Meeting Title: PMO Sync Date: 2025-09-29 Meeting participants: Alexander Lubka, Justin Breshears, Amber Lin, Uttam Kumaran
WEBVTT
1 00:02:46.150 ⇒ 00:02:47.300 Alexander Lubka: Hey, Justin.
2 00:02:48.120 ⇒ 00:02:49.370 Justin Breshears: Hello!
3 00:02:49.930 ⇒ 00:02:50.639 Alexander Lubka: How are ya?
4 00:02:51.820 ⇒ 00:02:52.619 Justin Breshears: You know what I mean?
5 00:02:52.620 ⇒ 00:02:53.810 Alexander Lubka: A finance meeting?
6 00:02:54.590 ⇒ 00:02:58.350 Justin Breshears: Yeah… Still fun, talking all the numbers.
7 00:03:00.050 ⇒ 00:03:02.150 Alexander Lubka: You guys were talking numbers for a while, I guess.
8 00:03:03.240 ⇒ 00:03:03.800 Justin Breshears: God.
9 00:03:04.410 ⇒ 00:03:04.880 Alexander Lubka: Lot of numbers.
10 00:03:04.880 ⇒ 00:03:05.649 Justin Breshears: I knew.
11 00:03:06.250 ⇒ 00:03:12.699 Justin Breshears: trying to get everything sorted out, so I gotta figure out all the reporting and whatnot, so…
12 00:03:13.660 ⇒ 00:03:15.689 Alexander Lubka: I’m sure it’s not the most organized.
13 00:03:16.600 ⇒ 00:03:17.820 Justin Breshears: Not exactly.
14 00:03:18.780 ⇒ 00:03:19.410 Alexander Lubka: Yep.
15 00:03:20.920 ⇒ 00:03:22.789 Alexander Lubka: Amber, how are you? How was last week?
16 00:03:23.280 ⇒ 00:03:29.950 Amber Lin: It was alright. This week and Monday were just very, very, very busy, that’s all.
17 00:03:30.450 ⇒ 00:03:33.259 Alexander Lubka: Did anything happen? Last meeting. Versus busy?
18 00:03:33.450 ⇒ 00:03:43.860 Amber Lin: It also was just busy, there was just… Remo came in, so… and then there was projects here and there, setting up reporting and all that, but manageable.
19 00:03:44.360 ⇒ 00:03:46.410 Alexander Lubka: That’s good. How’s the new place?
20 00:03:47.370 ⇒ 00:03:58.730 Amber Lin: Pretty good. It’s a really good location, it’s just expensive. So, eating the cost. I feel like I’m living in New York for this price.
21 00:03:59.290 ⇒ 00:04:02.020 Alexander Lubka: Oh, perfect, so when the lease is up, you just move to New York, you’re ready.
22 00:04:04.370 ⇒ 00:04:12.509 Amber Lin: It’s so much nicer, the weather here, though. I don’t know. I do like being able to walk in New York, but it’s really nice here.
23 00:04:12.510 ⇒ 00:04:16.440 Alexander Lubka: I agree with you for the winter, 100%. I do like the seasons.
24 00:04:17.490 ⇒ 00:04:21.250 Alexander Lubka: But, yeah, of course, winter, you got us beat a million times.
25 00:04:22.200 ⇒ 00:04:23.350 Alexander Lubka: No question.
26 00:04:26.330 ⇒ 00:04:28.139 Justin Breshears: Did you move, Amber?
27 00:04:28.840 ⇒ 00:04:37.110 Amber Lin: Oh, I moved apartments in LA, so I was in downtown before, and right now I’m… I’m in, Culver City, so just a…
28 00:04:37.370 ⇒ 00:04:38.949 Amber Lin: 20 minutes out.
29 00:04:39.550 ⇒ 00:04:40.170 Justin Breshears: Nice.
30 00:04:40.380 ⇒ 00:04:41.020 Amber Lin: Yeah.
31 00:04:42.790 ⇒ 00:04:50.039 Alexander Lubka: Yeah, we’ll have to figure out a time, I’ll be in LA in December, and then I’ll be there, so maybe one of those times we can figure out a time to get together.
32 00:04:50.260 ⇒ 00:04:51.480 Amber Lin: Yeah, awesome.
33 00:04:53.240 ⇒ 00:04:56.260 Alexander Lubka: Because not everybody can go to Austin to fancy conferences.
34 00:04:57.370 ⇒ 00:04:59.389 Justin Breshears: And throwing the cool kids down here.
35 00:04:59.390 ⇒ 00:05:00.950 Alexander Lubka: How was it with you? It was a good time?
36 00:05:00.950 ⇒ 00:05:03.160 Justin Breshears: wedding all the time. Yeah, it was a good time.
37 00:05:03.340 ⇒ 00:05:14.030 Justin Breshears: a quick trip, you know, just in and out, but I learned a lot about AI in a very short amount of time, so much so that my brain hurt, so…
38 00:05:15.250 ⇒ 00:05:17.559 Justin Breshears: I, I count that as a win.
39 00:05:18.030 ⇒ 00:05:20.289 Alexander Lubka: Isn’t the whole point of AI so your brain doesn’t hurt?
40 00:05:21.900 ⇒ 00:05:25.029 Justin Breshears: For everybody but the people that are building it, apparently.
41 00:05:25.030 ⇒ 00:05:25.720 Alexander Lubka: Yeah.
42 00:05:26.660 ⇒ 00:05:29.960 Justin Breshears: Yeah, it had a cool, like, keynote speaker who…
43 00:05:30.750 ⇒ 00:05:44.380 Justin Breshears: it had nothing to do with, like, the rest of the conference. It was, like, kind of random, but the rest of the conference was, like, using AI and, like, professional services and stuff, but then the keynote was, like, the head of robotics at UT
44 00:05:44.620 ⇒ 00:06:02.229 Justin Breshears: Or something, and he just talked about, like, AI and robotics the whole time, which was, like, fascinating, but it’s, like, not related to anything about us, but it was fascinating stuff. Like, they’re… they’re trying to build an AI robot soccer team that can beat
45 00:06:02.290 ⇒ 00:06:06.130 Justin Breshears: like, the World Cup-winning team by, like, 2050.
46 00:06:07.350 ⇒ 00:06:08.450 Amber Lin: Wow.
47 00:06:08.610 ⇒ 00:06:10.280 Justin Breshears: My… that would be something.
48 00:06:10.490 ⇒ 00:06:12.210 Alexander Lubka: I’m sure they could do the American team now.
49 00:06:12.500 ⇒ 00:06:15.529 Justin Breshears: Yeah, right, not far off of that. Yeah.
50 00:06:16.340 ⇒ 00:06:18.740 Justin Breshears: But yeah, it was… it was fascinating, but yeah, like.
51 00:06:19.590 ⇒ 00:06:23.389 Justin Breshears: Interesting choice of keynote for that… for that conference.
52 00:06:24.410 ⇒ 00:06:25.280 Alexander Lubka: That’s funny.
53 00:06:26.280 ⇒ 00:06:30.359 Alexander Lubka: Well, glad you guys had a good time, learned something, learned what 2050’s gonna look like.
54 00:06:30.540 ⇒ 00:06:32.050 Alexander Lubka: Sounds like a productive trip.
55 00:06:32.500 ⇒ 00:06:33.080 Justin Breshears: Yep.
56 00:06:33.430 ⇒ 00:06:35.040 Justin Breshears: Not too bad at all.
57 00:06:37.560 ⇒ 00:06:39.129 Alexander Lubka: He’s probably doing something on mute.
58 00:06:39.350 ⇒ 00:06:46.589 Alexander Lubka: All good. Alright guys, so today I got… it’s the end of the quarter, end of Q3. Gotta start Q4 on Wednesday.
59 00:06:46.590 ⇒ 00:06:59.660 Alexander Lubka: Wanted to go over a couple things with us to close out the quarter, our OKRs and our PMO plan. Amber and I started the PMO, and just for some context on the PMO plan part, we put that together, Q2,
60 00:06:59.930 ⇒ 00:07:06.220 Alexander Lubka: And so our goal was to give it a quarter, or Q2? Yeah, end of Q2. So we… we…
61 00:07:06.220 ⇒ 00:07:20.320 Alexander Lubka: been operating off of it, you know, loosely for… I would say mostly loosely. I think there’s things that we picked up and not, and things that we probably didn’t, hold ourselves accountable to as much because we didn’t have Justin yet, but now that we have Justin, I wanted to go over that to see, like.
62 00:07:20.520 ⇒ 00:07:38.969 Alexander Lubka: what did we actually implement? What did we actually use, in this quarter? Are there things… like, I just want to get feedback from that. Like, what did we… did anything not work from that? Is there things that we want to add to that? So I just wanted… I had… I was holding this as a checkpoint for… for that, for the end of this quarter.
63 00:07:39.140 ⇒ 00:07:43.489 Alexander Lubka: So those are things I wanted to talk about today. Anybody need anything else before we get started?
64 00:07:45.910 ⇒ 00:07:47.399 Justin Breshears: Oops, sounds like a good plan to me.
65 00:07:47.400 ⇒ 00:07:54.289 Alexander Lubka: Cool. I think, since we have Utong here, we could start with OKRs, and then take it from there. So I can share my screen.
66 00:07:56.150 ⇒ 00:07:56.880 Alexander Lubka: What?
67 00:07:58.930 ⇒ 00:08:00.190 Alexander Lubka: Did you say something?
68 00:08:00.410 ⇒ 00:08:02.579 Justin Breshears: Sounded like it was… No, it was an ad.
69 00:08:03.090 ⇒ 00:08:04.550 Alexander Lubka: It wasn’t bad.
70 00:08:06.770 ⇒ 00:08:08.949 Justin Breshears: Who’s watching YouTube, probably gonna do this?
71 00:08:09.650 ⇒ 00:08:10.340 Alexander Lubka: Yeah, I’m sure.
72 00:08:10.340 ⇒ 00:08:12.999 Amber Lin: Well, it was on my snack break, yeah.
73 00:08:13.880 ⇒ 00:08:15.240 Justin Breshears: Oh, that was beautiful.
74 00:08:15.450 ⇒ 00:08:16.829 Alexander Lubka: Oh, those are.
75 00:08:16.830 ⇒ 00:08:18.830 Justin Breshears: Yeah, they, like, came off mute, and then I heard it.
76 00:08:18.940 ⇒ 00:08:25.199 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, no, I’m much too professional for stuff like that. I was like, that’s me 3 years ago, I mean…
77 00:08:25.370 ⇒ 00:08:27.290 Uttam Kumaran: Oh shit, my YouTube’s on.
78 00:08:29.500 ⇒ 00:08:32.450 Alexander Lubka: Come on, Amber, you’re so 2022. Get with it.
79 00:08:32.900 ⇒ 00:08:39.130 Uttam Kumaran: Now, I just listen to YouTube on, like, very slow volume during meetings, so I can try to multitask.
80 00:08:39.380 ⇒ 00:08:39.789 Alexander Lubka: Perfect.
81 00:08:39.799 ⇒ 00:08:41.879 Uttam Kumaran: Trying to follow this Kawhi Leonard drama.
82 00:08:42.429 ⇒ 00:08:44.199 Uttam Kumaran: In basketball right now, so…
83 00:08:44.320 ⇒ 00:08:48.210 Alexander Lubka: With him, with his, $2 million investment or something?
84 00:08:48.210 ⇒ 00:08:54.970 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so I’m very invested in figuring out the salary cap circumvention drama that’s going on in the NBA.
85 00:08:54.970 ⇒ 00:09:00.659 Justin Breshears: I… I’m shocked that, like, this isn’t a thing, or hasn’t been a thing before that, because I’m like.
86 00:09:01.270 ⇒ 00:09:07.289 Uttam Kumaran: It definitely has been, just… this is a… this is, like… An insane amount of money.
87 00:09:08.110 ⇒ 00:09:15.999 Uttam Kumaran: I’m, like, you know, salary cap convention could be, like, oh, like, an LLC paid for your mom’s house. Those stuff, there’s no way, but this is, like.
88 00:09:16.970 ⇒ 00:09:18.789 Uttam Kumaran: This is the most amount of money ever.
89 00:09:18.790 ⇒ 00:09:21.360 Justin Breshears: Was it, like, $21 million or something like that?
90 00:09:21.550 ⇒ 00:09:23.819 Uttam Kumaran: No, it’s now closer to 40.
91 00:09:25.490 ⇒ 00:09:30.270 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so they found additional… Reporting that it puts it at closer to 40.
92 00:09:30.800 ⇒ 00:09:33.289 Justin Breshears: Don’t mess with Pablo Tori, he’ll get you.
93 00:09:33.290 ⇒ 00:09:34.380 Uttam Kumaran: I know!
94 00:09:34.380 ⇒ 00:09:35.530 Alexander Lubka: Yeah, right?
95 00:09:37.910 ⇒ 00:09:40.630 Alexander Lubka: Well, if you get any updates during the meeting, let us know, Tom.
96 00:09:40.630 ⇒ 00:09:43.679 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, okay, okay. No, I’m with you guys now.
97 00:09:43.930 ⇒ 00:09:44.610 Alexander Lubka: Cool.
98 00:09:45.200 ⇒ 00:09:58.030 Alexander Lubka: Alright, so I wanted to do, like, a mark-to-market of how we did for Q3. I was looking at our delivery ones, and great that we have this, and so… just wanted to close up the quarter.
99 00:09:58.490 ⇒ 00:10:00.359 Alexander Lubka: Is there anywhere we could put, like.
100 00:10:01.020 ⇒ 00:10:03.060 Alexander Lubka: notes. I guess you can add, like.
101 00:10:04.210 ⇒ 00:10:14.790 Alexander Lubka: some comments here. Alright, so for our first one for Q3, we had 100% of client projects initiated with the PM plans and roadmaps within 7 days of kickoff.
102 00:10:15.400 ⇒ 00:10:17.039 Alexander Lubka: Did we achieve this?
103 00:10:17.720 ⇒ 00:10:21.769 Amber Lin: The most recent one was remote, and it has been initiated.
104 00:10:23.020 ⇒ 00:10:23.980 Alexander Lubka: Hell yeah.
105 00:10:26.130 ⇒ 00:10:29.709 Amber Lin: You can add a new column if you want for the end of quarter.
106 00:10:30.530 ⇒ 00:10:32.020 Alexander Lubka: That’s a good one.
107 00:11:00.150 ⇒ 00:11:03.930 Justin Breshears: There’s nothing more nerve-wracking than trying to type while sharing your screen.
108 00:11:04.500 ⇒ 00:11:06.540 Alexander Lubka: I know, it’s probably the worst.
109 00:11:08.310 ⇒ 00:11:10.209 Alexander Lubka: Alright, cool.
110 00:11:10.710 ⇒ 00:11:11.999 Alexander Lubka: That sounds great.
111 00:11:12.170 ⇒ 00:11:18.200 Alexander Lubka: 90% of active tickets have clear owners, deadlines, and story points. How do we do with this one?
112 00:11:21.000 ⇒ 00:11:24.430 Justin Breshears: I don’t know how we were tracking this one, but I don’t…
113 00:11:24.690 ⇒ 00:11:27.370 Justin Breshears: Just gut feeling, I don’t think this one was achieved.
114 00:11:30.630 ⇒ 00:11:32.070 Alexander Lubka: Is that fair, Amber?
115 00:11:32.420 ⇒ 00:11:35.220 Amber Lin: Yeah, I would say we’re not at 90%.
116 00:11:36.500 ⇒ 00:11:37.120 Alexander Lubka: So…
117 00:11:37.120 ⇒ 00:11:39.289 Justin Breshears: So, like, how are we tracking that?
118 00:11:39.300 ⇒ 00:11:50.019 Amber Lin: This was the table today we’re trying to fill in of, our… what percentage of tickets are groomed. Groomed meaning it has owner’s deadlines and story points.
119 00:11:50.240 ⇒ 00:11:51.400 Justin Breshears: Insightful.
120 00:11:51.630 ⇒ 00:11:52.380 Amber Lin: Yeah.
121 00:11:52.850 ⇒ 00:11:54.699 Alexander Lubka: So you have a table you’re tracking with that with?
122 00:11:54.850 ⇒ 00:12:04.020 Amber Lin: Yeah, we just started this week, so I would not mark that as… a done or reached OKR.
123 00:12:04.220 ⇒ 00:12:04.970 Amber Lin: Huh.
124 00:12:06.020 ⇒ 00:12:06.760 Justin Breshears: or not.
125 00:12:08.020 ⇒ 00:12:12.440 Uttam Kumaran: Was this closer to 50, or was this closer to 90, or where did.
126 00:12:12.440 ⇒ 00:12:19.119 Amber Lin: I would say we’re at, like, 70. We’re not 50, but we’re nowhere near 90 yet.
127 00:12:24.470 ⇒ 00:12:26.620 Justin Breshears: I know we’ll probably get to it on, like.
128 00:12:27.240 ⇒ 00:12:32.100 Justin Breshears: stuff on planning for the next quarter or whatever, but I would say…
129 00:12:32.650 ⇒ 00:12:38.969 Justin Breshears: any OKR that we set or agreed to, like, we should definitely make sure that we have a clear and measurable way to track it.
130 00:12:40.900 ⇒ 00:12:41.670 Alexander Lubka: Definitely.
131 00:12:42.060 ⇒ 00:12:47.219 Alexander Lubka: So, do we have an idea of how we could get to 90%?
132 00:12:49.920 ⇒ 00:12:57.810 Alexander Lubka: there’s, like, a delta, like, 20% or so, okay. Like, we didn’t achieve this quarter, how can we get to 20… 90%?
133 00:12:58.490 ⇒ 00:13:16.379 Amber Lin: Justin proposed something that we… that we found that’s third-party… that requires fields to be filled in for linear. I think Utsom, we add a unit channel, we just want to get a OK, because it is a third-party tool, it’s not directly from linear, but we do think that if we put…
134 00:13:16.380 ⇒ 00:13:19.230 Amber Lin: Have that tool implemented, then…
135 00:13:19.270 ⇒ 00:13:24.929 Amber Lin: tickets would just have to have these fields, and I think that will solve some problems.
136 00:13:26.270 ⇒ 00:13:30.740 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, yeah, let me know, I feel like I may have missed it, so, yeah, I usually bump it up. Yeah, it’s…
137 00:13:30.840 ⇒ 00:13:48.430 Justin Breshears: It’s a plugin that was on the Linear site, so, like, it’s, like, marketed by Linear, but I think it’s developed by somebody else. But… yeah, you literally download it, and it would require fields, which I’m shocked isn’t a native feature in Linear, like, having required fields, but…
138 00:13:49.490 ⇒ 00:13:51.600 Alexander Lubka: That’s so crazy, you have to do it as a plugin?
139 00:13:51.960 ⇒ 00:13:54.450 Justin Breshears: Yeah, it’s like some kind of plugin that you download.
140 00:13:56.900 ⇒ 00:13:59.469 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, do you wanna… do you wanna… do you wanna bump it in Slack right now?
141 00:13:59.470 ⇒ 00:13:59.870 Justin Breshears: Yes.
142 00:13:59.870 ⇒ 00:14:00.729 Uttam Kumaran: There’s spell category.
143 00:14:01.840 ⇒ 00:14:03.199 Justin Breshears: Let’s see if I can find it.
144 00:14:07.140 ⇒ 00:14:09.030 Justin Breshears: What channel was that in?
145 00:14:09.780 ⇒ 00:14:12.470 Alexander Lubka: I think you had in our chat with Utam, Justin.
146 00:14:12.960 ⇒ 00:14:14.410 Justin Breshears: Yeah, it’s fine.
147 00:14:39.540 ⇒ 00:14:44.420 Justin Breshears: I don’t know where it is, but I’ll just send the link, and I’ll start a new one. So I think it did get buried.
148 00:14:58.460 ⇒ 00:15:11.250 Alexander Lubka: Alright, so we didn’t get there, but next steps are… we have identified a automation or plugin, and UTEM is to review it, and see if we can get it used to adopt… to get adoption up to 90% for next quarter.
149 00:15:11.830 ⇒ 00:15:12.730 Alexander Lubka: Sound good?
150 00:15:15.110 ⇒ 00:15:15.720 Uttam Kumaran: Right.
151 00:15:16.710 ⇒ 00:15:18.899 Justin Breshears: Yeah, one more note on that, too, is…
152 00:15:19.320 ⇒ 00:15:27.799 Justin Breshears: the… I think it’s important, like, if we do establish required fields, that it’s not, like, upon ticket creation, because sometimes, like, there’s…
153 00:15:27.800 ⇒ 00:15:40.549 Justin Breshears: tickets that maybe don’t have an assignee yet, or don’t have a due date yet, that need to go in the backlog, right? It’s more like tickets that move from backlog to in progress, or to-do in cycle, or something like that, than…
154 00:15:40.590 ⇒ 00:15:44.539 Justin Breshears: then they require those fields, which I think this plugin can do.
155 00:15:45.170 ⇒ 00:15:47.850 Alexander Lubka: Okay, I’m… I agree with that, if that’s possible.
156 00:15:48.890 ⇒ 00:15:49.410 Alexander Lubka: Yes, sir.
157 00:15:49.410 ⇒ 00:15:51.480 Justin Breshears: in our KM channel.
158 00:15:51.480 ⇒ 00:15:52.150 Alexander Lubka: Great.
159 00:15:53.190 ⇒ 00:15:58.429 Alexander Lubka: 100% of client projects receive weekly updates. Do we achieve this?
160 00:16:00.970 ⇒ 00:16:01.750 Alexander Lubka: Awesome.
161 00:16:04.220 ⇒ 00:16:06.960 Justin Breshears: Yep, I know, we got a nice little synth book as well.
162 00:16:06.960 ⇒ 00:16:12.829 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, this was huge. You guys have no idea, I’ve been… this has been such a long time coming. Very happy.
163 00:16:14.980 ⇒ 00:16:17.140 Alexander Lubka: You said about the template, Justin?
164 00:16:17.670 ⇒ 00:16:21.739 Justin Breshears: Yeah, there’s a template now that we created that we use for this.
165 00:16:23.670 ⇒ 00:16:24.280 Alexander Lubka: Yeah, so…
166 00:16:24.280 ⇒ 00:16:39.440 Justin Breshears: What I do is I take that template from, like, Notion, and I put it in a canvas in the specific client channels, and then kind of edit it to what makes sense for that project. So then I just pull it from the Slack canvas into the
167 00:16:39.720 ⇒ 00:16:41.270 Justin Breshears: And then edit it every week.
168 00:16:45.190 ⇒ 00:16:45.970 Alexander Lubka: That’s great.
169 00:16:46.440 ⇒ 00:16:54.700 Alexander Lubka: Good job, team. Created 5 reusable service epics with SOPs, playbooks approved by cross-functional leads.
170 00:16:54.990 ⇒ 00:17:03.150 Amber Lin: Nope, we did a few and then paused it, and I don’t think we will be doing this next quarter, because we just…
171 00:17:03.150 ⇒ 00:17:09.660 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, like, this is also something, like, I could bang… I just bang out for you guys, so if you… if,
172 00:17:10.140 ⇒ 00:17:11.440 Uttam Kumaran: I feel a good student.
173 00:17:12.079 ⇒ 00:17:20.690 Uttam Kumaran: We’re talking a lot about how do we allocate more of our engineers to this. This is something that I think, hopefully, if we have my time, I can get out to join free, but…
174 00:17:21.460 ⇒ 00:17:25.680 Justin Breshears: But also, when we talked about it last, when we kind of went over the OKRs.
175 00:17:25.880 ⇒ 00:17:29.690 Justin Breshears: I don’t know how, like, Useful this is, just with how.
176 00:17:29.690 ⇒ 00:17:30.070 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
177 00:17:30.070 ⇒ 00:17:39.239 Justin Breshears: different each project is, right? Like, if we had, you know, project types where we were running through a template every single time, then that would be super helpful, but…
178 00:17:39.480 ⇒ 00:17:43.279 Justin Breshears: I don’t… we don’t have any two projects that are the same right now.
179 00:17:44.430 ⇒ 00:17:55.299 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, ideally, if I talk about what we’re gonna do with the sales side, I’m starting to match… we’re starting to basically match deals with services, and then the next step is to say, like.
180 00:17:55.640 ⇒ 00:18:01.169 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, with services matched to, like, basically delivery playbooks.
181 00:18:01.540 ⇒ 00:18:04.770 Uttam Kumaran: So that’ll be the next piece we sort of work on, but…
182 00:18:05.620 ⇒ 00:18:09.249 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t think this is, like… So, or, like.
183 00:18:09.740 ⇒ 00:18:11.470 Uttam Kumaran: If we don’t do this, like.
184 00:18:11.740 ⇒ 00:18:14.310 Uttam Kumaran: stuff falls, so I think this is fun for now.
185 00:18:15.090 ⇒ 00:18:16.819 Justin Breshears: Yeah, I think we’ll get there, like, when we.
186 00:18:16.820 ⇒ 00:18:17.180 Uttam Kumaran: Certainly.
187 00:18:17.180 ⇒ 00:18:21.409 Justin Breshears: selling more like that, but, I mean, at my last forward vote.
188 00:18:21.760 ⇒ 00:18:33.239 Justin Breshears: They were, you know, at over $100 million in revenue and 700 employees in one eye. I think we had 3 templatized projects out of all the different ones that did hundreds and hundreds, so…
189 00:18:33.240 ⇒ 00:18:43.869 Justin Breshears: Very small percentage of ones that you can do, and usually those were just, like, parts of projects, where it was like, hey, set up a control tower in AWS, you have a template here.
190 00:18:46.180 ⇒ 00:18:48.049 Justin Breshears: Do they usually unlock the double thing.
191 00:18:50.820 ⇒ 00:18:53.679 Alexander Lubka: So this doesn’t seem like an effort we want to continue, right?
192 00:18:55.000 ⇒ 00:18:58.500 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I don’t think… I don’t think we’re gonna put more effort into this for now.
193 00:19:09.360 ⇒ 00:19:10.270 Justin Breshears: new status.
194 00:19:14.570 ⇒ 00:19:16.520 Alexander Lubka: Achieve 40% margins?
195 00:19:17.110 ⇒ 00:19:18.180 Alexander Lubka: How’d we do?
196 00:19:18.640 ⇒ 00:19:27.199 Amber Lin: I would say overall margin, so average margin across projects, so I think our, like, project margins were…
197 00:19:27.200 ⇒ 00:19:44.930 Amber Lin: Achieving that goal, we’re above 50, I think some weeks we’re at 60, so I would say we’re at that goal for overall margins, but for specific individual projects, there’s some projects that’s very high, some projects that’s under. So it depends on how we want to calculate that.
198 00:19:46.370 ⇒ 00:19:52.420 Uttam Kumaran: Well, the other thing is just, like, I think, for example, we just saw today that Sam’s hours were being…
199 00:19:52.650 ⇒ 00:19:57.729 Uttam Kumaran: Attributed to clients, so… I sort of don’t think that we can…
200 00:19:58.530 ⇒ 00:20:05.300 Uttam Kumaran: Confirm any of these metrics until we have… The underlying data confirmed, so… Ike.
201 00:20:05.410 ⇒ 00:20:10.630 Uttam Kumaran: I would… I know, I know roughly, like, it’s close in terms of just, like.
202 00:20:10.950 ⇒ 00:20:13.140 Uttam Kumaran: The division between the numbers, but…
203 00:20:13.970 ⇒ 00:20:17.010 Uttam Kumaran: I would say, like, we’re still having reporting issues, so…
204 00:20:18.420 ⇒ 00:20:21.269 Alexander Lubka: Okay, so these should be re… we can talk about next week?
205 00:20:21.670 ⇒ 00:20:25.650 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah… Okay. I guess let’s… yeah, I guess…
206 00:20:26.470 ⇒ 00:20:32.789 Uttam Kumaran: I think we… we basically did the… we produced and presented the margins report. I think it’s…
207 00:20:33.390 ⇒ 00:20:36.579 Uttam Kumaran: That’s fine. Like, I feel actually good closing that out.
208 00:20:38.190 ⇒ 00:20:39.560 Uttam Kumaran: So, number 7.
209 00:20:48.610 ⇒ 00:20:53.949 Uttam Kumaran: And then… Yeah, this one is, I would say, still lagging, too.
210 00:21:00.420 ⇒ 00:21:02.000 Alexander Lubka: So we need to report on this one.
211 00:21:03.150 ⇒ 00:21:06.190 Uttam Kumaran: I just think that we’re not…
212 00:21:06.590 ⇒ 00:21:10.840 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t think we… I think we’ve yet to report on, like, what percentage this is.
213 00:21:11.400 ⇒ 00:21:12.270 Alexander Lubka: Okay.
214 00:21:13.260 ⇒ 00:21:15.040 Alexander Lubka: We’ll follow up on that next week, then.
215 00:21:16.990 ⇒ 00:21:28.000 Justin Breshears: So a large portion of our previous meeting was talking about these things, because we’re cranking down on, you know, how everybody’s billing their time, and then with that, you know.
216 00:21:28.340 ⇒ 00:21:34.059 Justin Breshears: linear tickets and those things, too. So, that one, I think we will achieve this next quarter.
217 00:21:36.740 ⇒ 00:21:37.460 Alexander Lubka: Okay.
218 00:21:38.510 ⇒ 00:21:44.110 Alexander Lubka: And then I think the other one we had was just, like, the cap-and one. Amber, you didn’t…
219 00:21:44.530 ⇒ 00:21:45.760 Alexander Lubka: Take it, right?
220 00:21:46.230 ⇒ 00:21:49.369 Amber Lin: Nope. I did not end up taking that.
221 00:21:49.370 ⇒ 00:21:50.629 Alexander Lubka: Do you still want to?
222 00:21:52.260 ⇒ 00:22:02.789 Amber Lin: That’s a good question. Since I’m transitioning to a different role, if we confirm that we are transitioning, I don’t know how motivated I am to take it.
223 00:22:06.250 ⇒ 00:22:07.080 Alexander Lubka: Okay.
224 00:22:07.740 ⇒ 00:22:09.100 Alexander Lubka: But you don’t have that yet?
225 00:22:11.030 ⇒ 00:22:13.340 Alexander Lubka: You don’t have that confirmation yet that you’re looking for?
226 00:22:13.660 ⇒ 00:22:32.559 Amber Lin: I know we’re entering Q4 and we’re talking about it, but it just hasn’t been finalized of, okay, sure, we’re gonna do this, we’re gonna go ahead, because there… because if I were to change, then it requires that somebody takes over my current role, and I do know that we’re trying to not hire right now, so I’m just not sure.
227 00:22:32.560 ⇒ 00:22:35.480 Amber Lin: If we’re going to continue with that transition.
228 00:22:36.320 ⇒ 00:22:41.909 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I think it’s mainly just gonna be, like, timeline-wise. Like, I think we’re growing revenue pretty fast.
229 00:22:42.170 ⇒ 00:22:44.460 Uttam Kumaran: But I don’t know at the point where
230 00:22:44.910 ⇒ 00:22:48.809 Uttam Kumaran: Amber, it’s gonna be more than, like, 25% of your time.
231 00:22:49.070 ⇒ 00:22:52.029 Uttam Kumaran: So I’m not sure, like, what the timeline is going to be for that yet.
232 00:22:53.650 ⇒ 00:22:54.380 Alexander Lubka: Okay.
233 00:22:55.820 ⇒ 00:22:58.290 Alexander Lubka: So… if you’re…
234 00:22:58.580 ⇒ 00:23:08.499 Alexander Lubka: Rest of your time… hypothetically, if your 75% of your time is on project management, or 50, 75% to 50%, is the CAPM something you still want to pursue next quarter?
235 00:23:11.260 ⇒ 00:23:13.199 Amber Lin: I would say so, yeah.
236 00:23:14.250 ⇒ 00:23:20.169 Alexander Lubka: Okay. And so, how… where… how do you feel you’re at now with your preparation for it?
237 00:23:20.840 ⇒ 00:23:33.169 Amber Lin: I know the basics. I’m at… I was at the stage of taking practice exams, so if we were to resume, I would do that, and then book the exam. I would say it probably would take, like, a month.
238 00:23:36.890 ⇒ 00:23:43.820 Alexander Lubka: Okay. I think it’s, if you’re still going to be doing project management, I think it’s a valiant effort to continue.
239 00:23:45.750 ⇒ 00:23:55.029 Justin Breshears: will help you across many, many different roles, too, I’ll say that, even if you end up transitioning away from project management, the principles that you learn, I mean.
240 00:23:55.510 ⇒ 00:24:00.980 Justin Breshears: You’re gonna manage projects in pretty much any role that you… come across.
241 00:24:02.180 ⇒ 00:24:04.470 Justin Breshears: So, still helpful, in my opinion.
242 00:24:07.550 ⇒ 00:24:10.440 Alexander Lubka: Yeah, so if that’s something you still want to do, I support it.
243 00:24:11.040 ⇒ 00:24:11.770 Amber Lin: Okay.
244 00:24:14.320 ⇒ 00:24:17.109 Alexander Lubka: Alright, so good job, team! We hit…
245 00:24:17.300 ⇒ 00:24:21.490 Alexander Lubka: So far, we hit 1, 2… 3…
246 00:24:22.700 ⇒ 00:24:25.950 Alexander Lubka: Of our, like, 7 OKRs to TBD.
247 00:24:26.710 ⇒ 00:24:27.980 Alexander Lubka: 6 OKRs?
248 00:24:28.300 ⇒ 00:24:29.440 Alexander Lubka: Good job, team.
249 00:24:31.620 ⇒ 00:24:33.099 Alexander Lubka: Nobody has, like, the…
250 00:24:33.300 ⇒ 00:24:38.509 Justin Breshears: I take no credit, because I came in at the end of the quarter, so… that’s all.
251 00:24:39.030 ⇒ 00:24:40.510 Justin Breshears: It’s alright, Amber, wake up.
252 00:24:40.880 ⇒ 00:24:45.699 Alexander Lubka: That’s fine, but I thought, like, you don’t have, like, the reactions on this Zoom?
253 00:24:45.850 ⇒ 00:24:47.290 Justin Breshears: Oh, yeah, where we at?
254 00:24:47.730 ⇒ 00:24:48.719 Uttam Kumaran: turn it off.
255 00:24:48.720 ⇒ 00:24:50.800 Alexander Lubka: You turn it off? Were people abusing it?
256 00:24:50.800 ⇒ 00:24:52.009 Justin Breshears: Nope, no, we got it.
257 00:24:52.010 ⇒ 00:24:53.730 Alexander Lubka: While we still got it…
258 00:24:53.730 ⇒ 00:24:58.669 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, you can click on it. Sometimes it would do it, like, when I just did, like, my hands.
259 00:24:58.670 ⇒ 00:25:00.280 Justin Breshears: Oh, the hand gesture ones, yeah.
260 00:25:00.280 ⇒ 00:25:03.599 Uttam Kumaran: I turned that off, because it would come in at awkward times.
261 00:25:03.960 ⇒ 00:25:10.689 Justin Breshears: Yeah, when you’re, like, in a heated conversation with the client, and there’s balloon out of the door.
262 00:25:13.660 ⇒ 00:25:16.790 Alexander Lubka: Alright, good job, team. Good job, Amber. Shout out.
263 00:25:18.140 ⇒ 00:25:20.689 Alexander Lubka: Alright, now we got our Q4 one, so…
264 00:25:22.020 ⇒ 00:25:32.669 Alexander Lubka: Is this… it’s so… it’s, Justin’s the responsible person for this. Cool. Alright, so I think they were… these were, like, we weren’t sure about, right? Last time I checked?
265 00:25:34.070 ⇒ 00:25:35.790 Alexander Lubka: Is that still the case?
266 00:25:36.930 ⇒ 00:25:40.039 Justin Breshears: Alright, let’s see… Wait, that one’s a carrier.
267 00:25:40.040 ⇒ 00:25:47.700 Uttam Kumaran: For me, yeah, for me, like, 7… so there’s a couple things we changed. One is, those two at the bottom.
268 00:25:48.220 ⇒ 00:25:52.520 Uttam Kumaran: previously were assigned to engineering. I’ve sort of lumped everything into delivery.
269 00:25:53.790 ⇒ 00:26:01.020 Uttam Kumaran: Because I think ensuring 50% are committed, are completed, 50% have estimations, I feel like that’s…
270 00:26:01.260 ⇒ 00:26:03.179 Uttam Kumaran: Valid to be under delivery, but…
271 00:26:03.690 ⇒ 00:26:09.270 Uttam Kumaran: I think, yeah, I wanted this meeting to just confirm that we feel like we can accomplish all of these
272 00:26:11.450 ⇒ 00:26:13.809 Uttam Kumaran: You know, this quarter.
273 00:26:14.520 ⇒ 00:26:29.619 Justin Breshears: Yeah, a question on the bottom one, the estimations that match the execution duration, is that, like, we hit 50% of our estimations spot on, or is it… after the ticket is over, we go back and…
274 00:26:29.850 ⇒ 00:26:33.630 Justin Breshears: Change the points on the ticket to match what the actuals were.
275 00:26:34.860 ⇒ 00:26:37.310 Uttam Kumaran: No, it’s the former.
276 00:26:37.760 ⇒ 00:26:39.040 Uttam Kumaran: So we make sure that…
277 00:26:39.040 ⇒ 00:26:39.979 Justin Breshears: Okay, cool, yeah.
278 00:26:39.980 ⇒ 00:26:40.870 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah.
279 00:26:40.870 ⇒ 00:26:48.089 Justin Breshears: then I align with that, because I’m like, we should 100% have the points, like, be correct when we finish the ticket.
280 00:26:48.430 ⇒ 00:26:52.940 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, basically, it’s like, on the start, we make sure that this matches
281 00:26:53.170 ⇒ 00:26:54.879 Uttam Kumaran: The amount of time it took to do…
282 00:26:55.570 ⇒ 00:27:00.590 Justin Breshears: My question then, after that is, how will we report this?
283 00:27:02.970 ⇒ 00:27:06.369 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I think Awash had a scheme he was thinking about.
284 00:27:06.510 ⇒ 00:27:09.369 Uttam Kumaran: I forgot what exactly it was, but…
285 00:27:10.210 ⇒ 00:27:14.790 Uttam Kumaran: One is, like, if you have the amount of points that are assigned to someone, and you have the hours they worked.
286 00:27:15.330 ⇒ 00:27:20.380 Uttam Kumaran: And then you could basically get a sense of like…
287 00:27:20.840 ⇒ 00:27:23.479 Uttam Kumaran: What tickets were done during that time period.
288 00:27:23.810 ⇒ 00:27:30.330 Uttam Kumaran: I mean, ideally, you basically say, like, I spent 5 hours on this ticket, and it was a 5-pointer.
289 00:27:30.700 ⇒ 00:27:33.580 Uttam Kumaran: but I think we’ll have to think of
290 00:27:35.730 ⇒ 00:27:38.639 Uttam Kumaran: Another way of doing the data so that this lines up.
291 00:27:40.010 ⇒ 00:27:40.870 Justin Breshears: Yes.
292 00:27:41.370 ⇒ 00:27:46.249 Justin Breshears: Because that map method requires, like, review at the end of each sprint.
293 00:27:46.440 ⇒ 00:27:50.209 Justin Breshears: Seeing which one, like, how many we did, logging them somewhere.
294 00:27:50.420 ⇒ 00:27:52.029 Justin Breshears: And then comparing later on.
295 00:27:55.690 ⇒ 00:27:56.840 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah…
296 00:27:59.840 ⇒ 00:28:07.110 Uttam Kumaran: I guess another way of doing it is, like, When a ticket closes, you just update
297 00:28:08.020 ⇒ 00:28:11.349 Uttam Kumaran: The estimation, and then we can look at the before and after.
298 00:28:13.310 ⇒ 00:28:16.730 Alexander Lubka: Does, does Linear have a velocity report?
299 00:28:19.500 ⇒ 00:28:19.970 Uttam Kumaran: This is the…
300 00:28:19.970 ⇒ 00:28:21.480 Amber Lin: are you referring to?
301 00:28:23.610 ⇒ 00:28:24.350 Alexander Lubka: What’s that?
302 00:28:24.930 ⇒ 00:28:31.480 Amber Lin: What type of velocity are you referring to? Because there’s cycle completion rate, there’s…
303 00:28:31.690 ⇒ 00:28:36.080 Amber Lin: Also, within the cycle, there’s somewhat of a…
304 00:28:37.630 ⇒ 00:28:41.710 Amber Lin: I can… if you see my screen here, say…
305 00:28:41.890 ⇒ 00:28:53.369 Amber Lin: You can look at the different cycles and see, okay, how much was scoped and how much was completed, and then within the cycle, there’s this burn-up chart that you can look at.
306 00:28:54.110 ⇒ 00:28:55.689 Alexander Lubka: I can’t… so you can share your screen now.
307 00:28:56.510 ⇒ 00:29:00.850 Amber Lin: Oh, I am. I think you have to switch… click on the top while you’re viewing to see.
308 00:29:00.850 ⇒ 00:29:02.210 Alexander Lubka: Oh, I got it, yep, thanks.
309 00:29:02.320 ⇒ 00:29:03.570 Amber Lin: To see a word.
310 00:29:04.320 ⇒ 00:29:06.400 Amber Lin: We need to adjust on Eden.
311 00:29:06.520 ⇒ 00:29:10.400 Amber Lin: But this is, like, a burn-up chart.
312 00:29:10.650 ⇒ 00:29:17.050 Amber Lin: Or… you can look at the historical cycles, and then… See what was completed.
313 00:29:17.390 ⇒ 00:29:20.739 Alexander Lubka: And those are just ticket… like, it says 43 completed, 62.
314 00:29:20.740 ⇒ 00:29:25.710 Amber Lin: Those are estimates of story points, which is hours, essentially.
315 00:29:27.710 ⇒ 00:29:31.209 Justin Breshears: My only issue with that is, I think we should…
316 00:29:31.920 ⇒ 00:29:37.460 Justin Breshears: like, match the pointing at the end, like, let’s say I have a 5-pointer
317 00:29:37.790 ⇒ 00:29:41.079 Justin Breshears: I completed, but it took me 6 hours to do.
318 00:29:41.500 ⇒ 00:29:50.330 Justin Breshears: like, I think I should update the ticket when I close it out to match, like, what the actual was, because then, when I, as a PM, go into the, like, end of week.
319 00:29:50.610 ⇒ 00:29:57.200 Justin Breshears: you know, update to the client, I’m updating them on… let’s say they’re an hourly fine, I’m updating them on, like, philosophy.
320 00:29:57.440 ⇒ 00:29:59.459 Justin Breshears: You know, I’m pulling that.
321 00:29:59.880 ⇒ 00:30:02.230 Justin Breshears: Velocity foam, linear.
322 00:30:02.770 ⇒ 00:30:08.289 Justin Breshears: And so then, if we’re updating it to match what the actual was, then we really don’t know.
323 00:30:09.270 ⇒ 00:30:13.999 Justin Breshears: Like, based on that, if… if it was… Part of this metric hit.
324 00:30:15.750 ⇒ 00:30:16.799 Justin Breshears: That makes sense.
325 00:30:17.040 ⇒ 00:30:19.599 Justin Breshears: My brain’s all over the place, I don’t know if I’m making sense today.
326 00:30:19.600 ⇒ 00:30:20.230 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
327 00:30:21.350 ⇒ 00:30:21.970 Alexander Lubka: Damn.
328 00:30:22.290 ⇒ 00:30:23.180 Justin Breshears: So…
329 00:30:24.570 ⇒ 00:30:36.819 Justin Breshears: I think that’s my only thing is, like, I would love to have, like, all of our OKRs be very, like, trackable, measurable, and, like, that dashboard that we’ve been talking about today to pull up on Mondays, so I’m like…
330 00:30:37.210 ⇒ 00:30:39.810 Justin Breshears: If there’s not a way that we could easily pull
331 00:30:40.960 ⇒ 00:30:43.630 Justin Breshears: that report, is it a useful OKR?
332 00:30:43.760 ⇒ 00:30:46.490 Uttam Kumaran: Okay. The other, the other idea is…
333 00:30:46.490 ⇒ 00:30:47.479 Justin Breshears: What’s that? Go ahead.
334 00:30:47.480 ⇒ 00:30:48.339 Uttam Kumaran: No, no, no, no.
335 00:30:49.140 ⇒ 00:30:58.179 Justin Breshears: I was gonna say the other idea is to, like, have a field, if we can create, like, a custom field on each ticket, to where, like, when you close out the ticket, you say.
336 00:30:58.440 ⇒ 00:31:00.649 Justin Breshears: What, did it match? Yes or no?
337 00:31:04.380 ⇒ 00:31:06.609 Alexander Lubka: Do reconciliation at the end of a sprint or something?
338 00:31:08.420 ⇒ 00:31:11.280 Alexander Lubka: To do, like, a reconciliation at the end of the sprint, if it matched or not.
339 00:31:11.280 ⇒ 00:31:24.290 Justin Breshears: Yeah, because if we… if we… every ticket we close out, if we say, yes, it matched my estimate, or no, it didn’t, then at the end, you can look at what percentage are yes, what percentage are no, and see if it’s over 50%.
340 00:31:25.110 ⇒ 00:31:28.299 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I guess I would say the fundamental thing we’re trying to hit at is that
341 00:31:28.580 ⇒ 00:31:35.129 Uttam Kumaran: we… we… what we expect it’s gonna take is gonna take a little while. So, the other thing you can do is you could just…
342 00:31:35.580 ⇒ 00:31:38.609 Uttam Kumaran: Switch it just, like, we were within our budgets.
343 00:31:39.530 ⇒ 00:31:43.959 Uttam Kumaran: you can create it, you can change the OKR, just a budget OKR, like, we…
344 00:31:44.330 ⇒ 00:31:47.179 Uttam Kumaran: Are within plus or minus 10% of our budgets.
345 00:31:47.390 ⇒ 00:31:48.090 Uttam Kumaran: More like…
346 00:31:48.090 ⇒ 00:31:49.570 Justin Breshears: I think… I think that’s better.
347 00:31:49.570 ⇒ 00:31:51.830 Uttam Kumaran: But it’s kind of the mar- that’s already the margin.
348 00:31:52.900 ⇒ 00:31:54.860 Justin Breshears: Right. Anyways, right? So…
349 00:31:54.860 ⇒ 00:31:58.090 Uttam Kumaran: If this is redundant with the, with the,
350 00:31:59.580 ⇒ 00:32:03.069 Uttam Kumaran: with the margin, then I would just take this and make it the margin.
351 00:32:03.190 ⇒ 00:32:04.480 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, RN.
352 00:32:06.180 ⇒ 00:32:07.790 Justin Breshears: I agree. It’s almost like a sub.
353 00:32:07.790 ⇒ 00:32:08.450 Uttam Kumaran: followed.
354 00:32:08.780 ⇒ 00:32:11.359 Justin Breshears: A submetric, but under the margin loan?
355 00:32:12.310 ⇒ 00:32:15.519 Uttam Kumaran: Like, if I can figure out how to measure this, I will for you guys, but…
356 00:32:15.710 ⇒ 00:32:19.390 Uttam Kumaran: Otherwise, I would just try to aim to hit the margin this quarter.
357 00:32:19.390 ⇒ 00:32:23.489 Amber Lin: Do you want 50% project margin?
358 00:32:24.230 ⇒ 00:32:27.650 Amber Lin: Average project margin, because some of them are higher.
359 00:32:31.450 ⇒ 00:32:34.379 Uttam Kumaran: I would… I would sign up for what you guys can achieve.
360 00:32:34.640 ⇒ 00:32:37.540 Uttam Kumaran: Don’t make it aspirational, but like.
361 00:32:37.540 ⇒ 00:32:38.670 Amber Lin: That’s where you dressed it.
362 00:32:39.120 ⇒ 00:32:39.560 Amber Lin: Do you think?
363 00:32:39.560 ⇒ 00:32:40.770 Justin Breshears: So, sorry.
364 00:32:41.190 ⇒ 00:32:42.979 Justin Breshears: I’m stuck on the old problem, because…
365 00:32:43.500 ⇒ 00:32:51.019 Justin Breshears: Actually, like, it doesn’t necessarily equate to margin, because we can still hit our margin on all our projects and not deliver for the client.
366 00:32:51.860 ⇒ 00:32:57.129 Justin Breshears: If we just stick to budgets at the expense of, like, actually getting anything done, then…
367 00:32:57.240 ⇒ 00:33:01.090 Justin Breshears: we hit margin, yay, but we didn’t deliver, you know? So I think…
368 00:33:01.090 ⇒ 00:33:04.809 Uttam Kumaran: thing is going to be on renewals, right? So renewals and…
369 00:33:05.990 ⇒ 00:33:10.370 Uttam Kumaran: Basically, the balance is, like, renewals, or churn…
370 00:33:11.590 ⇒ 00:33:13.409 Uttam Kumaran: or MPS is how you base.
371 00:33:13.410 ⇒ 00:33:24.969 Justin Breshears: That’s where I think the OKR that we had in there was helpful, because it’s looking at, on a per-engineer, per-ticket basis, are we estimating correctly? Which I do think is helpful.
372 00:33:26.510 ⇒ 00:33:28.569 Justin Breshears: And it does roll up in the margin.
373 00:33:29.280 ⇒ 00:33:33.170 Justin Breshears: But margin is not the end-all, be-all of delivery, too.
374 00:33:35.720 ⇒ 00:33:43.390 Justin Breshears: I mean, we could sign a contract and stick one engineer on it for 5 hours a week, hit margin, and barely deliver anything, you know?
375 00:33:45.180 ⇒ 00:33:49.590 Uttam Kumaran: But then you… but then won’t you just assume you’re gonna lose it… lose the deal?
376 00:33:50.010 ⇒ 00:33:53.280 Justin Breshears: Yes, you would… you would definitely lose the client at that point, so…
377 00:33:53.280 ⇒ 00:33:56.529 Uttam Kumaran: So then, that’s why maybe the best thing is just to…
378 00:33:57.060 ⇒ 00:34:00.790 Uttam Kumaran: Like, go to the simplest metric, which is just churn.
379 00:34:01.710 ⇒ 00:34:05.690 Uttam Kumaran: But then the problem is, if you go too simple, you’re not gonna have full control over it.
380 00:34:06.610 ⇒ 00:34:07.400 Uttam Kumaran: Right.
381 00:34:07.920 ⇒ 00:34:08.370 Justin Breshears: Right.
382 00:34:08.370 ⇒ 00:34:10.509 Uttam Kumaran: But you can just say, like.
383 00:34:11.790 ⇒ 00:34:14.530 Uttam Kumaran: Right? What is our company goals, 15%?
384 00:34:15.170 ⇒ 00:34:22.929 Uttam Kumaran: churn, right? So… You can just say, we’re gonna aim for less than 50%, less than 15%,
385 00:34:24.560 ⇒ 00:34:26.950 Uttam Kumaran: Regrettable or preventable churn, right?
386 00:34:27.389 ⇒ 00:34:32.549 Justin Breshears: We could do that. I get… I get what you mean, though. This one, that one is, like, beyond engineering.
387 00:34:34.659 ⇒ 00:34:36.950 Uttam Kumaran: So, if I was thinking about engineering points.
388 00:34:40.270 ⇒ 00:34:41.229 Justin Breshears: That’s why there’s, like, a balance
389 00:34:41.730 ⇒ 00:34:56.419 Justin Breshears: because I do like looking at the nuts and bolts that lead up to the overall. So, yeah, 15% churn and 40% margin should be the, like, overall goals, but we do… there’s value in, like, looking at, like, well, what leads to that, you know?
390 00:34:57.060 ⇒ 00:34:58.420 Justin Breshears: So I don’t necessarily want to just…
391 00:34:58.420 ⇒ 00:35:02.430 Uttam Kumaran: The other one, the 50% of tickets are completed on or before due date.
392 00:35:04.950 ⇒ 00:35:07.640 Uttam Kumaran: Like, don’t… maybe that is just the…
393 00:35:13.970 ⇒ 00:35:15.680 Uttam Kumaran: That’s where you buy stories.
394 00:35:18.310 ⇒ 00:35:22.140 Uttam Kumaran: Because that should take into factor how much points that person has.
395 00:35:24.410 ⇒ 00:35:26.610 Uttam Kumaran: During the week that they’re working.
396 00:35:27.080 ⇒ 00:35:34.860 Justin Breshears: Yeah, because if you end up going over on another ticket, you push due date on another ticket, or you end up burning too hot, so that, yeah, that makes sense.
397 00:35:35.300 ⇒ 00:35:38.960 Uttam Kumaran: Like, until I can make it easier for the engineers.
398 00:35:39.230 ⇒ 00:35:42.430 Uttam Kumaran: To sort of trap, like, track?
399 00:35:42.590 ⇒ 00:35:44.140 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t think they’re gonna do it.
400 00:35:44.320 ⇒ 00:35:48.070 Uttam Kumaran: I mean, it’s just gonna be really tedious. For sure.
401 00:35:48.510 ⇒ 00:35:54.640 Justin Breshears: For both of these, though, I do want, like, a way to report on these things that doesn’t require the PM to, like, keep it all in their head, you know?
402 00:35:55.020 ⇒ 00:36:01.420 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so the second one I… the first one I can get you. Yeah, we have all the linear data, so we’ll have that.
403 00:36:02.550 ⇒ 00:36:10.359 Justin Breshears: Well, so the first one we can do on or before due date, we can definitely track, and I think maybe the second one is just, like, a custom field that we…
404 00:36:10.900 ⇒ 00:36:11.710 Justin Breshears: put…
405 00:36:15.400 ⇒ 00:36:18.480 Justin Breshears: If that is even possible, I don’t know linear that well.
406 00:36:19.910 ⇒ 00:36:20.700 Justin Breshears: Let’s see…
407 00:36:22.060 ⇒ 00:36:25.239 Alexander Lubka: I… I feel like… are we over… we might be over-engineering this.
408 00:36:25.600 ⇒ 00:36:27.579 Justin Breshears: There’s a way to, like, do…
409 00:36:28.170 ⇒ 00:36:32.090 Alexander Lubka: A report in linear, just, like, actual time versus, like, estimated time.
410 00:36:33.710 ⇒ 00:36:38.950 Uttam Kumaran: But see, actual time is the number of days it took to get done, not the number of hours.
411 00:36:39.670 ⇒ 00:36:40.400 Uttam Kumaran: Right.
412 00:36:41.750 ⇒ 00:36:46.999 Alexander Lubka: Because that’s why… that’s what… but again, like, this is where you have balance. If you know if…
413 00:36:47.100 ⇒ 00:36:51.869 Uttam Kumaran: If 90% of your active tickets have deadlines, and you miss more than half of them.
414 00:36:52.210 ⇒ 00:36:54.220 Uttam Kumaran: You’re probably not estimating well.
415 00:36:54.800 ⇒ 00:36:55.450 Justin Breshears: Yeah.
416 00:36:55.450 ⇒ 00:36:59.580 Uttam Kumaran: So you should assume that the estimation is the third leg of the stool, which is, like, you…
417 00:36:59.580 ⇒ 00:37:01.239 Alexander Lubka: You set the due dates.
418 00:37:01.400 ⇒ 00:37:04.000 Uttam Kumaran: Based on how much you have available.
419 00:37:04.780 ⇒ 00:37:08.709 Uttam Kumaran: And then you… you… you estimate it properly if you hit it.
420 00:37:09.090 ⇒ 00:37:11.490 Uttam Kumaran: The only reason you didn’t estimate properly is
421 00:37:11.890 ⇒ 00:37:14.720 Uttam Kumaran: Because it took way longer than you thought, so that’s a…
422 00:37:15.140 ⇒ 00:37:17.119 Uttam Kumaran: That’s back to the estimation problem.
423 00:37:17.630 ⇒ 00:37:18.380 Uttam Kumaran: Or…
424 00:37:18.380 ⇒ 00:37:19.080 Justin Breshears: If you…
425 00:37:19.080 ⇒ 00:37:22.730 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, some other extenuating circumstance, which you should have already budgeted for.
426 00:37:24.090 ⇒ 00:37:27.070 Justin Breshears: I’m just thinking, like, I’m looking at a ticket right now, like…
427 00:37:27.240 ⇒ 00:37:33.549 Justin Breshears: it has set estimate as a field. If we had a field that said, set actual.
428 00:37:34.270 ⇒ 00:37:43.879 Justin Breshears: And when you close out the ticket, you have the actual… then you have the estimate, which doesn’t change, but then you have the actual… and then you could probably run a report that compares the two, like Alex said.
429 00:37:45.680 ⇒ 00:37:46.070 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
430 00:37:46.070 ⇒ 00:37:50.710 Justin Breshears: Like, just part of closing out a ticket is just inputting the actual hours.
431 00:37:51.690 ⇒ 00:37:54.190 Uttam Kumaran: I just don’t know if I can do…
432 00:37:57.380 ⇒ 00:37:58.859 Uttam Kumaran: custom fields.
433 00:38:00.170 ⇒ 00:38:02.240 Justin Breshears: That would be a limiter for sure.
434 00:38:16.150 ⇒ 00:38:17.509 Alexander Lubka: Mary, do you want to come back to this one?
435 00:38:17.860 ⇒ 00:38:18.740 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
436 00:38:19.430 ⇒ 00:38:22.010 Justin Breshears: Alright, I’m just bogging this down, but…
437 00:38:22.740 ⇒ 00:38:23.819 Alexander Lubka: He’ll come back to it.
438 00:38:27.090 ⇒ 00:38:33.230 Alexander Lubka: For the… so, yeah, what was the status of these two that weren’t bolded? The question was if we want to include them or not?
439 00:38:36.160 ⇒ 00:38:43.030 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I guess because, like, we’re… I just didn’t know if they were gonna roll over or not, so if you guys think we’re, like, good on this.
440 00:38:44.200 ⇒ 00:38:46.400 Uttam Kumaran: And we don’t need to talk about it every week.
441 00:38:46.870 ⇒ 00:38:48.239 Alexander Lubka: Oh, no offense.
442 00:38:49.060 ⇒ 00:38:50.860 Uttam Kumaran: So the top one, I feel…
443 00:38:51.310 ⇒ 00:38:52.020 Alexander Lubka: Damn.
444 00:38:52.710 ⇒ 00:38:53.270 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
445 00:38:53.270 ⇒ 00:38:54.880 Justin Breshears: I think we can get rid of them.
446 00:38:55.530 ⇒ 00:38:56.349 Alexander Lubka: Both of them?
447 00:38:57.090 ⇒ 00:39:02.910 Justin Breshears: Yeah, because the second one’s gonna be resolved by having required fields. Like, that’s gonna be…
448 00:39:03.530 ⇒ 00:39:06.440 Justin Breshears: non-negotiable, if we implement that. Okay.
449 00:39:06.440 ⇒ 00:39:06.990 Alexander Lubka: Yeah.
450 00:39:07.310 ⇒ 00:39:13.420 Justin Breshears: I mean, initiating projects, like, I just feel like that is just… that’s a standard.
451 00:39:13.420 ⇒ 00:39:15.070 Uttam Kumaran: I think we solved it now.
452 00:39:15.070 ⇒ 00:39:16.430 Justin Breshears: Yeah. Last two weeks.
453 00:39:17.840 ⇒ 00:39:24.750 Justin Breshears: I think that’s just the standard, like, I don’t think that’s a, like, a metric to shoot for. It’s just that is the standard.
454 00:39:25.610 ⇒ 00:39:28.480 Alexander Lubka: Yeah, so in theory, if you are able to get that plugin.
455 00:39:28.690 ⇒ 00:39:30.940 Alexander Lubka: You can implement that pretty quickly.
456 00:39:32.080 ⇒ 00:39:35.910 Justin Breshears: Yeah, I think you should be able to download it and have it installed, like, instantly.
457 00:39:36.260 ⇒ 00:39:36.890 Alexander Lubka: Great.
458 00:39:37.470 ⇒ 00:39:39.110 Alexander Lubka: Alright, I’m in sync with that.
459 00:39:41.000 ⇒ 00:39:41.650 Alexander Lubka: These are good.
460 00:39:41.650 ⇒ 00:39:47.140 Justin Breshears: Now, if we want to come up with something else for under-strengthening PM execution, that’s…
461 00:39:50.200 ⇒ 00:39:51.930 Justin Breshears: I think that’s worth discussion.
462 00:39:53.030 ⇒ 00:39:56.739 Alexander Lubka: This is something that’s already… that we’re also already doing, right?
463 00:39:59.320 ⇒ 00:40:00.000 Justin Breshears: Yup.
464 00:40:00.430 ⇒ 00:40:00.950 Alexander Lubka: This is a roll.
465 00:40:00.950 ⇒ 00:40:03.530 Uttam Kumaran: I just think this one is a lot, like…
466 00:40:05.100 ⇒ 00:40:09.260 Uttam Kumaran: This one, it just requires a lot of process.
467 00:40:09.680 ⇒ 00:40:13.959 Uttam Kumaran: But my other… I guess my other thing I would poke at is, like.
468 00:40:14.570 ⇒ 00:40:18.139 Uttam Kumaran: sprint planning, grooming, like, I think grooming…
469 00:40:19.370 ⇒ 00:40:23.790 Uttam Kumaran: The grooming ticket was really that, like, 90% of tickets have everything.
470 00:40:24.300 ⇒ 00:40:32.049 Uttam Kumaran: Right, but I… Yeah, I still feel like we’re not doing planning, Or grooming on every client.
471 00:40:32.710 ⇒ 00:40:36.550 Uttam Kumaran: And we are producing the end-of-week report.
472 00:40:37.030 ⇒ 00:40:40.279 Uttam Kumaran: But… There isn’t, like, any sort of…
473 00:40:40.540 ⇒ 00:40:44.549 Uttam Kumaran: Backlog building going on across many of the clients.
474 00:40:44.950 ⇒ 00:40:45.760 Alexander Lubka: Well, one… one thing I.
475 00:40:45.760 ⇒ 00:40:46.330 Justin Breshears: True.
476 00:40:46.330 ⇒ 00:41:04.259 Alexander Lubka: One thing I would generally like to see is, like, I know Justin started the trainings with Rico and Amber, and I’d love to have some sort of measurement of, like, you’re doing the trainings, and that they were seeing results of the… either the quality or the, you know, whatever the result is, what we want to measure for… that’s actually working, and that the
477 00:41:04.740 ⇒ 00:41:06.579 Alexander Lubka: Ceremonies are improving.
478 00:41:08.250 ⇒ 00:41:14.529 Alexander Lubka: Because I think that’s something you’re going to keep doing. I think you just had one, right, Justin? That’s something you want to keep doing, of, like, training sessions with them?
479 00:41:14.890 ⇒ 00:41:15.740 Justin Breshears: For sure.
480 00:41:16.060 ⇒ 00:41:16.550 Alexander Lubka: Okay.
481 00:41:16.550 ⇒ 00:41:25.139 Justin Breshears: where I have a hard time with, like, the different ceremonies right now, at the stage of project that we’re at, is that all of them are not, like, necessary, and so…
482 00:41:25.340 ⇒ 00:41:32.419 Justin Breshears: We’ll take, like, take, like, Default, for example.
483 00:41:32.780 ⇒ 00:41:44.449 Justin Breshears: like, very much gonna be in this next contract, a very ad hoc type of project, where, like, yeah, they gave us something to do right now. Okay, like, we’re off and running with the vendor comparison.
484 00:41:44.870 ⇒ 00:41:45.939 Justin Breshears: But, like…
485 00:41:46.260 ⇒ 00:41:53.659 Justin Breshears: then stuff is just gonna, like, come in as they need it, right? So it’s like, how much of a backlog can we build out… build out in that?
486 00:41:54.310 ⇒ 00:41:58.739 Justin Breshears: So I don’t think we need, like, a planning and grooming session every week, or every sprint, or…
487 00:41:59.070 ⇒ 00:42:12.869 Alexander Lubka: Yeah, I think this is more… I think this is… maybe this isn’t the best place to put it, but I think it’s more agnostic to clients. I think it’s more like, do we have the confidence that every PM can run all the ceremonies that we identify are necessary?
488 00:42:13.360 ⇒ 00:42:13.980 Justin Breshears: Sure.
489 00:42:14.860 ⇒ 00:42:33.559 Alexander Lubka: So, like, yeah, I want to make… I want… it’d be great to know that, you know, Rico, for example, can run a sprint planning session, because I know a goal would be to try to get him to manage external projects. I think it’d be great, some sort of OKR to be like, can he… to know that every PM can manage all the ceremonies?
490 00:42:34.780 ⇒ 00:42:46.309 Alexander Lubka: like, and I don’t… we can measure… we could, like, I don’t know, do a test at the end, or just, like, conf… we have some way to measure it, but I think it’d be really cool if, like, okay, Justin’s… Justin’s taking the time, which I think is fantastic.
491 00:42:46.310 ⇒ 00:43:03.480 Alexander Lubka: to train them on, you know, how to manage projects, or how to manage these ceremonies. And just at the end of the quarter, being like, do we have the confidence that, you know, RICO can do… can run… do an external project? Do we have the confidence that, you know, they’re running into our Brainforged standards of how we expect ceremonies to be run?
492 00:43:04.210 ⇒ 00:43:04.849 Justin Breshears: Thank you.
493 00:43:06.100 ⇒ 00:43:11.400 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, that’s also important, like, I think one of the things that we don’t know the true
494 00:43:11.550 ⇒ 00:43:17.290 Uttam Kumaran: One thing that I would like to achieve this quarter is understanding the true level of effort per
495 00:43:17.690 ⇒ 00:43:20.960 Uttam Kumaran: Type of client, basically, like that 20, 25.
496 00:43:21.260 ⇒ 00:43:22.680 Uttam Kumaran: That’d be a great outcome.
497 00:43:22.930 ⇒ 00:43:28.050 Uttam Kumaran: Because before I can… Before we can optimize further on that.
498 00:43:28.260 ⇒ 00:43:33.210 Uttam Kumaran: Just need to know, like, are we hitting all of the expected rituals.
499 00:43:33.350 ⇒ 00:43:35.470 Uttam Kumaran: To our standard threat rate count.
500 00:43:35.610 ⇒ 00:43:41.980 Uttam Kumaran: So, I would like there to be something around, that would be great, I think. All of these kind of hit on that, but again.
501 00:43:42.210 ⇒ 00:43:49.079 Uttam Kumaran: I just feel like some of these… You could just, like, toss and AI and shit.
502 00:43:49.270 ⇒ 00:43:51.420 Uttam Kumaran: So I want to make sure that, like, we are…
503 00:43:51.600 ⇒ 00:43:54.230 Uttam Kumaran: There’s some others for qualitative balance here.
504 00:43:54.390 ⇒ 00:44:00.049 Uttam Kumaran: And we’re making sure that these are all working. Like, for example, 50% of tickets are completed, you could just have a rock star.
505 00:44:00.240 ⇒ 00:44:03.660 Uttam Kumaran: engineer, like, you just have Mustaf on your team, and you get… he’ll crush it.
506 00:44:03.850 ⇒ 00:44:08.730 Uttam Kumaran: Right, so I want to make sure that some of these are really hit at the root.
507 00:44:09.810 ⇒ 00:44:11.239 Uttam Kumaran: of the problem.
508 00:44:11.650 ⇒ 00:44:19.360 Uttam Kumaran: Which is, like, understanding of the client problem, really being… preparing for…
509 00:44:19.610 ⇒ 00:44:23.750 Uttam Kumaran: Sprint planning meetings, preparing for grooming, And…
510 00:44:24.950 ⇒ 00:44:27.919 Uttam Kumaran: Ultimately, like, we want clients to expand and renew.
511 00:44:28.190 ⇒ 00:44:34.599 Uttam Kumaran: And I think this is, like, the most tried and true way of getting there, is making sure you hit on those rituals, right? That’s our assumption.
512 00:44:36.820 ⇒ 00:44:37.420 Justin Breshears: Agreed.
513 00:44:41.320 ⇒ 00:44:43.380 Justin Breshears: Trying to think how to track that, I don’t know.
514 00:44:43.610 ⇒ 00:44:53.629 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, an easy way is you ask… you can ask the people on the client, like, you know, you could act… could ask Awash or Sam, who are on… who are on the client, whether they feel like
515 00:44:53.930 ⇒ 00:44:55.380 Uttam Kumaran: their perspective.
516 00:44:56.180 ⇒ 00:44:59.370 Uttam Kumaran: Things are well, you could ask the client themselves.
517 00:45:01.600 ⇒ 00:45:05.650 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know, some of the clients may or may not even know what this even is.
518 00:45:13.040 ⇒ 00:45:21.850 Uttam Kumaran: I mean, again, you can also… you can also require, like, a sprint plan report, or… a grooming report.
519 00:45:22.030 ⇒ 00:45:26.100 Uttam Kumaran: something that indicates to you, Justin, that this was done on a certain degree.
520 00:45:38.320 ⇒ 00:45:39.020 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
521 00:45:50.690 ⇒ 00:45:58.759 Justin Breshears: I was thinking, while you’re talking about the, like, monthly project reviews with clients, too, maybe that’s a way to tie in how we’re connecting.
522 00:46:00.880 ⇒ 00:46:01.359 Uttam Kumaran: as much as possible.
523 00:46:01.360 ⇒ 00:46:07.890 Justin Breshears: Reviews, and we’re getting… Positive client satisfaction scores through them.
524 00:46:07.890 ⇒ 00:46:12.159 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I guess that’s good. Maybe we do that. That’s something in the middle.
525 00:46:12.450 ⇒ 00:46:13.650 Uttam Kumaran: Which is…
526 00:46:17.710 ⇒ 00:46:19.840 Uttam Kumaran: you know, I don’t know, we conduct.
527 00:46:19.840 ⇒ 00:46:25.770 Justin Breshears: And we started asking clients to rate us in certain categories and actually get CSAT scores.
528 00:46:28.540 ⇒ 00:46:29.300 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
529 00:46:33.620 ⇒ 00:46:38.500 Justin Breshears: So… can of worms, I know, because it’s very subjective, but…
530 00:46:38.920 ⇒ 00:46:43.159 Justin Breshears: Can also unearth problems with how we are delivering.
531 00:46:56.290 ⇒ 00:47:01.750 Uttam Kumaran: But I guess this is where, like, this is why I try to architect the other KPIs the way they are, because
532 00:47:02.520 ⇒ 00:47:12.199 Uttam Kumaran: If you run a bad sprint plan, you’re not going to get your tickets done on time, or they’re gonna be ungroomed. It kind of requires you to run the sprint plan.
533 00:47:12.310 ⇒ 00:47:13.050 Uttam Kumaran: Pretty well.
534 00:47:13.870 ⇒ 00:47:18.230 Justin Breshears: That’s fine, we can put it back in and… Roll with it as is.
535 00:47:24.430 ⇒ 00:47:27.639 Justin Breshears: Because I agree with you, all of that will cascade.
536 00:47:28.240 ⇒ 00:47:33.519 Uttam Kumaran: Like, I would say out of both of these, like, this… this one is important.
537 00:47:34.010 ⇒ 00:47:36.989 Uttam Kumaran: This is number 1, and then this is number 2.
538 00:47:37.110 ⇒ 00:47:39.040 Uttam Kumaran: If you can’t do number 2 in the long term
539 00:47:41.760 ⇒ 00:47:43.500 Uttam Kumaran: We’re not doing this right now.
540 00:47:48.320 ⇒ 00:47:55.610 Uttam Kumaran: I mean, maybe this just is, like, every month, as part of our project review, we basically go by client, by ritual.
541 00:47:57.050 ⇒ 00:48:04.240 Uttam Kumaran: And we just… it doesn’t even have to be, like, a super measured… we, like, as a brew, we just say, like, did we do… did we do stuff well?
542 00:48:04.690 ⇒ 00:48:12.719 Uttam Kumaran: like, for clients that I’m related to, I can tell you really clearly. If we don’t know, we can ask Sam or Awash. We can ask a third party, basically.
543 00:48:14.700 ⇒ 00:48:20.110 Uttam Kumaran: And this is at the end of every month. We look at all… Clients, all standards.
544 00:48:21.010 ⇒ 00:48:23.779 Justin Breshears: Like, an internal monthly review of how we’re delivering.
545 00:48:24.090 ⇒ 00:48:29.289 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, like, it can be paired, because we have to prom… we have to produce something for the monthly review in many ways.
546 00:48:29.440 ⇒ 00:48:32.060 Justin Breshears: Part of this, there can be an internal component.
547 00:48:32.960 ⇒ 00:48:33.920 Justin Breshears: Yeah, like that.
548 00:48:36.360 ⇒ 00:48:42.680 Uttam Kumaran: So I would just… so I would say that, like, we conduct, like, the internal monthly review, and we find that
549 00:48:42.880 ⇒ 00:48:45.770 Uttam Kumaran: We are doing all of the ceremonies.
550 00:48:46.270 ⇒ 00:48:48.350 Uttam Kumaran: For all clients to our standards.
551 00:48:49.080 ⇒ 00:48:49.670 Justin Breshears: Yep.
552 00:48:50.540 ⇒ 00:48:51.359 Justin Breshears: Oh, it’s…
553 00:49:18.880 ⇒ 00:49:19.650 Alexander Lubka: Okay.
554 00:49:24.890 ⇒ 00:49:27.959 Alexander Lubka: So… This can be confirmed.
555 00:49:28.250 ⇒ 00:49:36.109 Alexander Lubka: With the monthly review and our analysis, and this can be confirmed with the client… a monthly client review?
556 00:49:36.740 ⇒ 00:49:56.499 Justin Breshears: Yeah, both are monthly reviews. We’ve started doing, like, monthly client reviews, and so the second one is more, like, in that monthly review cycle, we look introspectively and see if we’re running these things, and then the top one is, you know, we ask, or make sure, like, based on the client feedback, that we are doing that.
557 00:49:57.970 ⇒ 00:50:01.659 Alexander Lubka: Is this a… is 75% of clients surveyed saying that they’re…
558 00:50:02.940 ⇒ 00:50:09.810 Alexander Lubka: satisfactory with… whatever word you want to use, satisfactory with, you know, our PM’s performance sufficient?
559 00:50:10.290 ⇒ 00:50:12.240 Uttam Kumaran: Let’s see, this is where, like, I would just…
560 00:50:12.660 ⇒ 00:50:18.499 Uttam Kumaran: I would maybe put this… I would… I would probably challenge and just say, like, we hit our share numbers.
561 00:50:19.960 ⇒ 00:50:22.590 Alexander Lubka: Our what number, sorry? Like, our churn.
562 00:50:22.840 ⇒ 00:50:23.330 Justin Breshears: Yeah.
563 00:50:23.330 ⇒ 00:50:23.880 Alexander Lubka: Okay.
564 00:50:23.880 ⇒ 00:50:29.899 Justin Breshears: Yeah, I think a good indicator are, are we being good partners, or are we being good consultants, is our churn rate.
565 00:50:31.130 ⇒ 00:50:32.189 Justin Breshears: That’s a good point.
566 00:50:33.620 ⇒ 00:50:35.800 Alexander Lubka: Is there, like, a churn rate we want to try to hit?
567 00:50:36.310 ⇒ 00:50:37.830 Uttam Kumaran: Less than 15%.
568 00:50:47.610 ⇒ 00:50:48.830 Justin Breshears: Yeah, it’s good.
569 00:50:49.260 ⇒ 00:50:50.580 Justin Breshears: It’s a good way to look at it.
570 00:50:57.860 ⇒ 00:50:58.440 Alexander Lubka: Go.
571 00:51:01.710 ⇒ 00:51:06.510 Alexander Lubka: Okay, I think this is pretty measurable. I think this is… Hard.
572 00:51:10.280 ⇒ 00:51:12.809 Justin Breshears: Yeah, that one… that’s gonna be tough.
573 00:51:15.480 ⇒ 00:51:15.989 Alexander Lubka: Do you think you guys.
574 00:51:15.990 ⇒ 00:51:19.909 Uttam Kumaran: I think, like, this… what you have for me is you have, like.
575 00:51:20.020 ⇒ 00:51:22.010 Uttam Kumaran: I can do… I can, like…
576 00:51:22.810 ⇒ 00:51:26.089 Uttam Kumaran: get into a group chat, I can delay payments.
577 00:51:26.290 ⇒ 00:51:32.280 Uttam Kumaran: And I can do those things, so I feel like you can… you guys should be able to achieve this.
578 00:51:32.600 ⇒ 00:51:37.290 Justin Breshears: Yeah, I mean, I’ll push it for sure, and I think it absolutely is necessary, because
579 00:51:37.570 ⇒ 00:51:44.419 Justin Breshears: Based on the conversations we’ve had today around, like, margin and reporting and stuff, like, we need those timesheets to be on time and accurate.
580 00:51:44.970 ⇒ 00:51:46.570 Justin Breshears: So we definitely need this one.
581 00:51:46.900 ⇒ 00:51:54.329 Alexander Lubka: Is there any sort of automation we can trigger for, like, a Slack message or a report that says if we hit it or not by end of day Friday?
582 00:51:55.390 ⇒ 00:51:57.070 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, we could totally do that.
583 00:51:58.400 ⇒ 00:52:08.040 Justin Breshears: Yeah, we used to have an automated message go out when timesheets were passed due to every single person who was missing theirs and their managers.
584 00:52:09.490 ⇒ 00:52:10.230 Alexander Lubka: Bhho.
585 00:52:13.070 ⇒ 00:52:17.979 Alexander Lubka: Who can… who can set this up? Is there someone on the AI team that we can ask to set this up?
586 00:52:19.080 ⇒ 00:52:22.540 Uttam Kumaran: Rico can set this up pretty easily, if you like.
587 00:52:22.810 ⇒ 00:52:26.139 Uttam Kumaran: He’s helping me on a bunch of Slack automations.
588 00:52:30.170 ⇒ 00:52:30.700 Alexander Lubka: Okay.
589 00:52:31.100 ⇒ 00:52:34.030 Justin Breshears: I guess the only key piece of that is, like.
590 00:52:34.420 ⇒ 00:52:37.440 Justin Breshears: tying it to Clockify, and then for sure, like, because…
591 00:52:37.630 ⇒ 00:52:41.169 Justin Breshears: I don’t know, in Clockify, there’s not really, like, a submit button, is there?
592 00:52:41.840 ⇒ 00:52:43.599 Justin Breshears: Just saves, like, in real time.
593 00:52:43.600 ⇒ 00:52:48.080 Uttam Kumaran: It just saves, but we’re also on, like, the… we’re on… we’re… we’re not paying for Glockify.
594 00:52:48.300 ⇒ 00:52:52.600 Uttam Kumaran: So, I don’t have… we don’t have, like, any features, so I actually… this is, like…
595 00:52:52.770 ⇒ 00:52:56.010 Uttam Kumaran: I decided on Clockify randomly one day, like…
596 00:52:56.320 ⇒ 00:52:57.230 Justin Breshears: Okay.
597 00:52:57.230 ⇒ 00:53:00.080 Uttam Kumaran: So, we’re not tied to that tool.
598 00:53:00.500 ⇒ 00:53:08.329 Uttam Kumaran: I… this is where, like, if someone has an opinion on a better tool, or if there’s a feature we want in there, like, I’m actually sure…
599 00:53:08.660 ⇒ 00:53:14.260 Uttam Kumaran: We should just have Rico look to see if it’s there, and I could just… I could consider paying for it, basically.
600 00:53:15.040 ⇒ 00:53:20.349 Justin Breshears: Because Clockify, they just have so many features that, like, I’m sure they have a reminder feature.
601 00:53:21.000 ⇒ 00:53:24.509 Justin Breshears: Yeah, I just… you would need a submit button.
602 00:53:24.670 ⇒ 00:53:25.850 Justin Breshears: And have, like.
603 00:53:26.330 ⇒ 00:53:37.199 Justin Breshears: the clear delineation between this person submitted on time and this person didn’t. Right now, if I put any time in for, like, any time in the week, then I have something filled out in it.
604 00:53:38.030 ⇒ 00:53:38.640 Justin Breshears: You can’t really.
605 00:53:38.640 ⇒ 00:53:39.160 Uttam Kumaran: tell, like.
606 00:53:39.160 ⇒ 00:53:40.730 Justin Breshears: Oh, it’s not complete, you know?
607 00:53:41.200 ⇒ 00:53:41.770 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
608 00:53:48.150 ⇒ 00:53:51.210 Alexander Lubka: Is end of day Friday, 5 o’clock East Coast?
609 00:53:52.420 ⇒ 00:53:54.620 Alexander Lubka: Like, what is our expectation for them to get it in by?
610 00:53:55.060 ⇒ 00:53:58.199 Uttam Kumaran: It just needs to be done by Monday morning, basically.
611 00:53:58.200 ⇒ 00:54:03.790 Justin Breshears: Yeah, I would put that deadline at Monday morning, like.
612 00:54:04.880 ⇒ 00:54:12.269 Justin Breshears: a time that we kicked around earlier today. We were talking about, like, when we would want our dashboard to update.
613 00:54:12.410 ⇒ 00:54:15.560 Justin Breshears: was, like, 8 o’clock Pacific, because…
614 00:54:16.130 ⇒ 00:54:24.510 Justin Breshears: Our delivery meeting is 10 o’clock Pacific, so if it’s done by 8 o’clock Pacific, then it’s done in time for us to review it in that meeting.
615 00:54:25.180 ⇒ 00:54:25.820 Alexander Lubka: Great.
616 00:54:26.480 ⇒ 00:54:27.470 Alexander Lubka: So…
617 00:54:27.670 ⇒ 00:54:35.029 Alexander Lubka: Rico will figure out a… if the automation is possible at Clockify, if not, identify some new time tracking tools to enable that feature so that
618 00:54:35.180 ⇒ 00:54:43.580 Alexander Lubka: you’re notified by 8am on Pacific time on Monday if we have compliance with 100% timesheet submission.
619 00:54:43.990 ⇒ 00:54:44.780 Alexander Lubka: Fair?
620 00:54:45.780 ⇒ 00:54:47.250 Uttam Kumaran: Yes. Yes.
621 00:54:47.310 ⇒ 00:54:49.909 Justin Breshears: We would also need a way to submit timesheets.
622 00:54:52.830 ⇒ 00:54:53.809 Alexander Lubka: Alright, Amber, good luck!
623 00:54:55.100 ⇒ 00:54:59.899 Justin Breshears: That’s really the only wrinkle to this, because I’m like, I’m looking at Clockify right now, and I’m like.
624 00:55:00.570 ⇒ 00:55:04.800 Justin Breshears: Yeah, there’s no… there’s no way to know whether my timesheet is done.
625 00:55:06.100 ⇒ 00:55:11.509 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, you’re basically just, like, You just type in the time and it’s done, but…
626 00:55:11.510 ⇒ 00:55:12.100 Justin Breshears: Yeah.
627 00:55:12.360 ⇒ 00:55:18.569 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, again, this is something that, like, if it’s not the right tool for the job, we can switch tools. It doesn’t… nothing…
628 00:55:18.800 ⇒ 00:55:25.000 Uttam Kumaran: is set in stone. I’d rather it’s just… whatever we choose, we just know it’s gonna last us at least a quarter.
629 00:55:25.380 ⇒ 00:55:26.099 Uttam Kumaran: Yes, sir.
630 00:55:26.100 ⇒ 00:55:29.430 Justin Breshears: We’ll… we’ll put this for now, and we’ll figure out the logistics of it.
631 00:55:29.430 ⇒ 00:55:30.120 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
632 00:55:30.610 ⇒ 00:55:31.270 Alexander Lubka: Okay.
633 00:55:33.280 ⇒ 00:55:37.580 Alexander Lubka: How do we track this one, that we’re in compliance with that?
634 00:55:38.090 ⇒ 00:55:47.590 Uttam Kumaran: So, this one, we are bringing in, slack messages into… reporting.
635 00:55:47.730 ⇒ 00:55:54.270 Uttam Kumaran: So basically, we’re gonna look to see that any non-BrainForge message
636 00:55:55.910 ⇒ 00:56:01.699 Uttam Kumaran: I mean, to start with, we’ll probably just look like, does anything have a question mark, and then was there a thread, and then most of the time?
637 00:56:02.380 ⇒ 00:56:03.330 Uttam Kumaran: Delta.
638 00:56:07.500 ⇒ 00:56:12.999 Justin Breshears: So that means the answer has to be in a thread. What if you answer, like, right, the leaf beneath it?
639 00:56:13.380 ⇒ 00:56:16.269 Uttam Kumaran: I guess we could do that too,
640 00:56:19.960 ⇒ 00:56:28.639 Uttam Kumaran: The other way is I could just say that, like, anytime there’s a client message, there is at least a thread or a channel message within 2 hours from a rainbow function.
641 00:56:29.450 ⇒ 00:56:30.040 Justin Breshears: Yup.
642 00:56:33.300 ⇒ 00:56:36.669 Uttam Kumaran: I think we try, I think we try this, see what happens.
643 00:56:37.190 ⇒ 00:56:37.760 Justin Breshears: Fair.
644 00:56:39.110 ⇒ 00:56:46.530 Alexander Lubka: So to track the response times in… for non-brief work messages in Slack, with… is that, like, with a report that you can pull?
645 00:56:47.640 ⇒ 00:56:53.129 Uttam Kumaran: No, we’ll do it outside of Slack. We’re pulling already a bunch of Slack messages for the AI team.
646 00:56:53.970 ⇒ 00:57:03.069 Uttam Kumaran: into Snowflake, so we already have… we already have these stored. Basically, for any of our teams, as long as you add the Brainforge bot to the channel.
647 00:57:03.210 ⇒ 00:57:05.149 Uttam Kumaran: We’ll start to store those messages.
648 00:57:06.670 ⇒ 00:57:14.430 Alexander Lubka: So, is this a report, Justin, that you would want, like, weekly, or how often… what’s the cadence, or how often would you want to review it?
649 00:57:16.790 ⇒ 00:57:18.810 Uttam Kumaran: We can just do it on Monday meetings, right?
650 00:57:19.140 ⇒ 00:57:21.179 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I think weekly’s good.
651 00:57:21.180 ⇒ 00:57:22.819 Justin Breshears: that fast. Yeah.
652 00:57:23.760 ⇒ 00:57:28.649 Uttam Kumaran: So on the Monday meetings, I’m basically going to try to give you the answers to each of these.
653 00:57:28.830 ⇒ 00:57:30.530 Justin Breshears: Yeah, that’s the idea.
654 00:57:30.530 ⇒ 00:57:31.680 Uttam Kumaran: In one view.
655 00:57:33.530 ⇒ 00:57:34.749 Justin Breshears: 3 would be good.
656 00:57:37.300 ⇒ 00:57:38.150 Alexander Lubka: Okay.
657 00:57:40.560 ⇒ 00:57:43.279 Justin Breshears: Same with that report, we can look and see, Billy.
658 00:57:44.250 ⇒ 00:57:45.240 Justin Breshears: report from later.
659 00:57:54.670 ⇒ 00:57:57.300 Alexander Lubka: So this is a Monday report, this is a Monday report.
660 00:57:59.460 ⇒ 00:58:00.240 Alexander Lubka: And…
661 00:58:00.240 ⇒ 00:58:00.900 Justin Breshears: Oh.
662 00:58:02.870 ⇒ 00:58:04.410 Alexander Lubka: This is a Monday report.
663 00:58:04.950 ⇒ 00:58:06.849 Justin Breshears: And the top two are monthly.
664 00:58:08.370 ⇒ 00:58:09.020 Alexander Lubka: Okay.
665 00:58:15.530 ⇒ 00:58:21.869 Alexander Lubka: Do you have a name? Is it called, like, a delivery report, or just a Monday report, or what are you calling it? I know it doesn’t exist yet, but…
666 00:58:22.980 ⇒ 00:58:26.360 Alexander Lubka: Is this gonna be, like, a delivery? Is this, like, your delivery meeting?
667 00:58:26.360 ⇒ 00:58:29.059 Justin Breshears: Did you just say Delivery OKR dashboard?
668 00:58:31.860 ⇒ 00:58:34.299 Justin Breshears: Oh, this is just gonna be my dashboard.
669 00:58:35.210 ⇒ 00:58:35.780 Alexander Lubka: Okay.
670 00:58:41.800 ⇒ 00:58:42.490 Alexander Lubka: Okay.
671 00:58:45.800 ⇒ 00:58:50.000 Alexander Lubka: Monthly, monthly, Monday, Monday, Monday, and then this sucker.
672 00:58:54.960 ⇒ 00:58:56.739 Justin Breshears: Our custom field ability.
673 00:58:56.970 ⇒ 00:59:02.249 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, you can just put the patents on up, and by the end of… by next Monday, I’ll tell you when it’s possible.
674 00:59:04.390 ⇒ 00:59:06.110 Uttam Kumaran: That one makes sense, finally.
675 00:59:08.620 ⇒ 00:59:13.580 Uttam Kumaran: I guess my question overall is, like, do we feel like if we achieved each of these.
676 00:59:14.350 ⇒ 00:59:19.450 Uttam Kumaran: We would be in, significantly… more positive.
677 00:59:19.730 ⇒ 00:59:20.840 Uttam Kumaran: Situation.
678 00:59:31.440 ⇒ 00:59:35.209 Alexander Lubka: I think… I think the first two, for sure.
679 00:59:36.180 ⇒ 00:59:42.089 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, like, I think the second one is, like, really, really… Probably the most important.
680 00:59:42.550 ⇒ 00:59:43.210 Alexander Lubka: Yeah.
681 00:59:43.350 ⇒ 00:59:44.539 Alexander Lubka: I like that one a lot.
682 00:59:46.590 ⇒ 00:59:52.829 Alexander Lubka: I wanna… I wanna be confident that they can manage… any PM can manage external projects.
683 00:59:53.030 ⇒ 00:59:56.519 Alexander Lubka: Earning current PM can manage external projects by the end of the year.
684 00:59:57.500 ⇒ 00:59:59.330 Alexander Lubka: Or if not, have a signal of that.
685 00:59:59.860 ⇒ 01:00:01.000 Alexander Lubka: And why not?
686 01:00:05.260 ⇒ 01:00:11.900 Justin Breshears: Yeah, I mean, as it goes to touch on everything that we’re trying to achieve. We’re trying to achieve margin, we’re trying to achieve less churn.
687 01:00:12.870 ⇒ 01:00:14.869 Justin Breshears: And call them reluctant to those, too.
688 01:00:18.100 ⇒ 01:00:18.810 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
689 01:00:20.470 ⇒ 01:00:21.110 Alexander Lubka: Yep.
690 01:00:21.920 ⇒ 01:00:27.540 Justin Breshears: I have seen that the nuts and bolts of PMA does directly lead to better client outcomes.
691 01:00:27.720 ⇒ 01:00:31.150 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so that’s why I’m fine with, I’m fine with that, and then…
692 01:00:31.550 ⇒ 01:00:39.519 Uttam Kumaran: I think for me, it’s also, like, establishing those standards, which allows me to go make sure, like, you guys have capacity to service.
693 01:00:40.410 ⇒ 01:00:48.789 Uttam Kumaran: Right, so if the standards are high enough, we’re like, look, we can only make, like, we have too many clients to serve this, okay, then it’s up to me to go figure that out.
694 01:00:49.990 ⇒ 01:00:50.559 Justin Breshears: For sure.
695 01:00:50.560 ⇒ 01:00:51.429 Uttam Kumaran: So, that’s what I…
696 01:00:51.430 ⇒ 01:00:56.300 Justin Breshears: It is about raising the bar of standards, for sure. That’s… That’s the goal here.
697 01:00:57.020 ⇒ 01:00:57.670 Alexander Lubka: Yep.
698 01:00:59.090 ⇒ 01:00:59.729 Justin Breshears: I’m good with these.
699 01:01:00.220 ⇒ 01:01:03.709 Alexander Lubka: I think this is great, this is important, this is important for that.
700 01:01:03.910 ⇒ 01:01:06.150 Alexander Lubka: For sure, with the issues we’re having.
701 01:01:07.240 ⇒ 01:01:08.500 Alexander Lubka: This is… yeah.
702 01:01:09.200 ⇒ 01:01:12.390 Alexander Lubka: Yeah, I like these. Amber, what do you think of these OKRs?
703 01:01:14.290 ⇒ 01:01:27.880 Amber Lin: Yeah, I can help with tracking with most of them, and then, I would also like to get some training and see how I can improve, because I do think, my projects need
704 01:01:28.380 ⇒ 01:01:32.659 Amber Lin: some help, maybe I’ll grab some time with Justin to see how I can improve them.
705 01:01:33.900 ⇒ 01:01:39.359 Justin Breshears: I think what we can do is just… we… we meet together weekly already, and…
706 01:01:39.830 ⇒ 01:01:44.270 Justin Breshears: We can just have a topic of the week, where we go over all the different
707 01:01:44.680 ⇒ 01:01:47.030 Justin Breshears: parts of… of DMing, and…
708 01:01:47.440 ⇒ 01:01:52.110 Justin Breshears: Talk about it, and train on it, and make sure that we’re all set up until we’ve run out of ideas.
709 01:01:52.710 ⇒ 01:01:53.580 Amber Lin: Okay.
710 01:01:53.800 ⇒ 01:01:56.869 Alexander Lubka: Is that… does those meetings include Ricoh, or that’s just a one-on-one you guys have?
711 01:01:57.180 ⇒ 01:01:58.699 Justin Breshears: No, it’s the three of us.
712 01:01:59.420 ⇒ 01:02:00.190 Alexander Lubka: Great.
713 01:02:01.500 ⇒ 01:02:03.290 Justin Breshears: We have them on Fridays right now, right?
714 01:02:03.620 ⇒ 01:02:16.489 Amber Lin: Yeah, and then we have daily placeholders for quick check-ins. We usually probably end up doing, like, 3 meetings per week, like the Monday meeting and one Wednesday and one Friday.
715 01:02:16.620 ⇒ 01:02:19.310 Amber Lin: But we do meet pretty frequently.
716 01:02:21.270 ⇒ 01:02:28.489 Alexander Lubka: You could do, like, what is it, CAPM? The PMI does a thing where, like, if you work certain hours, then you don’t have to do, like, the training.
717 01:02:28.720 ⇒ 01:02:34.430 Alexander Lubka: We could do that. If you get your cap bim, that’s a… satisfies that requirement.
718 01:02:34.790 ⇒ 01:02:44.269 Justin Breshears: Oh, totally. It would, because then you would know, like, all that stuff, and then the only, you know, thing to do then is tailor it to Brainforge-specific context.
719 01:02:44.270 ⇒ 01:02:47.330 Alexander Lubka: Yeah. Amber, alright, if you get your CAPM…
720 01:02:47.560 ⇒ 01:02:49.820 Alexander Lubka: This is satisfied on your… your end?
721 01:02:50.520 ⇒ 01:02:54.790 Amber Lin: I already did the training, and that’s why I took.
722 01:02:54.790 ⇒ 01:02:59.330 Alexander Lubka: Alright, just sit down for it. It’s like 60… what’s it, 60, 90 questions? How many questions is it?
723 01:03:02.470 ⇒ 01:03:04.690 Alexander Lubka: It’s like half of the PMP one, I think.
724 01:03:05.310 ⇒ 01:03:06.820 Alexander Lubka: It’s 90 questions?
725 01:03:07.330 ⇒ 01:03:11.890 Amber Lin: I think it’s, like, 120. The PMP is 180.
726 01:03:12.700 ⇒ 01:03:13.590 Amber Lin: Nope, good.
727 01:03:14.640 ⇒ 01:03:23.179 Justin Breshears: Google also has a really good project management course, very comprehensive one. I took that. It’s on Coursera, it’s like 30 bucks a month or something.
728 01:03:23.470 ⇒ 01:03:24.120 Uttam Kumaran: Hmm.
729 01:03:24.120 ⇒ 01:03:25.709 Justin Breshears: Knock that out, it’s really good.
730 01:03:27.510 ⇒ 01:03:31.620 Justin Breshears: That’s how I satisfied my education requirements for my PMP.
731 01:03:32.050 ⇒ 01:03:33.470 Amber Lin: Mmm, okay.
732 01:03:34.920 ⇒ 01:03:37.580 Alexander Lubka: Yeah, that’s a lot better. I went to a class, and it sucked.
733 01:03:38.910 ⇒ 01:03:39.630 Justin Breshears: Oh, yeah.
734 01:03:39.630 ⇒ 01:03:40.089 Alexander Lubka: So don’t do that.
735 01:03:40.090 ⇒ 01:03:45.979 Justin Breshears: I took, I took the Certified Scrum Master, Certified Scrum Product Owner, and did the Google course.
736 01:03:47.600 ⇒ 01:03:48.629 Alexander Lubka: That’s the way to do it.
737 01:03:49.310 ⇒ 01:03:53.170 Alexander Lubka: You don’t have to… you don’t have to do awkward… Sessions with randos.
738 01:03:53.980 ⇒ 01:04:01.170 Justin Breshears: Oh, I did that for the CSM and the CSPO. Those were, like, two-day workshops, like, all day, with, like, random people, yeah.
739 01:04:01.170 ⇒ 01:04:02.120 Alexander Lubka: You feel sorry?
740 01:04:04.360 ⇒ 01:04:07.999 Alexander Lubka: Alright guys, we’re all good with these OKRs for next quarter, we’re gonna kill it.
741 01:04:09.440 ⇒ 01:04:11.410 Justin Breshears: We are. It’s gonna be a good quarter.
742 01:04:11.410 ⇒ 01:04:16.360 Alexander Lubka: I feel good about it. I feel like we can… I’m really excited about the training stuff, I’m really excited about the timesheet stuff.
743 01:04:16.850 ⇒ 01:04:20.900 Alexander Lubka: I mean, the… getting back to clients, this is… it’s gonna be great.
744 01:04:21.260 ⇒ 01:04:21.930 Justin Breshears: 13.
745 01:04:22.580 ⇒ 01:04:23.550 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I feel good.
746 01:04:24.690 ⇒ 01:04:25.839 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, go ahead.
747 01:04:27.060 ⇒ 01:04:29.339 Justin Breshears: Wait, I could keep interrupting you, I’m sorry.
748 01:04:29.340 ⇒ 01:04:31.060 Uttam Kumaran: No, no, no, you’re fine, go ahead.
749 01:04:31.550 ⇒ 01:04:40.400 Justin Breshears: I was just gonna say, the only thing not, like, listed here that’s also, like, a top priority for me is documenting the whole project lifecycle into, like.
750 01:04:40.960 ⇒ 01:04:44.400 Justin Breshears: like, SOPs, you know, how-tos and stuff like that. That’s kind of…
751 01:04:44.690 ⇒ 01:04:47.230 Justin Breshears: Just an important side project for me.
752 01:04:48.740 ⇒ 01:05:05.509 Justin Breshears: That… and that’s more about, like, future onboarding more than anything, I would say. Because then, you know, we got Amber and Rico training up every week on those things. Cool. What happens if we double in size, and then we bring on another PM? You know, how do we get them up to speed on our standards?
753 01:05:05.940 ⇒ 01:05:09.059 Justin Breshears: So, it’s not important enough, I think, to…
754 01:05:09.290 ⇒ 01:05:15.379 Justin Breshears: put as an OKR, but I do want to have the entire project lifecycle, like, documented in my step-by-steps.
755 01:05:16.650 ⇒ 01:05:17.330 Alexander Lubka: Hell yeah.
756 01:05:18.550 ⇒ 01:05:18.910 Uttam Kumaran: That’s a…
757 01:05:18.910 ⇒ 01:05:21.429 Alexander Lubka: Justin OKR, not a PMO.
758 01:05:21.430 ⇒ 01:05:23.349 Justin Breshears: per… personal OKR.
759 01:05:25.010 ⇒ 01:05:31.899 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I also… I think the biggest thing for me is, like, we… I want to make… continue to make decisions on a weekly basis.
760 01:05:32.170 ⇒ 01:05:39.720 Uttam Kumaran: Like, I really don’t want us to have to wait until our next, like, monthly sync to find out that we were dying all month.
761 01:05:40.030 ⇒ 01:05:48.390 Uttam Kumaran: So, I re… you guys know me, like, I’m gonna push every meeting we have on a weekly basis, like, what decisions can we make?
762 01:05:48.510 ⇒ 01:05:51.170 Uttam Kumaran: And then, how do we know last week went well?
763 01:05:51.300 ⇒ 01:05:57.399 Uttam Kumaran: And so, that’s my clear thing, is to try to leverage these OKRs to make sure that on a weekly basis.
764 01:05:57.680 ⇒ 01:06:01.840 Uttam Kumaran: we’re heading in the right direction. Ideally, I think…
765 01:06:02.040 ⇒ 01:06:04.440 Uttam Kumaran: you know, speaking with Rico today.
766 01:06:05.010 ⇒ 01:06:09.430 Uttam Kumaran: he feels pretty good, and I think we both run operations and recruiting pretty lean.
767 01:06:09.550 ⇒ 01:06:12.460 Uttam Kumaran: So I think he has time for PMing.
768 01:06:12.590 ⇒ 01:06:16.480 Uttam Kumaran: I also think if we’re gonna sort of slow down on the AI stuff.
769 01:06:16.740 ⇒ 01:06:21.700 Uttam Kumaran: Then really, it’s up to him to just nail sales.
770 01:06:22.100 ⇒ 01:06:26.420 Uttam Kumaran: And sort of make sure that every… all that… those costs are allocated for.
771 01:06:26.640 ⇒ 01:06:28.970 Uttam Kumaran: And then ideally, you can also start to support
772 01:06:29.740 ⇒ 01:06:32.940 Uttam Kumaran: He could be confident enough to support our external clients.
773 01:06:33.320 ⇒ 01:06:36.380 Uttam Kumaran: That’ll buy us a little bit more time before having to
774 01:06:36.700 ⇒ 01:06:41.480 Uttam Kumaran: bring on additional support for this career, so that’s what I would like to see this quarter.
775 01:06:41.700 ⇒ 01:06:47.489 Uttam Kumaran: sales, we’re gonna… the sales cycle will start to slow down after mid-November.
776 01:06:47.780 ⇒ 01:06:51.870 Uttam Kumaran: So we’re continuing to sell as much as we can to kick off before then.
777 01:06:52.420 ⇒ 01:06:57.649 Uttam Kumaran: and so that’s… that’s what we’re focused on the sales side.
778 01:06:57.930 ⇒ 01:07:02.740 Uttam Kumaran: So, I feel pretty good about another few contracts closing here.
779 01:07:02.970 ⇒ 01:07:08.519 Uttam Kumaran: I know if we just start Channel 4, there’s gonna be a couple more that continue to go, so…
780 01:07:08.770 ⇒ 01:07:14.679 Uttam Kumaran: the main… and the biggest thing is that we don’t lose insomnia, we don’t lose Ellie,
781 01:07:16.070 ⇒ 01:07:19.720 Uttam Kumaran: we don’t… and we… we pressure for Remo and get the renewal, so…
782 01:07:20.500 ⇒ 01:07:31.640 Uttam Kumaran: Those are all just as big of a sales opportunity as a net new client. If we’re able to retain all of our clients this month, this quarter, we’re in a dope spot.
783 01:07:32.210 ⇒ 01:07:35.070 Uttam Kumaran: We’ll easily be over 100K a month.
784 01:07:35.210 ⇒ 01:07:36.599 Uttam Kumaran: Can be really positive.
785 01:07:37.530 ⇒ 01:07:39.019 Justin Breshears: Yeah, it’s a good milestone.
786 01:07:42.700 ⇒ 01:07:47.240 Alexander Lubka: Awesome. The last thing I wanted to do, I think this is more like an amber-heavy thing.
787 01:07:47.820 ⇒ 01:07:50.210 Alexander Lubka: is I wanted to figure out…
788 01:07:50.750 ⇒ 01:08:02.350 Alexander Lubka: what the delta is between what we put together in June To what is actually… happening on the ground.
789 01:08:02.900 ⇒ 01:08:07.650 Amber Lin: In terms of rituals getting implemented, or…
790 01:08:07.650 ⇒ 01:08:08.540 Alexander Lubka: The whole thing.
791 01:08:13.630 ⇒ 01:08:19.069 Alexander Lubka: like… Are we… All our meetings have agendas.
792 01:08:19.330 ⇒ 01:08:25.690 Alexander Lubka: Are people going on time? Like, all this stuff. I want to know… we put this in for this quarter.
793 01:08:25.979 ⇒ 01:08:27.130 Alexander Lubka: I wanna…
794 01:08:27.340 ⇒ 01:08:36.219 Alexander Lubka: want to know what of this is sticking, what is not, and how Justin and I can build up top of it, because I think this… I think this could feed into, like.
795 01:08:36.270 ⇒ 01:08:47.819 Alexander Lubka: what Justin’s trying to do, of just, like, documenting every phase of the project lifecycle. I mean, you could do your own thing, of course, but I think this is a good place to start, especially if we know what the current state is.
796 01:08:49.930 ⇒ 01:08:59.529 Alexander Lubka: I mean, so, like, if we… you want to spend, like, a couple minutes on doing it now, that’s fine, and if you want to take it as an action item, Amber, to just, like, confirm, because I think you have the best…
797 01:08:59.830 ⇒ 01:09:02.089 Alexander Lubka: Analysis of that.
798 01:09:02.630 ⇒ 01:09:10.030 Alexander Lubka: But, like, I want to know, are we, like, you know, are we doing all this stuff? Or if we’re not, or is it, like, no… are some of these things in here, like, redundant?
799 01:09:10.240 ⇒ 01:09:16.820 Alexander Lubka: that we had in here in June? Are some of these things, like, we don’t need to do? Are some of these things not working that we are doing?
800 01:09:17.010 ⇒ 01:09:21.050 Alexander Lubka: That’s what I kind of want. I want to know the current state after we had this for a quarter.
801 01:09:23.580 ⇒ 01:09:33.610 Amber Lin: Okay, I think it’s better as the action item. I’ll go through and give you a current state. I just don’t think I can answer all of these things on this meeting and take too much time.
802 01:09:33.789 ⇒ 01:09:34.649 Alexander Lubka: Okay.
803 01:09:36.609 ⇒ 01:09:38.009 Justin Breshears: We can follow up on that.
804 01:09:38.819 ⇒ 01:09:42.969 Amber Lin: What’s a good deadline for that? When are we meeting next?
805 01:09:43.410 ⇒ 01:09:44.910 Alexander Lubka: Monday, next Monday?
806 01:09:46.160 ⇒ 01:09:47.360 Amber Lin: Sounds good.
807 01:09:47.590 ⇒ 01:09:48.380 Alexander Lubka: Thank you.
808 01:09:52.640 ⇒ 01:09:54.550 Justin Breshears: How was I can play? Anybody else for today?
809 01:09:55.840 ⇒ 01:09:57.629 Alexander Lubka: That’s all I got. Is anybody anything?
810 01:09:59.840 ⇒ 01:10:02.089 Uttam Kumaran: I think I’m good. So yeah,
811 01:10:02.330 ⇒ 01:10:04.169 Uttam Kumaran: I think I’ll send the message.
812 01:10:04.290 ⇒ 01:10:08.089 Uttam Kumaran: Once we lock this in, I’ll sort of probably send a startup quarter message.
813 01:10:08.380 ⇒ 01:10:14.549 Uttam Kumaran: To the team, just with decisions from this team. We’re confirming OKRs across engineering as well.
814 01:10:14.940 ⇒ 01:10:19.300 Uttam Kumaran: so yeah, I think, it’s all good for me.
815 01:10:20.310 ⇒ 01:10:22.730 Justin Breshears: Remember the rah-rah at the beginning of the quarter.
816 01:10:23.160 ⇒ 01:10:23.980 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
817 01:10:24.660 ⇒ 01:10:25.230 Alexander Lubka: Hmm.
818 01:10:26.980 ⇒ 01:10:28.640 Justin Breshears: Exciting. It’s gonna be a good quarter.
819 01:10:28.880 ⇒ 01:10:30.499 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, good stuff going.
820 01:10:31.060 ⇒ 01:10:32.580 Alexander Lubka: Hell yeah, that’s great.
821 01:10:33.520 ⇒ 01:10:38.799 Alexander Lubka: Cool, well, thanks for some extra time, guys, appreciate it. And, yeah, I… feeling good.
822 01:10:39.950 ⇒ 01:10:40.790 Justin Breshears: Thanks, everybody.
823 01:10:40.790 ⇒ 01:10:42.390 Uttam Kumaran: Anyways, have a good one, thank you.
824 01:10:43.240 ⇒ 01:10:44.110 Uttam Kumaran: Bye.