 ⇒ 00:07:16.559 Justin Breshears: Yeah. Or, yeah, I guess whatever this platform is can help us.
55 00:07:16.970 ⇒ 00:07:25.850 Amber Lin: Okay, I think this is unreal. Let’s say for the last 7… Last 7 days…
56 00:07:27.220 ⇒ 00:07:30.789 Amber Lin: Let’s say… completed…
57 00:07:33.940 ⇒ 00:07:35.670 Amber Lin: Completed issues.
58 00:07:38.250 ⇒ 00:07:40.869 Amber Lin: Where… what’s the difference?
59 00:07:41.260 ⇒ 00:07:48.419 Amber Lin: Issues completed this week. Yeah, we can… we can discover what we can do with this.
60 00:07:48.820 ⇒ 00:07:51.660 Amber Lin: Story? Yes.
61 00:07:52.340 ⇒ 00:07:58.199 Justin Breshears: even if, like, that’s the update on Monday, is like, hey, we are creating a process to track this.
62 00:07:58.820 ⇒ 00:08:01.030 Justin Breshears: I think that’s fine.
63 00:08:01.310 ⇒ 00:08:07.639 Justin Breshears: But yeah, I don’t want it to just have to be something that we, like, look at every single ticket and evaluate, like, that’s gonna be a nightmare.
64 00:08:08.090 ⇒ 00:08:20.999 Justin Breshears: a waste of all of our time. So, I think if we can find some way to report on this, otherwise, like, I don’t think we can have it as an OKR, right? We can’t have a metric that we hold ourselves to if we can’t report on it, so…
65 00:08:21.740 ⇒ 00:08:30.990 Justin Breshears: I would say, yeah, play around with this, and see what you can find out, and then, yeah, we can update on Monday, like, what the status of our reporting is on this one.
66 00:08:31.700 ⇒ 00:08:32.309 Amber Lin: Yeah.
67 00:08:32.600 ⇒ 00:08:42.079 Amber Lin: Okay, let’s see… Yeah, alright. I can go… And go check that.
68 00:08:43.490 ⇒ 00:08:45.299 Amber Lin: I’ll play around with this.
69 00:08:45.570 ⇒ 00:08:50.279 Amber Lin: And then once I figure it out, Rico, I’ll let you know how that…
70 00:08:50.470 ⇒ 00:08:55.839 Rico Rejoso: Okay, what do you mean by ungroom tickets? Mostly just items that don’t have…
71 00:08:55.840 ⇒ 00:08:57.950 Amber Lin: SMS, no due dates.
72 00:08:58.450 ⇒ 00:09:03.459 Amber Lin: I think we can easily find that with the report. I think we have.
73 00:09:03.460 ⇒ 00:09:17.839 Justin Breshears: It might also get… it might also get easier once I figure out… so I’m trying to explore, like, how to, you know, make the fields required. Yeah, so it might get easier once we have that, because then we’re going to have, like, native fields that are required.
74 00:09:17.840 ⇒ 00:09:18.950 Amber Lin: Mmm, yeah.
75 00:09:18.950 ⇒ 00:09:24.399 Justin Breshears: Like, I want us to not even be able to create a ticket unless it has all of that, right?
76 00:09:24.750 ⇒ 00:09:25.360 Amber Lin: Huh.
77 00:09:25.360 ⇒ 00:09:32.039 Justin Breshears: This might be a totally moot point at that, you know, instance when we can actually, you know, require those things.
78 00:09:32.360 ⇒ 00:09:32.970 Amber Lin: Yeah.
79 00:09:35.840 ⇒ 00:09:46.299 Rico Rejoso: I mean, for some backlog tickets, that was… that goes way be… way before. We usually put the estimates and due dates once we add it on the sprint.
80 00:09:46.450 ⇒ 00:09:53.989 Amber Lin: Yeah, I think this just applies to… for tickets in the cycle currently, they should all have SMS and D days.
81 00:09:53.990 ⇒ 00:10:04.139 Justin Breshears: Yeah, because I don’t expect, like, backlog tickets that are, like, designed to be done, you know, a month from now to, like, be fully built out. Yeah, that’s a… that’s a good call out, though, Rico.
82 00:10:07.730 ⇒ 00:10:15.589 Justin Breshears: Yeah, this should… we should only look at, like, when they get pulled into the active sprint, they have to have all these fields.
83 00:10:20.650 ⇒ 00:10:21.530 Amber Lin: Yeah, okay.
84 00:10:22.160 ⇒ 00:10:33.910 Justin Breshears: Like that, and then risks, that next table that you have, that is something that I think will have to be, like, an individual PM, like, you’re calling that out for each of your projects, because… Yeah.
85 00:10:33.910 ⇒ 00:10:43.219 Justin Breshears: the PMs are the ones that are identifying and managing those risks, right? So, that is one that’ll be on all of us for our teams to update.
86 00:10:45.460 ⇒ 00:10:48.790 Justin Breshears: And also delivery opportunities, that’s another Bitcoin.
87 00:10:49.020 ⇒ 00:10:50.010 Justin Breshears: Call out.
88 00:10:51.580 ⇒ 00:10:59.499 Justin Breshears: Like, you’re on a call with a client, and they’re like, yeah, we need to do this, you know, database thing, or we need this product analysis, or whatever, and like…
89 00:10:59.910 ⇒ 00:11:04.090 Justin Breshears: Those are things to call out, like, hey, we have an opportunity to… to help them out with that.
90 00:11:05.910 ⇒ 00:11:06.500 Amber Lin: Yeah.
91 00:11:07.060 ⇒ 00:11:07.880 Amber Lin: Okay.
92 00:11:08.240 ⇒ 00:11:15.039 Amber Lin: Let’s… I think that’s good. Let’s test it out this Monday and see how that goes.
93 00:11:15.040 ⇒ 00:11:19.310 Justin Breshears: I like this template a lot, though. You did great work here. It looks good. Yeah, thank you.
94 00:11:19.360 ⇒ 00:11:26.919 Amber Lin: Let’s see, what are the other items? Oh, we need to write…
95 00:11:27.060 ⇒ 00:11:32.280 Amber Lin: summaries or updates for the end of week.
96 00:11:32.280 ⇒ 00:11:32.910 Justin Breshears: Yes.
97 00:11:32.910 ⇒ 00:11:38.309 Amber Lin: Justin, did you have time to look at the delivery template? We can look at it right now.
98 00:11:38.550 ⇒ 00:11:41.330 Justin Breshears: Yeah, let’s look at it right now. I did not have time to look at it.
99 00:11:41.330 ⇒ 00:11:42.270 Amber Lin: That’s okay.
100 00:11:42.540 ⇒ 00:11:43.680 Amber Lin: Mmm…
101 00:11:45.540 ⇒ 00:11:54.680 Justin Breshears: Just so y’all are aware, we’re trying to finalize the contract and everything, but, like, the goal, hopefully, is for me to come on full-time October
102 00:11:55.020 ⇒ 00:11:58.960 Justin Breshears: So, I will have a lot more time at that point.
103 00:11:58.960 ⇒ 00:11:59.660 Amber Lin: Awesome.
104 00:11:59.660 ⇒ 00:12:05.759 Justin Breshears: Yeah, I hope it all works out, because I want to devote all my time to Brainforge.
105 00:12:06.570 ⇒ 00:12:15.719 Amber Lin: That’s great. Okay, let me share screen. This is… Actually, here is… Here is the link.
106 00:12:16.720 ⇒ 00:12:20.700 Amber Lin: Justin, do you want to share screen?
107 00:12:21.140 ⇒ 00:12:23.509 Amber Lin: So that we can see your edits there.
108 00:12:24.180 ⇒ 00:12:24.710 Justin Breshears: Fair.
109 00:12:26.660 ⇒ 00:12:27.670 Justin Breshears: We’ll pull it up.
110 00:12:35.540 ⇒ 00:12:36.280 Justin Breshears: Okay.
111 00:12:37.720 ⇒ 00:12:44.419 Justin Breshears: Let’s see… So this is the current, like, Slack template that we use.
112 00:12:47.260 ⇒ 00:12:51.730 Amber Lin: Yes, so if we scroll down to number 2…
113 00:12:52.370 ⇒ 00:12:59.189 Amber Lin: Cause we’re just… just this one, that’s what we need to send today, so I just want to get some feedback on that.
114 00:12:59.670 ⇒ 00:13:00.360 Justin Breshears: Okay.
115 00:13:02.170 ⇒ 00:13:04.610 Justin Breshears: Then what are the rest of these? Sorry, what is, like…
116 00:13:04.610 ⇒ 00:13:24.039 Amber Lin: These… the rest is, like, if we want to send a meeting recap, right, it’s the first one. The second is when the sprint starts, you said we should also communicate to the client of what’s our priorities. Yeah, so these are all the different templates we might end up using, and then we want to keep them in one place so we can refine them.
117 00:13:25.010 ⇒ 00:13:26.820 Justin Breshears: I like it. I like it.
118 00:13:27.730 ⇒ 00:13:35.860 Justin Breshears: What’s… do, like… Weekly, do you… Update.
119 00:13:42.590 ⇒ 00:13:44.400 Justin Breshears: That… makes sense.
120 00:13:48.040 ⇒ 00:13:51.790 Justin Breshears: You got it broken out by email and Slack, okay.
121 00:14:06.430 ⇒ 00:14:08.560 Justin Breshears: What is work stream updates?
122 00:14:08.990 ⇒ 00:14:17.869 Amber Lin: Say a project, say for default, right, there’s the consulting workstream, and then there’s a product analytics workstream. So it’s mostly
123 00:14:19.040 ⇒ 00:14:22.220 Amber Lin: Not overlapping projects, essentially.
124 00:14:22.770 ⇒ 00:14:23.580 Justin Breshears: Gotcha.
125 00:14:28.160 ⇒ 00:14:29.620 Justin Breshears: Here’s what’s left?
126 00:14:34.150 ⇒ 00:14:35.309 Justin Breshears: What is this one?
127 00:14:36.380 ⇒ 00:14:43.100 Amber Lin: What’s left is, say, we didn’t complete something,
128 00:14:43.280 ⇒ 00:15:00.380 Amber Lin: So, something that we planned and we didn’t complete, or say by the time we send the update, maybe midweek Friday, somebody’s still working on it, or they’re gonna work on it on the weekend, so it’s going to come, but it’s not done yet. That’s what I have there.
129 00:15:01.310 ⇒ 00:15:02.020 Justin Breshears: Okay.
130 00:15:09.110 ⇒ 00:15:10.240 Justin Breshears: What is this?
131 00:15:14.440 ⇒ 00:15:18.710 Amber Lin: Bye.
132 00:15:19.550 ⇒ 00:15:25.540 Amber Lin: Don’t know… Oh, I think this is some metrics.
133 00:15:25.810 ⇒ 00:15:29.450 Amber Lin: for, it’s like…
134 00:15:30.460 ⇒ 00:15:40.309 Amber Lin: how do I describe this? So, for instance, measuring the quality, I guess, quality of work so that they don’t break down.
135 00:15:40.310 ⇒ 00:16:00.150 Amber Lin: So, for automations, it’s like, overall, yes, we did this automation, but how good is it? We have success rate of this, and then we only have these many exceptions, and for data, it’s like making sure that we don’t have too many failures, and then making sure that it is fresh, and any issues that we need to point out.
136 00:16:01.350 ⇒ 00:16:05.119 Justin Breshears: Gotcha. Do you think this is necessary for this update?
137 00:16:05.120 ⇒ 00:16:12.180 Amber Lin: I think it’s necessary, because if data… if anything fails, it means that the work that we did
138 00:16:12.380 ⇒ 00:16:25.050 Amber Lin: is not good enough, and it… I think it gives the client confidence that, okay, we will report all the issues that happened. It’s just, right now, I don’t know how to get that data. Like, if I have that data.
139 00:16:25.050 ⇒ 00:16:25.640 Justin Breshears: That was my neck.
140 00:16:25.640 ⇒ 00:16:26.150 Amber Lin: That’s good.
141 00:16:26.150 ⇒ 00:16:32.650 Justin Breshears: Yeah, that’s my next question, is like, how are we pulling that? So, we don’t have a way to do that currently, do we?
142 00:16:34.060 ⇒ 00:16:34.690 Justin Breshears: Okay.
143 00:16:34.940 ⇒ 00:16:42.670 Justin Breshears: might I suggest that we don’t have this broken out into its own section, but… We can…
144 00:16:43.280 ⇒ 00:16:52.059 Justin Breshears: Include it in… these other sections as it, like, makes sense. So, like, let’s say…
145 00:16:52.280 ⇒ 00:16:55.129 Justin Breshears: You know, we are having a lot of failures, right?
146 00:16:55.930 ⇒ 00:16:58.370 Justin Breshears: That would… that would be a risk, right?
147 00:17:03.980 ⇒ 00:17:13.579 Justin Breshears: So it would fit into there, right? But I don’t think we necessarily need a, like, own section, especially if we don’t have a reliable way to report on it. It would be more like, as things pop up, we’re calling it out as risks and things.
148 00:17:13.740 ⇒ 00:17:15.180 Justin Breshears: But what are your thoughts?
149 00:17:16.250 ⇒ 00:17:23.060 Amber Lin: Sure, yeah, we can do this for now, let’s… let’s move this to… Like, nice-to-haves.
150 00:17:23.650 ⇒ 00:17:26.349 Justin Breshears: Yeah. Like, or maybe in the future.
151 00:17:30.349 ⇒ 00:17:31.829 Justin Breshears: Yeah, so…
152 00:17:38.299 ⇒ 00:17:52.219 Justin Breshears: Might I… It’s just Just naming it, like… weekly update… And then, how, like… They…
153 00:17:57.859 ⇒ 00:18:01.669 Justin Breshears: I was saying, like… Finally.
154 00:18:07.569 ⇒ 00:18:08.549 Justin Breshears: It’s a symbol.
155 00:18:11.609 ⇒ 00:18:19.099 Justin Breshears: I like this sprint focus, or Sprint Goal, whatever you want to call it, that’s good. Keyland’s great.
156 00:18:21.219 ⇒ 00:18:30.759 Justin Breshears: I mean… I think this is, like… Optional if multiple… separate.
157 00:18:31.819 ⇒ 00:18:34.199 Justin Breshears: I don’t know how to go.
158 00:18:34.879 ⇒ 00:18:37.459 Justin Breshears: I always get separate wrong. I always put ER.
159 00:18:38.699 ⇒ 00:18:39.569 Justin Breshears: Octane.
160 00:18:51.750 ⇒ 00:18:57.580 Justin Breshears: I don’t love this section, because it implies, like, we didn’t… Finish.
161 00:18:58.320 ⇒ 00:18:59.269 Justin Breshears: Even if we didn’t.
162 00:18:59.700 ⇒ 00:19:00.639 Justin Breshears: Like, you know…
163 00:19:00.640 ⇒ 00:19:06.670 Amber Lin: I see. Yeah, usually, right now, how I do things is just, I just say.
164 00:19:06.840 ⇒ 00:19:20.139 Amber Lin: I actually don’t do the key wins, because for Eden, there’s just so much. For bigger projects, I just do Workstream updates, and under that, I say what’s done, what’s left, what’s, like, next up. I just combine…
165 00:19:20.460 ⇒ 00:19:27.750 Amber Lin: I actually just combined the… Like, next up, and… and here.
166 00:19:28.280 ⇒ 00:19:35.350 Amber Lin: So it was, like… Next up, we’re in progress. I’ll just add something, like, under each workstream.
167 00:19:35.950 ⇒ 00:19:36.560 Justin Breshears: Yeah.
168 00:19:36.950 ⇒ 00:19:37.580 Amber Lin: Yeah.
169 00:19:38.070 ⇒ 00:19:43.130 Justin Breshears: Okay, yeah, I mean… And this is also just a template, right? Like, it can be customized, like, how.
170 00:19:43.130 ⇒ 00:19:43.739 Amber Lin: Yeah, totally.
171 00:19:43.740 ⇒ 00:19:50.820 Justin Breshears: So it’s not like you have to do it any certain way. It’s just my thoughts. Velocity’s good, except on…
172 00:19:51.190 ⇒ 00:19:54.869 Justin Breshears: This is a question I have, not necessarily a statement, but…
173 00:19:55.140 ⇒ 00:19:59.449 Justin Breshears: On fixed price engagements, do we need to report on hours worked?
174 00:19:59.940 ⇒ 00:20:00.910 Amber Lin: Yes.
175 00:20:02.720 ⇒ 00:20:03.870 Justin Breshears: Why?
176 00:20:04.450 ⇒ 00:20:09.030 Amber Lin: Because that’s how much money the client is spending directly.
177 00:20:09.770 ⇒ 00:20:11.419 Justin Breshears: Not on fixed price.
178 00:20:11.420 ⇒ 00:20:14.600 Amber Lin: Oh, sorry, I meant that. I thought you said hourly.
179 00:20:14.850 ⇒ 00:20:19.490 Justin Breshears: Oh, no, hourly, we definitely do. But yeah, on fixed price, I think…
180 00:20:21.380 ⇒ 00:20:30.080 Justin Breshears: hourly, or, like, hours worked isn’t a metric that we should report on, but I’m open to being convinced that I’m wrong.
181 00:20:35.340 ⇒ 00:20:38.180 Amber Lin: sorry, you said…
182 00:20:38.180 ⇒ 00:20:38.930 Justin Breshears: That’s the reasoning.
183 00:20:39.390 ⇒ 00:20:45.910 Justin Breshears: Here’s the reason why I say that. So, like, we got a client that pays us a fixed price, like $10,000 a month, like Insomnia.
184 00:20:46.890 ⇒ 00:20:54.260 Justin Breshears: Our goal is kind of to accomplish the work in the most efficient way possible, right? Because that’s better margin for us, right?
185 00:20:54.680 ⇒ 00:21:01.870 Justin Breshears: So, like… I don’t want to report on hours to a client, a fixed-price client.
186 00:21:01.980 ⇒ 00:21:08.120 Justin Breshears: And have them be like, oh, you’re only working 10 hours a week for us? Like, why are we paying you all this money?
187 00:21:08.430 ⇒ 00:21:13.760 Amber Lin: Oh, I agree. For fixed costs, we shouldn’t report, I just meant, okay, we should, yeah.
188 00:21:13.760 ⇒ 00:21:15.589 Justin Breshears: Gotcha, yeah, no, I’m with you there.
189 00:21:15.840 ⇒ 00:21:17.330 Justin Breshears: Okay.
190 00:21:18.580 ⇒ 00:21:22.450 Justin Breshears: Only report hours on hourly.
191 00:21:22.810 ⇒ 00:21:24.100 Justin Breshears: on trials.
192 00:21:25.100 ⇒ 00:21:26.090 Justin Breshears: Not.
193 00:21:26.360 ⇒ 00:21:27.250 Justin Breshears: fixed.
194 00:21:33.300 ⇒ 00:21:34.110 Justin Breshears: Cool.
195 00:21:37.320 ⇒ 00:21:45.830 Justin Breshears: I would put, like, this… And I would just say… Velocity…
196 00:21:49.230 ⇒ 00:21:51.099 Justin Breshears: Plan versus actual.
197 00:21:54.830 ⇒ 00:21:59.080 Justin Breshears: I mean, you’re, like, in progress or unstarted and all that. Just put…
198 00:21:59.460 ⇒ 00:22:01.600 Justin Breshears: Here’s what we planned, here’s what we got done.
199 00:22:10.920 ⇒ 00:22:15.339 Justin Breshears: I would not report on this in, like, a weekly update. This is more of, like, a one-off kind of thing.
200 00:22:15.440 ⇒ 00:22:23.299 Justin Breshears: expansion ideas and opportunities, like, that’s more of a… That’s true. We’re reporting it internally, to, like, Utam and Robert,
201 00:22:23.520 ⇒ 00:22:24.190 Justin Breshears: For sure.
202 00:22:24.600 ⇒ 00:22:27.859 Justin Breshears: But yeah, that’s not a… it’s not an update to the client kind of thing.
203 00:22:27.860 ⇒ 00:22:33.479 Amber Lin: Yeah, but do you think we should change it to, okay, this is an opportunity that I think we can…
204 00:22:33.760 ⇒ 00:22:39.870 Amber Lin: for the client of, say, oh, we saw this, would you consider doing this? I think it will bring this benefit.
205 00:22:40.010 ⇒ 00:22:40.819 Amber Lin: Make sure we include.
206 00:22:40.820 ⇒ 00:22:41.370 Justin Breshears: I mean…
207 00:22:41.370 ⇒ 00:22:42.159 Amber Lin: of stuff?
208 00:22:42.580 ⇒ 00:22:50.459 Justin Breshears: We definitely should be talking to the client about that, but not in, like, the weekly sprint updates. Like, that’s not a… that’s not for this, I don’t think.
209 00:22:50.460 ⇒ 00:22:51.120 Amber Lin: Okay.
210 00:22:52.600 ⇒ 00:22:54.559 Justin Breshears: I would change this to risk and blockers.
211 00:22:55.040 ⇒ 00:22:56.779 Amber Lin: Okay, that makes sense.
212 00:23:15.600 ⇒ 00:23:16.270 Justin Breshears: Nope.
213 00:23:17.060 ⇒ 00:23:17.610 Amber Lin: Alright.
214 00:23:17.610 ⇒ 00:23:19.050 Justin Breshears: I like it. What do y’all think?
215 00:23:19.320 ⇒ 00:23:20.249 Amber Lin: I like it.
216 00:23:20.760 ⇒ 00:23:23.740 Amber Lin: We’ll test it out today, and we’ll have more feedback.
217 00:23:24.370 ⇒ 00:23:25.110 Justin Breshears: Beautiful.
218 00:23:25.270 ⇒ 00:23:25.820 Amber Lin: Yeah, okay.
219 00:23:25.820 ⇒ 00:23:39.720 Justin Breshears: And what you can do for, like… so that’s the email one. I think it can be the same for email and Slack, because, like, we’ve pared it down a lot, so, like, you can just have the same exact template for both. But what I do is,
220 00:23:41.580 ⇒ 00:23:47.850 Justin Breshears: So, obviously you don’t need Subject for Slack, but, like… Show you.
221 00:23:51.670 ⇒ 00:23:53.240 Justin Breshears: So, that’d be…
222 00:24:00.570 ⇒ 00:24:03.560 Justin Breshears: Well, I guess we could just put it in our project management channel.
223 00:24:04.140 ⇒ 00:24:09.579 Justin Breshears: Yeah, sorry, I’m… All over the place.
224 00:24:10.520 ⇒ 00:24:27.350 Justin Breshears: Okay, so let’s just do it on Project Management Channel… Canvas… Make your candles… Update… Weekly update… Complete…
225 00:24:30.190 ⇒ 00:24:30.970 Justin Breshears: Boom.
226 00:24:31.470 ⇒ 00:24:33.460 Justin Breshears: And you can just copy and paste from here.
227 00:24:33.990 ⇒ 00:24:39.189 Justin Breshears: You could put it in your own client channels if you want to, but at least it lives here now.
228 00:24:40.410 ⇒ 00:24:46.870 Justin Breshears: I had, like, a similar one here, but this was very, like, just quick, so I’m gonna delete that, actually.
229 00:24:48.730 ⇒ 00:24:49.530 Amber Lin: There, no.
230 00:24:49.530 ⇒ 00:24:50.370 Justin Breshears: lives in here.
231 00:24:50.510 ⇒ 00:25:02.340 Amber Lin: Great. Also saw a message about Insomnia Interlude. Let’s just add Casey Mustafa. I think it’s just… they weren’t… they were too new, so they never got added to the workflow.
232 00:25:03.540 ⇒ 00:25:06.429 Justin Breshears: Oh, yeah, I talked to Sam about it, so they’re on it.
233 00:25:06.430 ⇒ 00:25:07.770 Amber Lin: Oh, great, okay.
234 00:25:08.150 ⇒ 00:25:09.859 Amber Lin: Sounds good. That’s all I had.
235 00:25:09.860 ⇒ 00:25:17.390 Justin Breshears: Actually, it should have… my request should have gone through Rico, so, yeah, because Rico’s the keeper of their time, so…
236 00:25:17.390 ⇒ 00:25:21.300 Amber Lin: Well, if Sam got the request, Sam will tell Rico. That’s my assumption.
237 00:25:21.300 ⇒ 00:25:25.349 Justin Breshears: Okay, yeah, he should, because Rico should be in the know.
238 00:25:25.980 ⇒ 00:25:29.620 Amber Lin: So what we need to do for Monday… Oh, one other thing, sorry.
239 00:25:29.620 ⇒ 00:25:34.330 Justin Breshears: Go ahead. One other thing I would add is, like, an overall status.
240 00:25:34.610 ⇒ 00:25:35.550 Justin Breshears: That’s one thing that…
241 00:25:35.550 ⇒ 00:25:36.119 Amber Lin: What does that mean?
242 00:25:36.120 ⇒ 00:25:39.330 Justin Breshears: It’s not me, so, like… Green, yellow, red.
243 00:25:39.820 ⇒ 00:25:42.500 Amber Lin: What do you think about adding, like, a status to this?
244 00:25:43.290 ⇒ 00:25:44.620 Amber Lin: To which part?
245 00:25:45.790 ⇒ 00:25:46.750 Justin Breshears: So I…
246 00:25:48.400 ⇒ 00:25:50.690 Amber Lin: to the Workstream updates?
247 00:26:03.170 ⇒ 00:26:05.550 Justin Breshears: Do we have emojis? How do you do emojis on Mocha?
248 00:26:05.550 ⇒ 00:26:11.550 Amber Lin: There’s actually something… on here… Here.
249 00:26:14.460 ⇒ 00:26:15.909 Justin Breshears: Yay, then Bill, yeah.
250 00:26:17.380 ⇒ 00:26:24.339 Amber Lin: Should that be a project status, or should that be a part of the blockers and part of the workstream updates?
251 00:26:25.020 ⇒ 00:26:31.120 Justin Breshears: I think we need an overall. So what I like to do is, like, have an overall project status,
252 00:26:43.940 ⇒ 00:26:48.800 Justin Breshears: We just can’t get… Trying to think of right now.
253 00:26:48.980 ⇒ 00:26:51.510 Justin Breshears: My brain, it’s all over the place.
254 00:26:51.860 ⇒ 00:26:53.130 Justin Breshears: Okay,
255 00:26:57.380 ⇒ 00:26:58.419 Justin Breshears: For a race.
256 00:27:00.150 ⇒ 00:27:01.710 Justin Breshears: at risk.
257 00:27:04.660 ⇒ 00:27:05.380 Justin Breshears: Need.
258 00:27:09.290 ⇒ 00:27:10.880 Justin Breshears: Let’s what I’ll see.
259 00:27:11.070 ⇒ 00:27:17.330 Justin Breshears: So, for this, like… Keep the one that’s relevant.
260 00:27:20.920 ⇒ 00:27:26.070 Justin Breshears: And then… What you do is, like, below, you can call out.
261 00:27:27.240 ⇒ 00:27:32.299 Justin Breshears: like, the specific things. So, like, if we’re in yellow, right? Like, you’re gonna call out the risk down here.
262 00:27:34.120 ⇒ 00:27:41.589 Justin Breshears: If you’re in red, like, you’re definitely gonna call out the risk down there. If you’re green, you don’t need any kind of special things, right?
263 00:27:48.860 ⇒ 00:27:53.720 Justin Breshears: Thoughts, hate it, love it, anything? I mean, y’all don’t have to agree with me, like…
264 00:27:53.720 ⇒ 00:28:10.869 Amber Lin: I want to try it out, I think it’s good. It’s just, we’ve been using various templates, and sometimes it’s just… we just need to send a update, so we haven’t optimized what we send. It’s just getting an update out for now, but now we can improve there.
265 00:28:11.380 ⇒ 00:28:26.730 Justin Breshears: Okay, let’s try this out. The goal here is to get enough information to the client that they’re like, okay, yeah, we’re getting some stuff done, and we’re also reporting on, like, overall health of the project, but not, like, bogging them down with, like, a bunch of stuff.
266 00:28:27.060 ⇒ 00:28:34.530 Justin Breshears: I don’t want to get into the weeds, right? So it’s not, like, send them every little thing we ever did, but, you know, kind of just how,
267 00:28:34.670 ⇒ 00:28:38.960 Justin Breshears: A decent-sized update, so let’s try it out, see what we think.
268 00:28:39.300 ⇒ 00:28:40.240 Amber Lin: Sounds good.
269 00:28:40.540 ⇒ 00:28:43.500 Amber Lin: Beautiful. Alright.
270 00:28:44.830 ⇒ 00:28:45.760 Amber Lin: Great.
271 00:28:49.480 ⇒ 00:28:58.789 Amber Lin: Okay, I don’t have anything else, just next Monday, I’ll prepare the hours, and then if you guys can fill in…
272 00:28:58.940 ⇒ 00:29:12.179 Amber Lin: I’ll try to see if I can find a way to automate finding, like, ticket grooming statuses, but if not, we’ll just have to fill it out for our respective teams for now, and then we’ll find a way.
273 00:29:14.830 ⇒ 00:29:15.480 Rico Rejoso: Got it.
274 00:29:15.730 ⇒ 00:29:16.230 Amber Lin: Okay.
275 00:29:16.230 ⇒ 00:29:23.859 Rico Rejoso: By the way, the plan was asking our readiness for the meeting with, finance by Monday.
276 00:29:25.040 ⇒ 00:29:25.770 Amber Lin: Oh.
277 00:29:26.200 ⇒ 00:29:31.839 Amber Lin: Good point. What defines readiness? What does he need?
278 00:29:32.490 ⇒ 00:29:36.159 Rico Rejoso: I think that’s for the, budget allocation for Imperial Pools.
279 00:29:36.500 ⇒ 00:29:37.680 Amber Lin: I see.
280 00:29:38.040 ⇒ 00:29:42.140 Amber Lin: I sent him something…
281 00:29:42.370 ⇒ 00:29:48.259 Amber Lin: I actually… let me brand up, so let me see if I can get… can get some help here.
282 00:29:48.530 ⇒ 00:29:55.360 Amber Lin: So… I…
283 00:29:56.080 ⇒ 00:30:03.339 Amber Lin: I was asked to do the internal budget for the different teams, and I had a Notion doc that
284 00:30:03.580 ⇒ 00:30:09.070 Amber Lin: Did ours, based on… Or is it?
285 00:30:10.270 ⇒ 00:30:11.020 Amber Lin: Okay.
286 00:30:13.420 ⇒ 00:30:14.540 Amber Lin: Oh, shit.
287 00:30:16.050 ⇒ 00:30:20.560 Amber Lin: So I… originally, I did this based on each person.
288 00:30:20.950 ⇒ 00:30:28.810 Amber Lin: allocations for the different teams. So, our goal… okay, here’s an overview of our goal. So, we want…
289 00:30:29.740 ⇒ 00:30:40.920 Amber Lin: 50% margin, so gonna be our next goal, and then… so, gives us about 40% to do operating expenses, and then to have
290 00:30:41.140 ⇒ 00:30:44.739 Amber Lin: 10% net profit, before tax.
291 00:30:45.500 ⇒ 00:30:55.850 Amber Lin: And then… Based on… actually, ignore, ignore that one. So, based on… the…
292 00:30:56.030 ⇒ 00:31:01.589 Amber Lin: ROI, because that’s what Wukon recommended. Based on the ROI of each activity.
293 00:31:01.930 ⇒ 00:31:13.419 Amber Lin: we want to assign the percentage of operational expenses, the budget that we have. So after that, I’m still working on for each…
294 00:31:14.810 ⇒ 00:31:19.440 Amber Lin: Like, for each, section of how-to.
295 00:31:20.870 ⇒ 00:31:28.579 Amber Lin: allocate the time, so I currently have it divided by activity. So, for example, for sales and marketing.
296 00:31:28.600 ⇒ 00:31:42.049 Amber Lin: For sales, there’s, like, outbound, account executive, sales ops, and then for marketing, there’s paid events, content marketing, and brand community. Each of them should have different ROIs, and based on that, we should have different allocations.
297 00:31:42.670 ⇒ 00:31:48.259 Amber Lin: I have this set, I still need someone to review, and then I’m trying to…
298 00:31:48.600 ⇒ 00:31:54.679 Amber Lin: I’m trying to allocate people’s hours to these categories, which I don’t know if it’s too much.
299 00:31:54.960 ⇒ 00:31:58.450 Amber Lin: Because we have blended rates.
300 00:31:58.990 ⇒ 00:32:06.440 Amber Lin: And if we just cap the total hours, that’s not going to…
301 00:32:06.630 ⇒ 00:32:19.950 Amber Lin: secure our costs. So, the cost will still vary, because, if we just cap total hours, then one person may work a lot, or one person might work less, and that will…
302 00:32:20.000 ⇒ 00:32:26.909 Amber Lin: cause, like, turbulence in our costs. So that’s an overview. Any…
303 00:32:27.150 ⇒ 00:32:33.009 Amber Lin: feedback, any thoughts I can have so I can edit this? I still don’t feel like this is the best.
304 00:32:37.180 ⇒ 00:32:39.160 Rico Rejoso: How did you get the ROI?
305 00:32:39.560 ⇒ 00:32:42.789 Amber Lin: That is AI. That is AI.
306 00:32:43.010 ⇒ 00:32:48.469 Amber Lin: I have an ROI breakdown here…
307 00:32:49.120 ⇒ 00:33:07.640 Amber Lin: Actually, I guess I don’t. So I have the overall ROI, and I have the approximate ROI broken down, say, outbound sales, because it’s immediate, and then account executive has higher ROI, because it’s direct revenue, so we should spend more on that.
308 00:33:08.060 ⇒ 00:33:14.469 Amber Lin: But these are all based on… Based on AI.
309 00:33:17.020 ⇒ 00:33:21.399 Rico Rejoso: Okay, and the category are AI as well, or did you get that from the…
310 00:33:21.820 ⇒ 00:33:22.560 Amber Lin: beaten.
311 00:33:22.850 ⇒ 00:33:29.850 Amber Lin: Mostly… well, I got these from the team, the other ones are all AI-generated.
312 00:33:29.850 ⇒ 00:33:30.420 Rico Rejoso: Okay.
313 00:33:30.800 ⇒ 00:33:31.360 Amber Lin: Yeah.
314 00:33:32.680 ⇒ 00:33:34.850 Amber Lin: Once we… but I do think we have…
315 00:33:35.430 ⇒ 00:33:37.240 Amber Lin: When do you think we have these?
316 00:33:38.780 ⇒ 00:33:42.779 Rico Rejoso: I think most are accurate, it’s just on the sales and marketing.
317 00:33:43.050 ⇒ 00:33:48.100 Rico Rejoso: Because I’m also trying to gather all the activities, because I’m trying to come up with the SOP.
318 00:33:49.090 ⇒ 00:33:54.309 Rico Rejoso: standardize everything for them, and I’m still waiting their feedbacks in regards to these steps.
319 00:33:54.710 ⇒ 00:33:55.679 Rico Rejoso: Come up with that food.
320 00:33:58.430 ⇒ 00:34:02.010 Rico Rejoso: Yeah. I didn’t think… Thank you, Abel. That’s very detailed.
321 00:34:03.260 ⇒ 00:34:09.109 Amber Lin: Yeah, Justin, what do you think? How should we best do our budget for internal teams?
322 00:34:20.530 ⇒ 00:34:23.100 Amber Lin: Oh, you’re on mute if you’re talking.
323 00:34:23.900 ⇒ 00:34:26.439 Justin Breshears: I sure was talking. Sorry.
324 00:34:26.440 ⇒ 00:34:27.230 Amber Lin: Oh, my goodness.
325 00:34:27.230 ⇒ 00:34:33.919 Justin Breshears: It’s a great question. I have not devoted any brainpower to it yet, so I will…
326 00:34:35.080 ⇒ 00:34:37.500 Justin Breshears: I will have to get back to you on that.
327 00:34:38.050 ⇒ 00:34:57.710 Amber Lin: I guess my main question is, I’ve… we’ve done so far allocations… budget allocations based on activity per team, and we allocate it per team based on their ROI. My question is, should I go one step further and assign individual hours to these activities?
328 00:34:57.840 ⇒ 00:35:14.359 Amber Lin: for instance, I’ll say outbound, Justina should spend 10 hours, Hannah spent 2, and then on enablement, Justina should spend 10, and Hannah should spend this much. Like, should I go to that level of granularity? Do you think it’s even enforceable if I go that far?
329 00:35:14.940 ⇒ 00:35:23.649 Justin Breshears: I mean, if you’re… if you’re measuring budget and hours, like, they’re all… it’s all gonna be, like, the same, right? Because everybody kind of has a…
330 00:35:23.940 ⇒ 00:35:25.610 Justin Breshears: an hourly rate, right?
331 00:35:26.080 ⇒ 00:35:32.780 Justin Breshears: Either way you measure it is going to be, like, the same, if you want to measure it by cost, or if you want to measure it by hours.
332 00:35:33.960 ⇒ 00:35:37.010 Justin Breshears: And so, I think that is a…
333 00:35:38.010 ⇒ 00:35:42.220 Justin Breshears: question for your internal stakeholder, Tom, probably.
334 00:35:43.420 ⇒ 00:35:46.210 Amber Lin: Okay, I’ll go ask him, I’ll see him in a bit.
335 00:35:46.210 ⇒ 00:35:53.989 Justin Breshears: Okay, I can’t help but notice on the left side, though, that you have Julie Zhao’s manager… something on your tabs.
336 00:35:54.360 ⇒ 00:35:55.300 Amber Lin: Where, where?
337 00:35:55.750 ⇒ 00:35:59.099 Justin Breshears: On your, on your tabs on the left side, Julie Sounds is that?
338 00:36:00.230 ⇒ 00:36:01.080 Justin Breshears: Yeah.
339 00:36:01.210 ⇒ 00:36:03.489 Justin Breshears: I read her book. It’s so good.
340 00:36:03.930 ⇒ 00:36:11.359 Amber Lin: Oh, oops, Utam recommend… I think Utam and Awash read this. I didn’t… I haven’t read this yet. Highly recommend. I love that book.
341 00:36:11.730 ⇒ 00:36:12.270 Amber Lin: Okay.
342 00:36:12.270 ⇒ 00:36:13.959 Justin Breshears: had to call it out, because I saw that.
343 00:36:13.960 ⇒ 00:36:19.440 Amber Lin: It’s also in Utum’s bookshelf. I… when I went over, I…
344 00:36:19.610 ⇒ 00:36:25.569 Amber Lin: took photos of all his books, and I… am reading off his bookshelf list.
345 00:36:25.980 ⇒ 00:36:32.730 Justin Breshears: That… that book shaped a lot of, like, what I think about, like, leading teams, so I’d recommend.
346 00:36:33.140 ⇒ 00:36:34.990 Amber Lin: Okay, that’s great.
347 00:36:35.930 ⇒ 00:36:39.339 Amber Lin: Alright, that is all. Anything else?
348 00:36:41.080 ⇒ 00:36:42.860 Justin Breshears: I’m good. Appreciate y’all.
349 00:36:43.520 ⇒ 00:36:46.570 Amber Lin: Alright, thanks everyone, I’ll see you later.
350 00:36:46.860 ⇒ 00:36:47.240 Justin Breshears: Bye.
351 00:36:47.240 ⇒ 00:36:47.660 Rico Rejoso: Right.
352 00:36:47.660 ⇒ 00:36:48.460 Amber Lin: Bye.