Meeting Title: Resourcing and planning across Data-Fullstack Date: 2025-12-03 Meeting participants: Awaish Kumar, Uttam Kumaran, Clarence Stone
WEBVTT
1 00:06:48.800 ⇒ 00:06:51.179 Uttam Kumaran: Anyway, sorry, I just finished, interview.
2 00:06:53.730 ⇒ 00:06:55.020 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, hello.
3 00:06:58.090 ⇒ 00:07:01.889 Awaish Kumar: You’re having an interview with… What’s, engineer, or…
4 00:07:02.170 ⇒ 00:07:06.970 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, engineer, venkata Prasad.
5 00:07:07.480 ⇒ 00:07:12.370 Uttam Kumaran: He’s, he’s interested in marketing, Product analytics.
6 00:07:14.650 ⇒ 00:07:15.370 Awaish Kumar: Okay.
7 00:07:15.370 ⇒ 00:07:19.040 Uttam Kumaran: So I’ll have you chat with him, and then I’ll maybe have him chat with,
8 00:07:19.960 ⇒ 00:07:22.320 Uttam Kumaran: Maybe with Amber.
9 00:07:26.400 ⇒ 00:07:32.760 Uttam Kumaran: And then, byron said he’s just gonna be a few… minutes behind.
10 00:07:34.210 ⇒ 00:07:34.880 Awaish Kumar: Okay.
11 00:09:12.110 ⇒ 00:09:16.219 Awaish Kumar: Like, are you able to see multiple time zones in the Google Calendar?
12 00:09:17.840 ⇒ 00:09:22.280 Uttam Kumaran: So let me show you. You should actually use this app if you want.
13 00:09:22.460 ⇒ 00:09:24.209 Uttam Kumaran: I use this app called VimCal.
14 00:09:24.670 ⇒ 00:09:26.600 Uttam Kumaran: So I have 5 time zones here.
15 00:09:26.900 ⇒ 00:09:27.570 Awaish Kumar: Hold on.
16 00:09:27.950 ⇒ 00:09:28.630 Awaish Kumar: What do I…
17 00:09:28.630 ⇒ 00:09:30.140 Uttam Kumaran: get this, I can invite you.
18 00:09:30.340 ⇒ 00:09:36.810 Awaish Kumar: Okay, yeah, I would love to. I just… I just saw the settings in Google Calendar, it can only…
19 00:09:37.100 ⇒ 00:09:37.920 Awaish Kumar: Have a selected.
20 00:09:37.920 ⇒ 00:09:38.640 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
21 00:09:38.640 ⇒ 00:09:39.440 Awaish Kumar: Results.
22 00:09:40.200 ⇒ 00:09:44.140 Uttam Kumaran: I’m gonna, I’ll add you to this. Let me also,
23 00:09:48.820 ⇒ 00:09:52.840 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, let me actually send, yeah, okay.
24 00:10:04.200 ⇒ 00:10:06.550 Uttam Kumaran: Hold on my dog, just… let’s go outside.
25 00:10:19.430 ⇒ 00:10:21.459 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, this app is really good, so…
26 00:10:24.010 ⇒ 00:10:26.250 Uttam Kumaran: I think Amber uses it? Not sure.
27 00:10:28.600 ⇒ 00:10:29.240 Awaish Kumar: Okay.
28 00:17:18.930 ⇒ 00:17:20.260 Clarence Stone: Hey, sorry I’m late.
29 00:17:21.540 ⇒ 00:17:22.430 Uttam Kumaran: All good
30 00:17:30.110 ⇒ 00:17:32.390 Uttam Kumaran: Nice! Okay, so I think…
31 00:17:32.800 ⇒ 00:17:36.999 Uttam Kumaran: you know, I feel like we’re gonna have a bunch of these calls, but I think… I feel like…
32 00:17:37.440 ⇒ 00:17:41.279 Uttam Kumaran: To try to set the stage.
33 00:17:41.380 ⇒ 00:17:45.509 Uttam Kumaran: I feel like, you know, we have several types of, like.
34 00:17:45.640 ⇒ 00:17:54.709 Uttam Kumaran: you know, service areas, one of which is, highlighting around data warehousing, data modeling, and BI.
35 00:17:56.240 ⇒ 00:18:12.209 Uttam Kumaran: I… there’s also sort of strategy analysis. I think Awash is probably the most senior, you know, person, has been really helping me run the data engineering, data modeling, data infrastructure.
36 00:18:12.710 ⇒ 00:18:23.349 Uttam Kumaran: you know, work stream. And I think we’re at a point where we kind of, like, just want to think about… I think, Clarence, this is helpful for us to think about, like, what is it
37 00:18:23.480 ⇒ 00:18:26.680 Uttam Kumaran: What does it take to run one of these
38 00:18:27.110 ⇒ 00:18:32.540 Uttam Kumaran: service areas, and I think for us to have a conversation about, like.
39 00:18:32.970 ⇒ 00:18:37.850 Uttam Kumaran: How we’re all… how we’re thinking about resourcing, who we have right now, who we don’t.
40 00:18:38.060 ⇒ 00:18:41.950 Uttam Kumaran: We can tackle it from many different ways. We can talk about it, like.
41 00:18:42.440 ⇒ 00:18:56.360 Uttam Kumaran: from the client’s perspective, from our perspective, we can also look at, like, hey, these are the clients we have who are leveraging the service, and here are the people that are doing it. I do want to take advantage of you, Clarence, being new to this, to, like.
42 00:18:57.190 ⇒ 00:19:00.470 Uttam Kumaran: to ask, like, questions, and so I may…
43 00:19:00.860 ⇒ 00:19:04.709 Uttam Kumaran: like, have you try to drive, because otherwise, like, I…
44 00:19:04.830 ⇒ 00:19:07.849 Uttam Kumaran: I have… I have a thought in my head on, like.
45 00:19:08.380 ⇒ 00:19:25.489 Uttam Kumaran: how to do this, but again, like, I think you being new allows us to sort of maybe think about things in a new way. You also are… are seeing, and maybe one thing you can explain to Awash is our concept of the 11-8 stand, and how maybe we can leverage that analogy more, even in this conversation.
46 00:19:25.760 ⇒ 00:19:28.209 Uttam Kumaran: But yeah, just me’s kind of setting the stage there.
47 00:19:29.210 ⇒ 00:19:37.979 Clarence Stone: Sure, yeah, so, Wish, great to meet you, seen you in many meetings. Let me, okay, so…
48 00:19:39.320 ⇒ 00:19:43.260 Clarence Stone: I guess I’ll start off with sharing with you our…
49 00:19:43.260 ⇒ 00:20:07.019 Clarence Stone: our working concepts. So this isn’t, like, concrete, but really just a better way to explain the type of scaling that’s, you know, that’s coming up ahead, and position the kind of transformation that needs to happen, right? So give me one second, I’m gonna share my slide. And then, like, related to this, I would love to hear from your side, right, what’s been working, and what
50 00:20:07.020 ⇒ 00:20:16.530 Clarence Stone: doesn’t work, and, you know, where we can find some improvements. So, kind of think on that while I do this presentation, so we can kind of bifurcate, you know.
51 00:20:16.740 ⇒ 00:20:34.830 Clarence Stone: topics. So, really quickly, I wanted to find a more simpler way to explain the kind of, like, growth and scaling happening in this organization with the rest of the team, and we’re still working on refining this concept. But imagine that you, Tom, and Robert
52 00:20:34.830 ⇒ 00:20:48.780 Clarence Stone: decided, hey, there’s a lot of market demand, right? We have the right experience, and we know that people would really like a lemonade stand. So they take the risk, and they start a lemonade stand, they start selling lemonade, and it works out really well.
53 00:20:48.940 ⇒ 00:21:06.169 Clarence Stone: Right? And what happens now, and this is where you are today, the lemonade stand works so well that they started selling cookies, they started selling donuts, they’re starting to sell coffee, matcha, all those amazing things, and in order to make sure that all of those, you know, things are being made and given to customers.
54 00:21:06.440 ⇒ 00:21:08.620 Clarence Stone: You guys have, like.
55 00:21:08.950 ⇒ 00:21:18.860 Clarence Stone: competency meetings and competency leads, right? So everyone making lemonade or doing data work has a data lead that’s running the dailies, and
56 00:21:18.990 ⇒ 00:21:37.020 Clarence Stone: Utam and Robert are still watching over the entire business as a whole, right? There are these pieces that, you know, are starting to, you know, take leadership and form of, like, like you, right? Taking lead of a lot of the technical pieces. You’re right here watching over the production of anything that’s lemonade, right?
57 00:21:37.020 ⇒ 00:21:39.540 Clarence Stone: What we do need to happen, though, is
58 00:21:39.540 ⇒ 00:22:04.449 Clarence Stone: If Utam and Robert spend their time on watching this lemonade stand too, they’re gonna miss out on opportunities to expand the business. They’re gonna miss out on the kind of time they need to see what new sectors and opportunities are available, right? So… and they’re gonna miss out on time to actually talk with you guys one-on-one and develop your skills and share what they know, right? Because they’re just really stuck trying to operate this lemonade stand.
59 00:22:04.450 ⇒ 00:22:28.510 Clarence Stone: So the transformation that we’re looking for is to find more leaders to own this lemonade stand. And the good news here, Awash, is that, like, Utam and Robert have been doing this for a while now. They’ve got the experience to solve a lot of the problems that you might experience, or whoever’s going to take over this lead might experience, right? So you’re not going into it blind, the kind of, you know, challenges and risks ahead are
60 00:22:28.510 ⇒ 00:22:42.860 Clarence Stone: are a lot easier because you’ve got people in the organization who have the skills to do it. And in turn, Utam and Robert might be able to start new service lines, new opportunities, or new client engagements, or different types of engagements, so that,
61 00:22:42.860 ⇒ 00:22:55.940 Clarence Stone: you know, the business grows, and then you can make even more leaders, right? So, let me just pause there and ask, like, does that make sense? Is, like, this transition from here to here, make sense to you, and why we’re doing it?
62 00:22:56.900 ⇒ 00:22:58.520 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, yeah, it does make sense.
63 00:22:59.140 ⇒ 00:22:59.880 Clarence Stone: Right
64 00:22:59.880 ⇒ 00:23:23.659 Clarence Stone: So, in this context, you’ve been spending a lot of time as an awesome lead, you know, kind of running those stand-ups, and I think our topic right now is to talk about resourcing and competencies. So, from your standpoint, how’s that experience been? What’s working well? What hasn’t been working? And then we can try to, you know, apply it to this analogy if we need to solve a deep problem, but, you know, this is just a framework to kind of
65 00:23:24.020 ⇒ 00:23:25.339 Clarence Stone: Have in the back of your mind.
66 00:23:26.830 ⇒ 00:23:37.770 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, so… In my experience, what… Like, the projects where… I’ve been involved…
67 00:23:38.720 ⇒ 00:23:44.599 Awaish Kumar: In, like, actively, where you see, basically, everything was happening.
68 00:23:44.750 ⇒ 00:23:47.670 Awaish Kumar: You have more visibility.
69 00:23:48.020 ⇒ 00:23:54.550 Awaish Kumar: But then, like, on some of the clients where you’re not directly working, so… like…
70 00:23:55.370 ⇒ 00:24:00.239 Awaish Kumar: Maybe, like, just come in for some engagement, and then just,
71 00:24:00.770 ⇒ 00:24:11.620 Awaish Kumar: help there, and just, like, then move forward. And those pieces, like, I would say I lack the visibility into what’s going on in other clients, and…
72 00:24:12.130 ⇒ 00:24:37.029 Clarence Stone: Let’s actually refine that thought, right? So tell me more about the visibility that you lack. Like, I think in your scenario, you’re saying something like, hey, I’m getting dropped into, you know, another, you know, project or engagement to just do one small piece, right? Maybe they’re stuck on a data flow issue, and they ask, hey, OH, can you help us out, right? What kind of context do you get when that ask goes to you? Like, do you under… like, did they give you a summary of the objectives of the
73 00:24:37.030 ⇒ 00:24:46.250 Clarence Stone: project, the why on why the client needs it, and what on what you need to build, and then kind of let you do it? Or, like, what about this transition process is kind of
74 00:24:46.300 ⇒ 00:24:48.460 Clarence Stone: You know, lacking the fidelity.
75 00:24:49.120 ⇒ 00:24:51.600 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, like, in what, like…
76 00:24:52.450 ⇒ 00:25:01.229 Awaish Kumar: I would say I pretty much get involved in all the data work which goes on, but, like, I…
77 00:25:01.630 ⇒ 00:25:10.510 Awaish Kumar: not every time I have the full contact, like, for the clients where I’m actively involved, like Aiden, Urban Sims, Hedra, where I spend a lot of time.
78 00:25:10.630 ⇒ 00:25:16.869 Awaish Kumar: So you know the full picture, what’s going on, and, like, for example.
79 00:25:17.740 ⇒ 00:25:22.049 Awaish Kumar: For some of the clients, you just ping, like, I need help with this.
80 00:25:22.340 ⇒ 00:25:31.249 Awaish Kumar: Getting the access for this data, or putting it into warehouse, and things like that, and you do it, and yeah, then, you know…
81 00:25:32.090 ⇒ 00:25:35.179 Awaish Kumar: How do you follow, like, the picture? What’s… what’s…
82 00:25:36.630 ⇒ 00:25:42.900 Awaish Kumar: what went wrong there, like, if something happened after that, and it got dropped.
83 00:25:43.040 ⇒ 00:25:47.999 Awaish Kumar: So, I don’t know what happened, and I just get pinged when things fall.
84 00:25:48.860 ⇒ 00:25:50.370 Awaish Kumar: It has happened.
85 00:25:50.920 ⇒ 00:26:07.510 Clarence Stone: Yeah, so what I’m hearing is that for the engagements that you’re doing a lot of work on, you have a lot of good context, because, you know, you’re getting the context, or the backstory, or the history of this project from somewhere, right? So I think what I want to learn from you is.
86 00:26:07.510 ⇒ 00:26:24.019 Clarence Stone: Why is your understanding, and how is your understanding better on certain projects versus others? And is there somebody who’s leading you and giving you that information? Are you just, you know, seeing better documentation around these projects? Like, what makes it so that, you know.
87 00:26:24.020 ⇒ 00:26:25.750 Awaish Kumar: It was just more engagement?
88 00:26:25.970 ⇒ 00:26:27.169 Awaish Kumar: Thank you, I did.
89 00:26:27.530 ⇒ 00:26:34.229 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, like, I get to spend, for example, 20 hours on… per week on a client I have, and then the continuous
90 00:26:34.470 ⇒ 00:26:40.370 Awaish Kumar: engagement, like, I’m working on that piece, like,
91 00:26:40.470 ⇒ 00:26:48.850 Awaish Kumar: in the month, so I… and I’m continuing to work on that, so if something is going wrong, you hear it somewhere in the stand-up, in a meeting, and…
92 00:26:49.000 ⇒ 00:26:51.050 Awaish Kumar: Somewhere, and then you just know
93 00:26:51.300 ⇒ 00:26:54.160 Awaish Kumar: And maybe you can course-correct things.
94 00:26:54.330 ⇒ 00:27:05.679 Awaish Kumar: But sometimes, when you’re not actually involved, or maybe if you’re not part of the client meetings, or things like that. So what… they talked in the meetings, so I don’t know, so…
95 00:27:07.170 ⇒ 00:27:09.569 Clarence Stone: Have you,
96 00:27:10.080 ⇒ 00:27:18.329 Clarence Stone: tried using the portal and the meeting chat tools. I’m just wondering, you know, how well that works as well into this workflow for you.
97 00:27:19.790 ⇒ 00:27:23.650 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, I have tried that, but, like, I’ve been also involved…
98 00:27:23.990 ⇒ 00:27:27.160 Awaish Kumar: Like, doing hands-on stuff, so, like…
99 00:27:27.740 ⇒ 00:27:36.589 Awaish Kumar: I have been not going into the… those… like, I have used those to, like, go on, and if I know some…
100 00:27:37.180 ⇒ 00:27:44.159 Awaish Kumar: we talk about something in a meeting, then I just go there and I can use this transcript or utilize the chat.
101 00:27:44.330 ⇒ 00:27:50.049 Awaish Kumar: to ask questions and get the context, but yeah, sometimes… but not all the time, like, I…
102 00:27:50.230 ⇒ 00:27:55.310 Awaish Kumar: Like, every day you get the context of what’s going on in what… in those clients.
103 00:27:55.810 ⇒ 00:28:02.110 Awaish Kumar: That piece is, like, yeah, I wasn’t able to… Like, maintain that.
104 00:28:03.990 ⇒ 00:28:26.199 Clarence Stone: Yeah, so let me bring up one more visualization for you, just to check if I’m understanding what you’re saying, correctly. So what you’re saying is, hey, you’ve got, let’s just say, this green box is in data, right? Like, you’ve got a really good understanding of all the things that are happening in data, because you hear it on a stand-up, maybe you hear there’s some challenges on some clients here on these data calls.
105 00:28:26.200 ⇒ 00:28:34.399 Clarence Stone: But you’re not getting the full history of that client, or what’s happening in that meeting, because, you know, you’re not really getting this vertical view of
106 00:28:34.400 ⇒ 00:28:44.119 Clarence Stone: hey, let’s say this is a client. What all happened from the start to end, right? You’re not getting that story, right? You’re just getting your slice of information from data, is that correct?
107 00:28:45.730 ⇒ 00:28:56.800 Awaish Kumar: Yes, but also the… the client… To client basis, like, So… like…
108 00:28:57.040 ⇒ 00:29:03.009 Awaish Kumar: For example, if you… if we take an example of insomnia or something, some client, where I…
109 00:29:03.120 ⇒ 00:29:06.980 Awaish Kumar: got partly engaged, like, if some…
110 00:29:07.220 ⇒ 00:29:22.640 Awaish Kumar: team needed help with ingestion, I got in, get, like, help with the data ingestion, bring in the data at the warehouse, and that’s all. And then, like, projects started moving, and then I just got engaged in another service, so I don’t know then what happened.
111 00:29:22.960 ⇒ 00:29:25.490 Awaish Kumar: And that’s, like, in that line, so…
112 00:29:25.490 ⇒ 00:29:33.559 Clarence Stone: Yeah, yeah. So you do your piece, and you don’t know what happens after, so you don’t know how the whole picture is put together, right? Is that what you’re saying?
113 00:29:33.560 ⇒ 00:29:34.110 Awaish Kumar: Yeah.
114 00:29:34.580 ⇒ 00:29:38.089 Clarence Stone: Okay, that makes total sense. So…
115 00:29:38.540 ⇒ 00:29:51.579 Clarence Stone: I would love to hear your thoughts on how you would fix that. Like, what would you want to see? What kind of, you know, meetings or support, or people, or tools, or knowledge could help you out?
116 00:29:53.540 ⇒ 00:29:54.400 Awaish Kumar: Yeah.
117 00:29:56.390 ⇒ 00:29:58.609 Clarence Stone: How would you do it if you could do however you want?
118 00:30:00.730 ⇒ 00:30:11.420 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, like, I… like, I don’t think I can be part of all the meetings for all the clients, so that’s not practical, but I think I can utilize the platform more.
119 00:30:13.550 ⇒ 00:30:17.379 Awaish Kumar: Like, maybe it can give me context on, like, what happened…
120 00:30:17.880 ⇒ 00:30:23.849 Awaish Kumar: This week, on this client, and what we finished, what we worked on, What would it?
121 00:30:24.030 ⇒ 00:30:31.300 Awaish Kumar: deliverables, and dealing with the deadlines, and things like that. If I can extract this information from the platform.
122 00:30:31.620 ⇒ 00:30:33.370 Awaish Kumar: Then I can have some.
123 00:30:33.920 ⇒ 00:30:40.009 Awaish Kumar: Picture in front of me, to maybe talk… talk to the team in the stand-ups, or… Things like that.
124 00:30:44.140 ⇒ 00:30:49.259 Clarence Stone: Got it, interesting. So, so tell me, tell me more about how that would work.
125 00:30:50.980 ⇒ 00:30:51.980 Awaish Kumar: Oh…
126 00:30:55.840 ⇒ 00:30:59.430 Awaish Kumar: Like, for example,
127 00:30:59.570 ⇒ 00:31:08.440 Awaish Kumar: In the, like, maybe in a week, we had, like, 10 meetings for our clients, including stand-ups and external client meetings.
128 00:31:08.670 ⇒ 00:31:13.489 Awaish Kumar: And if I can… if our platform can generate a summary, like.
129 00:31:13.900 ⇒ 00:31:17.450 Awaish Kumar: Of those talks, what happened, what we talked about.
130 00:31:17.860 ⇒ 00:31:20.849 Awaish Kumar: What were the action items, and…
131 00:31:21.280 ⇒ 00:31:29.190 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, things like that. Maybe we can connect linear? Were all of those translated into tickets or not, or things like that?
132 00:31:29.600 ⇒ 00:31:33.890 Clarence Stone: Yep, yep. I think we’re on the same wavelength.
133 00:31:35.040 ⇒ 00:31:41.619 Clarence Stone: So, Utam, I just want to be clear on what your objectives are for this meeting. Like, you wanted to talk about resource planning as well?
134 00:31:42.870 ⇒ 00:31:45.929 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I mean, I guess I see, like.
135 00:31:46.800 ⇒ 00:31:49.039 Uttam Kumaran: If we just want to talk about
136 00:31:49.210 ⇒ 00:32:07.050 Uttam Kumaran: Oasis purview, which is everything around data engineering and data modeling and, like, data infrastructure. I want to hear from… I want to hear, like, what… like, what resourcing looks like if we consider that as a service line, right? And Oasis, like, one of the key…
137 00:32:07.290 ⇒ 00:32:08.520 Uttam Kumaran: people that…
138 00:32:08.650 ⇒ 00:32:16.229 Uttam Kumaran: touches everything around those kind of types of functional things we do for clients. And what you’re hearing more is, like.
139 00:32:16.730 ⇒ 00:32:22.259 Uttam Kumaran: about how, like, what Oasia’s day-to-day looks like, but I guess I’m more interested in, like.
140 00:32:22.980 ⇒ 00:32:35.120 Uttam Kumaran: okay, are we happy with the fact that we’re running, like, a daily meeting? Are we hap… are we missing key roles in the team? Like, we just added Ashwini, who I think has been really helpful.
141 00:32:35.340 ⇒ 00:32:38.389 Uttam Kumaran: like, I’m trying to just understand if we just talk about that
142 00:32:38.580 ⇒ 00:32:48.740 Uttam Kumaran: service, which is, like, data infrastructure. You know, like, what… and that way, that may set the stage for looking at every other service that we do. But every other service
143 00:32:49.270 ⇒ 00:33:01.859 Uttam Kumaran: you know, we don’t have this level of maturity, and not only in the fact that, like, I have a ton of background in this world, so does Awash, but this is our most staffed area in the company.
144 00:33:03.800 ⇒ 00:33:05.990 Clarence Stone: Okay, perfect. So,
145 00:33:06.290 ⇒ 00:33:24.570 Clarence Stone: I don’t want to start solutioning with you. I think I get you on what you mean, though. Like, you would want a single place to get a full diagnostic and project summary, right, and a quick update on what’s been happening, and then if you finish up your piece on it, you want to go back to see how it ended, right?
146 00:33:24.570 ⇒ 00:33:28.990 Clarence Stone: So you want to know about, you know, a client’s journey and the deliverable.
147 00:33:29.070 ⇒ 00:33:43.429 Clarence Stone: Absolutely got it. So, so definitely a great highlight on a process challenge for you. So, let’s shift to people challenges, right? Imagine that, you know, like, what we want in the future is for you to be able to
148 00:33:43.470 ⇒ 00:33:52.019 Clarence Stone: You know, get a data, you know, work item, right, or a project, and be able to deliver that end-to-end
149 00:33:52.080 ⇒ 00:34:03.789 Clarence Stone: on your own, without support from Robert or Ecom, unless, you know, you can always ask questions, right? But I’m saying, like, you know, you’re gonna lead the full, you know, build-out of a data solution.
150 00:34:03.940 ⇒ 00:34:14.570 Clarence Stone: how does that change your perspective on the people that you have today in terms of resourcing, is sort of the question we want to explore. Do you have enough people if you had to do it?
151 00:34:16.980 ⇒ 00:34:20.360 Awaish Kumar: Like, right now, with the con…
152 00:34:21.320 ⇒ 00:34:26.450 Awaish Kumar: with the clients we’re working on, I think we do have enough people
153 00:34:28.409 ⇒ 00:34:33.330 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, but, like, I… like, I shared a, like, kind of…
154 00:34:33.949 ⇒ 00:34:38.259 Awaish Kumar: A screenshot in this, chat, in this meeting.
155 00:34:38.380 ⇒ 00:34:46.919 Awaish Kumar: So, like, I don’t know if operating can have similar kind of view, but if we could have, like, this view, which can give us more…
156 00:34:47.060 ⇒ 00:34:52.660 Awaish Kumar: visibility, like, for the… we can have, like… for Aiden, I need 10 hours of data engineering work.
157 00:34:52.860 ⇒ 00:35:04.710 Awaish Kumar: 5 hours are covered by me, and 5 are covered by Ashwini, so we know, like, okay, and we are, like, we have more 35 plus 35 hours of DE time.
158 00:35:05.010 ⇒ 00:35:12.970 Awaish Kumar: to spend on some of the clients. Similarly, on client Aiden, we have data analytics, we need 10 hours, and…
159 00:35:13.200 ⇒ 00:35:16.989 Awaish Kumar: Person ABC is spending those 10 hours a week here.
160 00:35:17.090 ⇒ 00:35:21.330 Awaish Kumar: So… That’s, like, we do…
161 00:35:21.330 ⇒ 00:35:35.609 Clarence Stone: work projects, the products that kind of break that down so we can take a look at, you know, existing resourcing and then current workload, because UTAM, then we can project out, let’s just say, you know, 20-30% padding on that, so you have some growth room.
162 00:35:35.720 ⇒ 00:35:44.550 Clarence Stone: On those hours, and then we can, you know, back-calculate, you know, how many hours you’re gonna need as a demand for the next, you know, quarter or two, at least.
163 00:35:45.220 ⇒ 00:35:51.125 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so we use this tool called Operating for all of our, like, resource… .
164 00:35:51.840 ⇒ 00:35:54.929 Clarence Stone: I can’t decide if I like it or not.
165 00:35:54.930 ⇒ 00:36:07.430 Uttam Kumaran: I mean, I don’t like doing… I don’t like any of this. I, I… the reason why… I mean, these guys are ex-consultants, and they’re layering on a lot.
166 00:36:07.560 ⇒ 00:36:15.720 Uttam Kumaran: I think, ultimately, like, there… I don’t know another tool that could do this. I know, like, people tend to do this in Anaplan or other stuff, like, I just don’t…
167 00:36:15.890 ⇒ 00:36:19.360 Uttam Kumaran: this is, like, what I found works, and, like, we know these guys, so…
168 00:36:20.940 ⇒ 00:36:31.550 Uttam Kumaran: whatever. But, like, this is basically what we use for all of our planning. But again, like, right now, I’m leading this, and, like, you can tell we haven’t… we didn’t do…
169 00:36:31.680 ⇒ 00:36:44.289 Uttam Kumaran: we didn’t… we haven’t planned December yet, we just got jammed the last 3 weeks, so we didn’t plan out December, but this should give you a good view of the last 3 months of, like, planning that we did,
170 00:36:44.790 ⇒ 00:36:46.490 Uttam Kumaran: You know, which is…
171 00:36:47.720 ⇒ 00:36:53.759 Uttam Kumaran: You know, which should show you, like, how everybody’s allocated to what project. So you can see these are, like, clients.
172 00:36:53.890 ⇒ 00:37:06.120 Uttam Kumaran: And then you can see, like, who’s allocated per client, and here you can see the people allocation. So Wish, for example, you can see, okay, there’s Eden’s second deal, there’s Ipe’s first deal, there’s…
173 00:37:06.320 ⇒ 00:37:08.360 Uttam Kumaran: So, like, everything is kind of in here.
174 00:37:08.680 ⇒ 00:37:10.140 Uttam Kumaran: You know…
175 00:37:15.420 ⇒ 00:37:20.930 Clarence Stone: Okay, and, and… Based on this, Awash?
176 00:37:21.400 ⇒ 00:37:23.989 Clarence Stone: How comfortable are you with your staffing?
177 00:37:26.840 ⇒ 00:37:29.440 Clarence Stone: I’m trying to slice through this too, this is interesting.
178 00:37:29.610 ⇒ 00:37:34.090 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I’ll… it’s just gonna take a sec to probably go through. I’ll make… oh, you’re in here? Okay, good.
179 00:37:37.700 ⇒ 00:37:43.180 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I, you go, Wish. You go first.
180 00:37:44.490 ⇒ 00:37:53.070 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, like, I don’t know, I… I’ve seen this before, but, like,
181 00:37:54.800 ⇒ 00:38:02.490 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, like, the view, maybe it’s just the… how you visualize it, kind of, like,
182 00:38:04.470 ⇒ 00:38:13.450 Awaish Kumar: It’s hard there, I don’t know, like, maybe… Like, to see if, .
183 00:38:14.050 ⇒ 00:38:24.850 Clarence Stone: Okay, I got you. Let’s… let’s try this together. Like, I… I don’t know this app either, but I think we can… we can learn. So, Aish, can you just give me names of people that…
184 00:38:25.030 ⇒ 00:38:30.620 Clarence Stone: would be, you know, assigned to data with you, so it’s you.
185 00:38:30.620 ⇒ 00:38:34.510 Awaish Kumar: 20… Actually, India, demolade…
186 00:38:34.750 ⇒ 00:38:38.370 Clarence Stone: Especially… The Milare, and then…
187 00:38:39.810 ⇒ 00:38:46.589 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, that’s… like, that’s all for DEA. I don’t know if we want to include, guessings, or…
188 00:38:47.930 ⇒ 00:38:51.479 Clarence Stone: Okay, let’s just do DA and see… okay, so we’ve got…
189 00:38:56.690 ⇒ 00:38:58.930 Clarence Stone: Time off… you’ve got…
190 00:38:59.780 ⇒ 00:39:01.999 Uttam Kumaran: I would include… I would include both of them, Awash.
191 00:39:06.930 ⇒ 00:39:12.719 Clarence Stone: Yeah, so, so it seems like… so I guess this is the mismatch from my under… Misunderstanding here. It’s, it’s like.
192 00:39:12.770 ⇒ 00:39:28.390 Clarence Stone: You just said that you were pretty comfortable with getting more workload, for new projects, but it looks like, just according to this, that we’re assigning them a lot of more than 100%, and this… always, you’re close to 100%.
193 00:39:28.810 ⇒ 00:39:38.909 Clarence Stone: Right, so this is where, like, I think there’s a mismatch, like, we’re allocating people on hours, are these hours wrong in estimation, or are, you know, is there…
194 00:39:38.910 ⇒ 00:39:45.080 Uttam Kumaran: So this… so this was for last month, and this was accurate for last month, which is why I hired Ashwini.
195 00:39:45.560 ⇒ 00:39:47.500 Uttam Kumaran: Right? So this… this…
196 00:39:47.690 ⇒ 00:40:02.490 Uttam Kumaran: because we were slammed, I went and we hired Ashwini, and so now that should free up. Additionally, Pacey and Mustafa have upskilled into being able to move from just taking on AI work into also being able to take on
197 00:40:02.920 ⇒ 00:40:04.020 Uttam Kumaran: data work.
198 00:40:04.260 ⇒ 00:40:12.789 Uttam Kumaran: So… Like, that’s… those are two… both… both actions that we took in order to give more…
199 00:40:12.970 ⇒ 00:40:15.690 Uttam Kumaran: Resourcing to this, you know, service line.
200 00:40:16.030 ⇒ 00:40:18.180 Uttam Kumaran: Casey and Mustafa. M.
201 00:40:20.160 ⇒ 00:40:22.410 Uttam Kumaran: Mustafa Raja, yeah.
202 00:40:25.430 ⇒ 00:40:31.609 Uttam Kumaran: I’m sorry, those are all… because you have the filter set to, like, 6 months, it’ll give you everybody that was ever here.
203 00:40:31.790 ⇒ 00:40:35.320 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, if you just do the last month or so, it doesn’t active, but yeah.
204 00:40:36.290 ⇒ 00:40:37.060 Clarence Stone: I mean…
205 00:40:39.000 ⇒ 00:40:57.829 Clarence Stone: According to this chart, Awish, you’re full up. Is this accurate, I guess, is what we should say. Like, so this was for last month, is this accurate for next month? And, if it is, that means you are going to be tight on resourcing, so we… this is… this is why Lutam wanted to have this conversation, right?
206 00:40:58.240 ⇒ 00:41:06.020 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, for the… yeah, like… with Ashwini coming on Eden, like, I get… I get some free time.
207 00:41:06.560 ⇒ 00:41:13.070 Awaish Kumar: And also… We are also, like, on urban stems, we are…
208 00:41:13.690 ⇒ 00:41:19.530 Awaish Kumar: going to spend less time, so I… maybe I or Demonade will have some more time there.
209 00:41:20.630 ⇒ 00:41:23.829 Awaish Kumar: And, I can spend my time… Yeah, I…
210 00:41:24.970 ⇒ 00:41:28.659 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I think you’re gonna have an additional 40 hours from Mashweeney.
211 00:41:29.810 ⇒ 00:41:32.510 Uttam Kumaran: And so that, like, breaks up a lot.
212 00:41:32.680 ⇒ 00:41:38.829 Uttam Kumaran: And then you also have, like, I don’t think case… like, I don’t think this is an accurate representation of December.
213 00:41:39.190 ⇒ 00:41:45.079 Uttam Kumaran: But anecdotally, like, I do think that we… we have enough resourcing for
214 00:41:45.540 ⇒ 00:41:53.359 Uttam Kumaran: the clients, what I don’t… this is where I think what you mentioned, Clarence, is, like, building a buffer for a wish
215 00:41:53.480 ⇒ 00:41:56.300 Uttam Kumaran: To actually be able to… Run this.
216 00:41:56.580 ⇒ 00:41:59.100 Clarence Stone: Right. Because I have been running this.
217 00:41:59.290 ⇒ 00:42:08.150 Uttam Kumaran: And… I was running it because we were only, like, 6 or 7 clients, and then now, I think we’re probably at a point where, Awash, you should probably be, like.
218 00:42:08.220 ⇒ 00:42:24.569 Uttam Kumaran: that we should carve out time for you to do this type of operational planning work for this service line. So that’s the kind of thing I want to drive towards, which is, like, what are these activities that I want to make sure, Awish, you have capacity in your schedule
219 00:42:24.710 ⇒ 00:42:33.710 Uttam Kumaran: to take on this, right? And then, that way, you can come to me and be like, hey, I do need more resourcing, and then I can go work on that, right?
220 00:42:34.530 ⇒ 00:42:41.120 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, but, like, I am more… want to understand, like, how we are going to know For example.
221 00:42:41.590 ⇒ 00:42:48.890 Awaish Kumar: for, like… For the clients where you are not active, how do you decide, like, if you need more
222 00:42:49.710 ⇒ 00:42:55.329 Awaish Kumar: Like, data analyst, 20 hours for data analyst, or what… what are the needs?
223 00:42:56.900 ⇒ 00:43:04.709 Clarence Stone: Yeah, so a couple ways you can do it. You can project out expected demand based on the linear tickets that are in the bucket.
224 00:43:04.920 ⇒ 00:43:20.949 Clarence Stone: you can ask Utam and Robert, you know, hey, you know, we seem to be, you know, close to the end of the work for this client. Are we expected to have more? Right? Because then that’s how you can lay out how many hours you’re going to need for the following month.
225 00:43:21.280 ⇒ 00:43:33.550 Clarence Stone: Right, so you should get two signals. One is, you know, clients got tons of linear tickets. Okay, there’s definitely… you can carry over the hours next month, right? If there isn’t, you should just look into those
226 00:43:33.550 ⇒ 00:43:47.539 Clarence Stone: meeting notes or client details, try to find some summaries first, and see if you can get some indicators on demand in the future. If not, you know, make that call out in the meeting, and say, hey, we’re about to round off, you know, on
227 00:43:47.690 ⇒ 00:43:53.010 Clarence Stone: all the work for this client, are we going to get, you know, follow-on work? And I think you’re gonna…
228 00:43:53.060 ⇒ 00:44:09.619 Clarence Stone: you probably hear more of that on Robert’s call, right? Because there’s a lot of discussion on what dashboard visualizations to build next, you know, what data pipeline sequencing is, so I think that’s where you’re going to get your signals. Does that make sense on how you would lay out, you know, the timeline?
229 00:44:10.700 ⇒ 00:44:22.059 Clarence Stone: Right, so, I guess some real… let’s just completely backtrack and provide you with some additional context. I want to say that there’s a huge shift, right, that
230 00:44:22.060 ⇒ 00:44:40.200 Clarence Stone: like, I guess, mentally or, like, personal growth opportunity here, where, when you’re… when you’re building something and you’re an individual contributor, you think one way, because your goal is to finish whatever’s on the ticket, right? But when you become a leader, it becomes a little bit more complicated, and I… I want you to think about
231 00:44:40.200 ⇒ 00:44:55.580 Clarence Stone: this leadership role in just 3 different buckets. One is, like, process, people, and the technology, right? So, are the people on your team given the right technology, or picking the right technology, or implementing the right technology in the right ways at any given time?
232 00:44:55.580 ⇒ 00:45:03.189 Clarence Stone: Right? You have depth and experience, you can definitely make that determination as you’re listening to your team and asking them what they’ve been doing.
233 00:45:03.350 ⇒ 00:45:20.569 Clarence Stone: In terms of process, right, are you guys doing things in the right order? Are you skipping steps? Is there information missing? Right? And we talked a little bit about that. You said, hey, it’s really hard for me to get a snapshot of what is happening in a client’s journey and their end-to-end, you know.
234 00:45:20.730 ⇒ 00:45:43.540 Clarence Stone: process. So, what would help us, you know, is if you can tell me what specifically you would want to know about an engagement, right? Just list it out completely, and then, you know, we’ll figure out how to plug it in best for you. So there’s some process improvements involved here. I haven’t heard anything from you on technology, and the topic that we’re talking about right now is people.
235 00:45:43.540 ⇒ 00:46:07.150 Clarence Stone: Right? The question is, do you even have the people to run this team, right? These are three circles, they all need to be working for you to be an effective leader. So, when it comes to people, it’s not just that you’re keeping all your people, you know, busy, it’s that you have time to do this planning, right? Lead the meetings, think about what everyone’s doing, double check and improve the process, or maybe change the technology to make things easier.
236 00:46:07.270 ⇒ 00:46:08.509 Clarence Stone: Does that make sense?
237 00:46:09.680 ⇒ 00:46:11.050 Awaish Kumar: Yep, he does.
238 00:46:11.380 ⇒ 00:46:16.929 Clarence Stone: Right, so as soon as I think about, hey, Wish is going to take a leadership role, he’s gonna lead,
239 00:46:17.010 ⇒ 00:46:36.710 Clarence Stone: a data team, I’m thinking, does he have all three of these in a good spot so that he could be successful, right? So that’s why we’re saying, okay, hey, what is the process that you use today, and is it going to work for all these people? How many people do you have? What technologies are you using? Because those are the questions that come after you recognize these three buckets.
240 00:46:37.250 ⇒ 00:46:38.280 Clarence Stone: Make sense?
241 00:46:38.500 ⇒ 00:46:39.319 Awaish Kumar: Yep.
242 00:46:40.230 ⇒ 00:46:46.570 Clarence Stone: So, in this framework, though, like, We talked about your staffing
243 00:46:47.300 ⇒ 00:46:53.189 Clarence Stone: work, availability right now, how you might project the future, the question I would ask you is.
244 00:46:53.710 ⇒ 00:47:00.399 Clarence Stone: you know, do you have the right staffing? And you don’t have to answer this today, right? You can tell us, hey, I’m gonna, you know.
245 00:47:00.400 ⇒ 00:47:18.539 Clarence Stone: go and check on the workload as a whole on each project. I’m going to take a look at what my team is working on, and then get back to us. That’s fine, too. This isn’t a, you know, this isn’t a live quiz, right? But that exercise is important. You should probably know that at any given time, how much free time available you have.
246 00:47:18.540 ⇒ 00:47:27.399 Clarence Stone: on your entire team. It’s not just you anymore, right? And what process or what things they have to do in what order, in terms of, like, technology and process. Does that make sense?
247 00:47:28.000 ⇒ 00:47:33.640 Clarence Stone: So, question is, like… How busy is your team?
248 00:47:34.220 ⇒ 00:47:46.909 Clarence Stone: do you need help? Right? So that would be the people-based question that we would ask you. The same thing goes for technology, like, do you have the right tools?
249 00:47:47.530 ⇒ 00:47:52.079 Clarence Stone: Are you using the best-in-class tech?
250 00:47:52.500 ⇒ 00:48:03.990 Clarence Stone: Right? For, you know, the best client deliveries. Now, like, I’m sure you’re comfortable having this conversation with your time. You can say, hey, I need this tool, I need this app, I need this, you know, product in order to help a client out.
251 00:48:04.630 ⇒ 00:48:10.519 Uttam Kumaran: That’s me, dude. I’m like, how… like, I can buy you anything on planet Earth.
252 00:48:12.630 ⇒ 00:48:28.109 Clarence Stone: And that’s the best part, right? Like, so we’re here to support you on all three of these buckets, and really, like, all the questions we’re asking is because we want to be able to help you to make sure that you’re doing all of those things, right? So when it comes to process, you made a really great call-out,
253 00:48:28.110 ⇒ 00:48:36.650 Clarence Stone: Like, a better way to see the health and journey of a client, project, right?
254 00:48:37.430 ⇒ 00:48:54.429 Clarence Stone: So, we definitely need to do that, that’s an IOU, we need to be able to give that visualization to you, but maybe from your side, you can help us by saying, hey, this is my current team demand, this is what I expect, right? And then, you know, if I said to you.
255 00:48:54.630 ⇒ 00:48:58.879 Clarence Stone: In 6 months, if, you know, you had 30% more work.
256 00:49:00.450 ⇒ 00:49:02.290 Clarence Stone: How many people would you need, then?
257 00:49:06.860 ⇒ 00:49:13.540 Clarence Stone: Right. These are the, I think, the top-level questions that This discussion is about.
258 00:49:14.950 ⇒ 00:49:22.569 Clarence Stone: And I know that there are much more deeper conversations for each one, right? So it’s not an easy thing to answer, but does this make sense?
259 00:49:23.520 ⇒ 00:49:27.390 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, it does, like… it really…
260 00:49:27.750 ⇒ 00:49:36.149 Awaish Kumar: like, I can… what I can tell right now is that, like, we have enough people to serve the clients which we have right now.
261 00:49:36.720 ⇒ 00:49:41.019 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, but if the workload increases, then,
262 00:49:41.790 ⇒ 00:49:46.099 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, we need to figure out how much free time we have on each of these people.
263 00:49:46.520 ⇒ 00:50:00.139 Clarence Stone: So, as a leader, the way I would solve this… answer this question is I would ask myself, right? Let’s just say… I’m gonna… I’m gonna get rid of everything. Let’s just say…
264 00:50:00.300 ⇒ 00:50:02.690 Clarence Stone: You’re now leading this team.
265 00:50:03.460 ⇒ 00:50:04.989 Clarence Stone: Right, you’re over here.
266 00:50:06.400 ⇒ 00:50:09.830 Clarence Stone: And, can I just type in this? Yeah, there we go.
267 00:50:11.120 ⇒ 00:50:16.390 Clarence Stone: Awish, here, here. Okay. Awish, how many hours are you gonna need, right?
268 00:50:17.970 ⇒ 00:50:27.420 Clarence Stone: with the expected growth to lead your team, and then we’re asking you, how many team members do you need to meet that expected demand? That’s…
269 00:50:27.700 ⇒ 00:50:28.689 Clarence Stone: Down here.
270 00:50:29.960 ⇒ 00:50:30.620 Awaish Kumar: Right.
271 00:50:30.760 ⇒ 00:50:47.080 Clarence Stone: And the way I would do it is, as the leader, I would say, how much time do I need every day to run my stand-ups, review people’s work, and maybe have 30 minutes of office hours in order to help people out with technical challenges, right?
272 00:50:47.280 ⇒ 00:50:51.260 Clarence Stone: And then I would say, okay, what… what…
273 00:50:51.760 ⇒ 00:50:58.859 Clarence Stone: what engagements am I on? What projects am I already on? I would answer that, and I would come up with a number here.
274 00:50:59.480 ⇒ 00:51:02.620 Clarence Stone: Right, so you have admin time, and then project time now.
275 00:51:02.900 ⇒ 00:51:10.010 Clarence Stone: And my best recommendation to you is your mix is probably going to be around 30-40%.
276 00:51:10.330 ⇒ 00:51:13.470 Clarence Stone: 30 to… yeah, 30, maybe 40, depends.
277 00:51:13.720 ⇒ 00:51:24.149 Clarence Stone: of your time doing admin, right? Like, leadership of this team. And then, you know, the rest is 60-70% of you producing project work.
278 00:51:24.150 ⇒ 00:51:34.779 Clarence Stone: So, that’s how I would estimate your hours. Everyone else is just 100% project work, right? You just have to decide what percent of that 100, goes to what project.
279 00:51:35.870 ⇒ 00:51:38.349 Clarence Stone: And not be your decision as the lead.
280 00:51:38.600 ⇒ 00:51:39.790 Clarence Stone: On who does what.
281 00:51:40.620 ⇒ 00:51:45.199 Clarence Stone: Right. Does this make sense on how you would answer that resourcing challenge?
282 00:51:45.470 ⇒ 00:51:46.380 Awaish Kumar: Yup.
283 00:51:46.970 ⇒ 00:52:06.470 Clarence Stone: Right? So, I mean, like, right off the bat, I would just say, okay, I know that there are two standups every morning, they’re about an hour each. That’s 10 hours out of the admin time, right? And, you know, you’ve probably… you’re booked for, like, what, 35 hours of project right now?
284 00:52:07.530 ⇒ 00:52:09.560 Clarence Stone: Like, you’re already above that.
285 00:52:11.850 ⇒ 00:52:25.719 Clarence Stone: Right? So you have to think about how you’re going to push some of the projects to which team member, what skill sets they have, and if they can do it, and how much help you have to give them, because you’re not going to be able to offload the whole project sometimes, right? So…
286 00:52:25.940 ⇒ 00:52:29.509 Clarence Stone: How would you change your current hour workload?
287 00:52:30.660 ⇒ 00:52:31.550 Clarence Stone: Bye.
288 00:52:32.040 ⇒ 00:52:35.350 Awaish Kumar: Like, we do have, like, for example, Ashwani.
289 00:52:35.580 ⇒ 00:52:38.970 Awaish Kumar: Who is already taking over Aiden’s world.
290 00:52:39.660 ⇒ 00:52:42.869 Awaish Kumar: So, yeah, I’m going to get some time there.
291 00:52:45.760 ⇒ 00:52:50.160 Uttam Kumaran: also urban sands. I’ve been spending some time there, so…
292 00:52:50.160 ⇒ 00:52:54.789 Awaish Kumar: this client. Maybe I no longer have to spend time there, so I’m going to get…
293 00:52:55.090 ⇒ 00:53:03.090 Awaish Kumar: Time from both of these clients, and then spend Maybe then divided between… admin and element.
294 00:53:04.490 ⇒ 00:53:15.299 Clarence Stone: Gotcha. So, okay, so, so the way, the format that I would want from you, then, is it would be some number of hours for client 1, number of hours for
295 00:53:16.300 ⇒ 00:53:19.200 Clarence Stone: For client 2, and etc.
296 00:53:20.430 ⇒ 00:53:25.230 Clarence Stone: Right, and I’d love to see that same projection for each of these team members as well.
297 00:53:25.760 ⇒ 00:53:45.430 Clarence Stone: Right? So team member one is gonna have X amount of hours on client 1, client 2, or 3, whatever, like, so fill in the name, right, for me. So I’ll make this a… I’ll make it a variable, so you fill it in, right? So that’s sort of, like, the visualization that… that you need to arrive at. Does… does that make sense? Utam, does this make sense as resource planning?
298 00:53:46.970 ⇒ 00:53:49.709 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I mean, all of this you should… we can do in operating.
299 00:53:49.930 ⇒ 00:53:56.729 Uttam Kumaran: So I would just try to centralize all of this in operating a ways, where basically, in one view, you can look at all those folks.
300 00:53:57.300 ⇒ 00:53:59.200 Uttam Kumaran: And you should be able to…
301 00:53:59.500 ⇒ 00:54:10.460 Uttam Kumaran: on one side, you can see the clients, on one side, you’ll see the people, and we should basically be able to see this. So you can budget in there directly, and then, yeah. I mean, I feel like, at the moment.
302 00:54:10.880 ⇒ 00:54:18.260 Uttam Kumaran: Across… I probably agree with you in that we do have time. I think…
303 00:54:19.160 ⇒ 00:54:28.440 Uttam Kumaran: like, you finding time for this is gonna be a challenge, and so that is something that we need to consider. And then second is, like,
304 00:54:30.720 ⇒ 00:54:41.739 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I mean, that’s probably the only thing I feel like we haven’t explicitly said out loud that we want to make sure happens, because otherwise you’re gonna get jammed like I’m getting jammed, you know?
305 00:54:43.020 ⇒ 00:54:44.120 Awaish Kumar: Okay.
306 00:54:49.360 ⇒ 00:54:52.530 Clarence Stone: Yeah, and if it’s any comfort.
307 00:54:52.710 ⇒ 00:54:54.389 Clarence Stone: It’s okay if you get it wrong.
308 00:54:54.400 ⇒ 00:55:14.049 Clarence Stone: you’re gonna learn as a leader that your estimations are wrong, and then you’re gonna change it a little bit, you’re gonna tweak it so that it gets refined over and over again, right? So, don’t treat this as a commitment, but rather, hey, I think this is what things should be, and as you learn more, you can adjust and refine, you know, the way you spread your hours.
309 00:55:15.380 ⇒ 00:55:16.000 Clarence Stone: Right.
310 00:55:17.550 ⇒ 00:55:18.500 Awaish Kumar: Okay, yep.
311 00:55:19.590 ⇒ 00:55:31.840 Clarence Stone: So, like, I would love this layout for you, and then, like, for each team member, as well as answering the question, if there was 30% more, would you need another team member or not?
312 00:55:32.100 ⇒ 00:55:32.940 Clarence Stone: Right.
313 00:55:35.230 ⇒ 00:55:35.830 Awaish Kumar: Yep.
314 00:55:36.050 ⇒ 00:55:39.969 Clarence Stone: I’ll add that to this slide, and I’ll give this to you as a template for you to fill out.
315 00:55:40.670 ⇒ 00:55:54.140 Uttam Kumaran: And then this is where also, like, as part of our Monday meetings with delivery, or we should think about, and Claire, something we can think about is, like, okay, for a way to give a cl… like, do we have enough resourcing? He did ask
316 00:55:54.280 ⇒ 00:55:56.100 Uttam Kumaran: A great question, which is.
317 00:55:56.380 ⇒ 00:56:06.760 Uttam Kumaran: like, what’s coming up. And sales has to deliver that for you. Sales needs to give you an area, which you can go see in HubSpot, is basically leads by…
318 00:56:07.120 ⇒ 00:56:11.400 Uttam Kumaran: Pipeline, like pipeline status, and what services those leads are buying.
319 00:56:11.760 ⇒ 00:56:26.739 Uttam Kumaran: the nice thing is, that’s all in HubSpot already. So, like, we have a lot of that, and Ryan is keeping all that CRM data up to date. Of course, if you ask me, I know what clients are coming up, but…
320 00:56:26.880 ⇒ 00:56:32.500 Uttam Kumaran: we… I want… like, you should be able to go directly to sales and be like, hey, I’m planning December… I’m planning…
321 00:56:32.680 ⇒ 00:56:34.360 Uttam Kumaran: like, January.
322 00:56:34.480 ⇒ 00:56:46.270 Uttam Kumaran: who’s coming, right? And, look, there should be some… we should think about what the contracts are. Like, hey, if… for example, someone called me yesterday, and they’re asking for us to start next week.
323 00:56:47.150 ⇒ 00:56:50.970 Uttam Kumaran: I need to run it by you before saying yes.
324 00:56:51.410 ⇒ 00:56:58.389 Uttam Kumaran: Right. And that’s what needs to happen. And actually, that’s what I… that’s what I want to happen. Right now, I…
325 00:56:58.970 ⇒ 00:57:18.140 Uttam Kumaran: think for maybe 2 seconds, I… I’ll do a bunch of… run a bunch of calcs in my head, and then I’m basically… I’m like, yeah, we could do Monday, for this price. That’s not good. Like, I can’t be doing that. That’s not a scalable motion. So for me, in that moment, I should… I need to go check with… I gotta go check with our team to see whether we have capacity.
326 00:57:18.240 ⇒ 00:57:21.470 Uttam Kumaran: I go to you, and you’re like, I don’t know, and I’m like, well.
327 00:57:21.710 ⇒ 00:57:24.269 Uttam Kumaran: if I… if I doubled the price.
328 00:57:24.420 ⇒ 00:57:35.660 Uttam Kumaran: who from our bench could you get and patch to go deliver? That’s… those are the kinds of things that sales and delivery need to be, like, talking through, right? So, yeah.
329 00:57:36.900 ⇒ 00:57:39.380 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, okay, it does make sense.
330 00:57:41.600 ⇒ 00:57:46.549 Clarence Stone: So, to kind of reinforce that, right? So today, what’s happening is
331 00:57:46.880 ⇒ 00:57:58.209 Clarence Stone: like, Utama or Robert are bringing you work in the form of linear tickets, and then you’re working with the team to produce the results of those linear tickets, right? What Utama’s saying is that
332 00:57:58.390 ⇒ 00:58:06.059 Clarence Stone: Ideally, in the future, and this is, you know, a process that we’re gonna work out, is you’re gonna go through the sales team instead.
333 00:58:06.060 ⇒ 00:58:30.749 Clarence Stone: Right? But that doesn’t mean that Robert or Tom can’t come to you, right? They might find an amazing opportunity, they need to know right now, can we, you know, do this work next week? Right? So, this pipeline is still open. And lastly, the thing that I want to, you know, kind of reinforce to you is that you’re a leader. You actually have the option to talk with other project leaders and look at the ongoing clients and engagements and say.
334 00:58:30.930 ⇒ 00:58:37.170 Clarence Stone: oh, well, this client could really benefit from this data service. We should think about presenting it to them.
335 00:58:37.540 ⇒ 00:58:39.010 Clarence Stone: Right? So…
336 00:58:39.480 ⇒ 00:58:48.749 Clarence Stone: If you wanted to do that, you can even just create, you know, talk to Tom and Robert, create a presentation, and pitch it to the client, and now, all of a sudden, you are winning work for your team.
337 00:58:50.500 ⇒ 00:58:58.899 Clarence Stone: Right? So that way, your team is always fully staffed. So there are so many ways that you can, you know, fill the bucket.
338 00:58:59.050 ⇒ 00:59:13.109 Clarence Stone: Right? But your goal is to make sure everyone is always fully staffed and doing productive work, right? So, most of the time, you’re going to be good with the work coming in from these two buckets, but as you grow and learn and become
339 00:59:13.340 ⇒ 00:59:31.589 Clarence Stone: really good at understanding client needs, you might just actually look at a project and go, oh, there’s a data solution here for us to sell, right? And that is your transformation. You become the eyes and ears, identifying things that Robert and Utam used to be identifying. You can also do it. It becomes another person.
340 00:59:31.590 ⇒ 00:59:44.130 Clarence Stone: Right? That goes back to our image here. Like, they can’t do it alone. They need help. They need people who are going to, you know, recognize the same things and be able to take over functions of the business, right?
341 00:59:45.770 ⇒ 00:59:46.960 Awaish Kumar: Okay.
342 00:59:47.090 ⇒ 00:59:56.969 Clarence Stone: These would be your inputs to… to keeping your… so let me… let me put this… inputs to keeping your team busy, right? Your job…
343 00:59:57.880 ⇒ 01:00:03.410 Clarence Stone: To keep them busy, and, producing great work.
344 01:00:04.180 ⇒ 01:00:12.780 Clarence Stone: That’s… that’s it, right? It’s so simple when I say it that way, it’s much more complicated when you’re actually able to do it, right? So I totally recognize that.
345 01:00:15.660 ⇒ 01:00:19.800 Clarence Stone: Right, so does this, like, this kind of helps with filling the team bucket.
346 01:00:22.190 ⇒ 01:00:38.830 Clarence Stone: Right? And really, I just want to impress, like, this role gives you the opportunity to really start to explore new markets and grow your own team, too. Right? What if, you know, you identified an opportunity, you pitched it, and they bought it, you know, your team even grows. Maybe you need more people.
347 01:00:39.770 ⇒ 01:00:40.590 Clarence Stone: Right.
348 01:00:42.390 ⇒ 01:00:54.619 Clarence Stone: So this is why we’re doing this exercise, right? So that at any given time when sales calls, says, OH, like, can we do this, and what is the timeline? Well, if you can’t answer this, you can’t provide a good estimate.
349 01:00:56.730 ⇒ 01:00:57.400 Awaish Kumar: Right.
350 01:01:00.840 ⇒ 01:01:05.240 Clarence Stone: Cool. So, you know, I think your next activity is to… to plan this out.
351 01:01:05.410 ⇒ 01:01:24.230 Clarence Stone: And if you want to do it live with me, and I’ll sit and help you think about it, you think out loud, you tell me what you’re thinking about, and then we can do it together, I’m happy to do it. Or if you just want to try it on your own and come back, we can do that. Same goes for… this is just a visualization for you to understand, right? Like.
352 01:01:24.230 ⇒ 01:01:25.150 Awaish Kumar: Okay.
353 01:01:25.340 ⇒ 01:01:26.090 Clarence Stone: Yeah.
354 01:01:26.720 ⇒ 01:01:31.509 Clarence Stone: But Tom, is that… is that good for a plan, or were you expecting an output today?
355 01:01:32.010 ⇒ 01:01:40.210 Uttam Kumaran: No, that’s fine. Yeah, this is great. I think… I think, as I mentioned to… to you, Clarence, like, this is our, probably.
356 01:01:40.450 ⇒ 01:01:43.570 Uttam Kumaran: Our longest-running service line.
357 01:01:43.940 ⇒ 01:01:50.600 Uttam Kumaran: The one that we have the most clarity on the outputs, and the one that’s most heavily staffed, with
358 01:01:50.760 ⇒ 01:01:58.659 Uttam Kumaran: the staff being here the longest. So, perfect guinea pig for this is to see, like, how much effort it truly takes
359 01:01:58.660 ⇒ 01:02:10.989 Uttam Kumaran: And that’s what’s gonna… I want… I basically want to use this exercise as a way to say, what do we expect out of people that may come in and own service lines, if that’s the model that they… that you’re proposing, right? So…
360 01:02:11.020 ⇒ 01:02:14.750 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t think we have the people
361 01:02:14.980 ⇒ 01:02:21.970 Uttam Kumaran: to do this on other service lines right now, but I don’t know, this would be something that I think could be good.
362 01:02:26.510 ⇒ 01:02:34.740 Clarence Stone: Cool. Alright, so a few options, Awash. Do you want to do it right now, and we’ll walk through it and talk through it together, or do you want to try it yourself?
363 01:02:35.470 ⇒ 01:02:41.260 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, I can… First tried myself, and maybe we.
364 01:02:41.260 ⇒ 01:02:43.120 Clarence Stone: I’m gonna attempt, right?
365 01:02:45.020 ⇒ 01:02:45.410 Awaish Kumar: Sorry?
366 01:02:45.410 ⇒ 01:02:48.189 Clarence Stone: Let me share these two slides with you.
367 01:02:49.030 ⇒ 01:02:50.399 Uttam Kumaran: And I’m gonna jump to another call.
368 01:02:50.720 ⇒ 01:02:58.430 Clarence Stone: Okay, cool. And so, before I… when I… before I, share this with you, I’ll talk you through the slides real quick, right?
369 01:02:59.270 ⇒ 01:03:00.700 Awaish Kumar: I also have you.
370 01:03:01.460 ⇒ 01:03:02.810 Awaish Kumar: same meeting, I think.
371 01:03:02.810 ⇒ 01:03:23.380 Clarence Stone: You have another meeting? Okay. Let me… I’ll just share the slide deck with you. All you need to know is this… this is inspiration for you. I… I… this is what I’m going to do for you so that you can actually get a history on every project and every client. This doesn’t have every piece of information, so if it’s missing things, I’d love for you to tell me what it’s missing. But I want, in… in your company portal.
372 01:03:23.380 ⇒ 01:03:25.829 Clarence Stone: Right? To be able to go here.
373 01:03:25.970 ⇒ 01:03:28.730 Clarence Stone: Click ABC Home, and then see the whole history of it.
374 01:03:28.730 ⇒ 01:03:53.509 Clarence Stone: what was the objective, what was the project, who did what, when was it delivered, what happened, right? And then that way, you know what happened when you start working on it. You have that background and history. So I think a good summary has at least these things, like project scope, goals, risks, who’s on the team, some assumptions and decisions that were made, but you might want different information as well. So let me know what that summary looks like, because I think the best place is
375 01:03:53.510 ⇒ 01:04:01.850 Clarence Stone: to put it here, right? You get pulled into ABC Home or Hedra, you don’t know what’s going on, you can just look at the top and go, okay, I understand.
376 01:04:02.940 ⇒ 01:04:08.410 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, so thing is that, like, for example, clients like Aiden, we have multiple projects.
377 01:04:08.750 ⇒ 01:04:10.799 Awaish Kumar: And it’s kind of ongoing.
378 01:04:10.970 ⇒ 01:04:15.630 Awaish Kumar: engagements as well, so we don’t always have net new projects.
379 01:04:15.780 ⇒ 01:04:16.340 Awaish Kumar: Weird.
380 01:04:16.340 ⇒ 01:04:26.129 Clarence Stone: So you would have different health, statuses, right? So let’s say this is… this would be two dashboards, right? You would get two visualizations of this, because there’s two projects.
381 01:04:27.760 ⇒ 01:04:28.719 Clarence Stone: That makes sense.
382 01:04:29.170 ⇒ 01:04:30.579 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, well, yeah.
383 01:04:32.810 ⇒ 01:04:39.760 Clarence Stone: Yeah, so… so let me know what’s missing, because what I’m going to propose to Uten is we start creating project health boards.
384 01:04:40.590 ⇒ 01:04:44.780 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, like, this looks good for a project, but the only thing I…
385 01:04:45.400 ⇒ 01:04:49.350 Awaish Kumar: I was… I’m saying is regarding, having…
386 01:04:51.010 ⇒ 01:05:02.159 Awaish Kumar: like, the list of projects, and then you can go on. So we… for a client, we worked on 5 different projects, and then you have some ongoing engagements, which are, like, maintenance.
387 01:05:02.260 ⇒ 01:05:04.420 Awaish Kumar: So I don’t know how we can rely.
388 01:05:04.630 ⇒ 01:05:23.550 Clarence Stone: We can keep that in a project, or it should be a separate thing, I don’t know. So the way I’m imagining it is you have a bunch of tabs up here. Like, you can see all the closed projects, and then one ongoing project, and you can go through the older projects, or look at the newest one. So we’ll just make a tab setup up here, if there’s multiple projects.
389 01:05:24.510 ⇒ 01:05:33.059 Clarence Stone: But the gist is, like, I want you to be able to just look at it and go, okay, it looks like it’s stuck here on these tickets, what’s the update?
390 01:05:33.280 ⇒ 01:05:43.379 Clarence Stone: You know, on your syncs, so that you’re not, you know, kind of looking through a ton of different things. So it’s like a combination of Stand Up Assistant and the data that’s in here with some additional context.
391 01:05:43.980 ⇒ 01:05:51.869 Awaish Kumar: So we also have data in oper… like, operating data coming into Snowflake. We can utilize that, and also
392 01:05:52.660 ⇒ 01:05:56.980 Awaish Kumar: Keep that as a part of this dashboard, that, okay, these… what is the resources?
393 01:05:57.170 ⇒ 01:06:00.509 Awaish Kumar: On this client, and what are their hours, and things like that.
394 01:06:01.010 ⇒ 01:06:10.770 Clarence Stone: Yep, and then you have your weekly status update. What happened yesterday, what changed, and what’s today, right? So this is for your dailies. We need more of a zoomed-out engagement.
395 01:06:10.900 ⇒ 01:06:11.790 Clarence Stone: Update.
396 01:06:12.000 ⇒ 01:06:20.529 Clarence Stone: Right, so we’ll get there, and I’m gonna work on it, but, you know, love your feedback on what’s missing there. This is just an explainer, and I love your input here.
397 01:06:20.530 ⇒ 01:06:27.179 Awaish Kumar: For this slide, like, Because it needs to be… Today, or we can have…
398 01:06:30.220 ⇒ 01:06:48.830 Clarence Stone: I, you know, I don’t think it needs… it’s due today, but, you know, probably soon. How about Friday? I think, you know, just put in some numbers and see where things are and what help you need from us. If this is hard to do, there’s probably some issues with our workflow, so I want to solve that too, so let me know if you’re stuck.
399 01:06:49.280 ⇒ 01:07:02.669 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, like, it might be easier, I’m just stuck with, like, one of the client work, so I want to focus on that today, because it’s just discovery of a few things, and it takes time. I don’t know how much time, like, it’s…
400 01:07:03.010 ⇒ 01:07:08.489 Awaish Kumar: Like, there’s no specific task, I just have to go in, figured out what’s there, so…
401 01:07:08.760 ⇒ 01:07:13.639 Awaish Kumar: It might take some time, so maybe I can… I’ve worked on this thing tomorrow.
402 01:07:14.490 ⇒ 01:07:18.659 Awaish Kumar: But if I get time, I can do it today as well, but maybe tomorrow.
403 01:07:19.210 ⇒ 01:07:23.410 Clarence Stone: Yep, sounds good. Yeah, give it a shot tomorrow, and I’ll send you the link to the slide deck. Cool?
404 01:07:23.410 ⇒ 01:07:24.559 Awaish Kumar: Okay, thank you.
405 01:07:24.770 ⇒ 01:07:26.190 Clarence Stone: Awesome. Thanks!
406 01:07:28.420 ⇒ 01:07:29.110 Awaish Kumar: Right?
407 01:07:29.400 ⇒ 01:07:32.669 Clarence Stone: Right. If I can figure out how to…