Amir Bormand: [00:00:00] On this episode of the podcast I have with me Jack Cora. He is the VP of Engineering at D Scout. We’re gonna be talking about process and what to do and what not to do to remain nimble. Obviously, every company has to add processes and that overhead impacts team velocity that that nimbleness, that startups rely on.
And I’m excited to have Jack come on and talk to us about that. Thanks for being on the podcast. Thanks
Jack Kora: Amir. And a couple words about what the company does that I work for and what my role is. We are D Scout. We are an online platform for user experience research. So unlike Qualtrics, which is really famous in the quantitative world and just focuses on basically surveys we’re video heavy.
A lot of experience research focuses around like record having participants record a video. So if you need [00:01:00] any sort of concept testing more upstream research we’re a good. My role at the company so as a VP of engineering, we don’t have a C T O right? So I manage all of the engineering department.
However, my role is a little more focused on the people side rather than, Just technology. We have a very sophisticated tech team and a chief architect who is a really solid engineer and there’s just really no need for me to be involved in like tech other than at a very high level.
Amir Bormand: Awesome.
All right. I’m sure you probably deal with a lot of this stuff in one shape or form and I guess every team has to deal with, growing and having to, enhance mature processes and everyone’s always trying to keep an eye out on, team velocity and making sure.
They, you don’t have too much process. But you need some process. And I guess before we dive into that give us a little lay of the land of what, how your teams [00:02:00] work now, just to understand. Yep. Yep.
Jack Kora: So I’ve been at Discard for four years, and just so I understand the journey we’ve been through when I joined, we had 18 dev people in my department right now with some contractors.
We have around 60. So we’ve definitely grown ahead to grow our process. But at the moment we’re split into teams that are product. Based teams. And they’re cross-function also. It’s, backend front end qa but also product manager and a product designer. And each team and each team sets its own backlog and work towards its own product goals.
Awesome.
Amir Bormand: I guess, you’ve been there now four years. Take us back and have us maybe understand how much. Process change has happened. So the four years you’ve been there, and again, this is a very, unscientific measure possibly, but are we talking about in the last four years, have you seen a lot of shift?
Is it a slower shift or, how has process changed over that time for you guys? Definitely
Jack Kora: a lot of shift. [00:03:00] A lot of shift. Okay. Some of it was around just going from basically one big team to many teams. Another big shift was naturally when we’re on the smaller side, everyone did the same thing.
At this point, we have, I, I can’t remember, seven or eight teams, and each team does its own flavor of agile. I don’t believe in like standardizing the process across all teams, but then there was also a bit of a qualitative shift in terms. How we approach at its core. Do we always start with requirements first, then design, and then implementation, and then testing or there’s like more, more agile for the lack of a better term, way to be a little more iterative than that.
And like I’m happy to dive deep dive into that kind of later on in the podcast, but that was like a shift we went through this year.
Amir Bormand: I guess as you [00:04:00] go back and you mentioned a lot of change, a lot of shift. Each team has its own version of Agile. I also was, hearing that there are certain.
Certain processes that, that seem cohesive or maybe each one, each team has its own specific way of doing it. But h how is that handled? I guess each team can have its own ceremonies or rituals or how they’d like to implement Agile, obviously. But is the core different in each team or do you guys actually, have some kind of standardization of what it should look.
Jack Kora: Looking at my almost personal journey through rao, which I first, my first team moved to Scrum in 2008, so it’s been a while that I’ve been doing this and my personal understanding of a agile evolved to where I, right now, I don’t care about Scrum Con or Scrum bun or XP to me. It’s a toolbox of different techniques, stand [00:05:00] daily stands is a technique.
Grooming meetings is a technique. I think Groomings, were popularized by Scrum, but doesn’t mean if you’re doing company can do groomings, right? Or refinements is like it’s commonly referred to nowadays. So to me it’s less about what you call the process and more about you need to do refinements, do refinements do you feel like you need to meet daily First stand?
Sure. But some of our teams meet like twice a week in person, and the other three days are in Slack. So in that sense, Yeah, everyone does refinements because how else would you do it? Everyone does stands on a slightly different frequency cuz there’s definitely some standard techniques that are just so useful that everyone’s doing it, but there’s no like mandate from me or anyone else that you have to do certain things.
Interesting.
Amir Bormand: Before we dive back into some of the signals, When process has to change. I guess keeping it current when your teams have to work with each other, [00:06:00] obviously, it sounds like everyone will do refinement, whatever you call it, you can call it, maybe it’s scan men, whether it’s Scrum, that’s all.
Okay. When you have two different teams that potentially have to work with each other how is it decided people are doing slightly different things. How does that interaction.
Jack Kora: No, that’s a good question. But, so I what, like a year ago, roughly read this book called Working Backwards by one of Amazon’s SVPs who was there from the beginning.
And one of the very interesting points he had there is as they scaled first they tried to improve how they work in enter team communication. But what they realize is it’s best if you don’t have to talk to each other because you’re in. So a lot of our teams work fairly independently. There will be of course a couple projects per year where it’s like a big enough project that spans multiple teams.
In that case, it’s usually that’s the one off, right? So we don’t optimize for that per [00:07:00] se. In that case, it’s usually the work is split into larger chunks, and then each team executes independently. One process that where I’m, so as you can probably tell by now, I’m pretty loose around what the teams do, but there is one process where I am involved in that.
I ask all the teams to do. And it’s project management which sits on top of their daily or weekly Agile and that’s a more cos grained process, usually only needed for bigger projects, like over a month long where there are milestones, deliverables, risk analysis, and if it’s across team project, then there will be milestones across teams.
And that’s where I’m a little more involved and our like managers and directors pay more attention at like higher.
Amir Bormand: Outta curiosity, where’s all, when you mentioned project management where do you keep all that? How do you guys, manage the
Jack Kora: repository? [00:08:00] Until literally, like a month ago, it was Confluence just moved into notion, which I would highly recommend.
Okay.
Amir Bormand: All right. Everyone seems to, yeah I hear a notion being used more and more, so that’s interesting. Let’s go back now. I think it’s always interesting is. You identify the need for the process to change, because there is a danger, as somebody, let’s say, who is overseeing things that, you might overcorrect or over-prescribe a process.
And that’s always a, that is a potential. But when you’re sitting and you’re looking at things and when you guys first notice, hey, things have to change. We’re growing fast as other, drivers. Is there a signal obviously, that you’re seeing that’s black and white?
Are there shades of gray of, Hey guys, I think we might need to make some changes around here. How does that come about?
Jack Kora: I would say there’s two driving factors. One is a team or a few teams are under delivering, and that could mean literally they’re just missing dates. This could [00:09:00] mean they’re delivering on time, but say poor quality.
Also important. That’s obviously a telltale sign. There’s something off doesn’t, honestly, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a process problem, but it means that you as a manager, you have to dive in and figure it out or help the team figure it out. I would say another, but another criteria is if you feel like things are working well, but maybe they could be better and may, maybe to qualify this last point.
My core belief is that right process is a means to an end. It’s not an end in itself. And like earlier on, on my career, I was like very enamored with process and I don’t know if I went too far into that, but it’s easy to get carried away with cuz it’s cool. It’s like engineering thinking but really it’s there to help you deliver.
So whatever minimal way [00:10:00] of delivering works, if it works, you don’t need more but where I’m going with this is that different projects may need different process. For example, like I mentioned, the big change we went through this year, and I don’t know if there’s a formal name for this process, but I’m calling it Lean Startup after the Lean Startup book.
And. For example, we have some projects that are pretty well understood from product perspective. We have requirements, we have design that’s pretty locked in. And so it’s a little more waterfall actually. Good for Scrum, right? You have PMs give you requirements. Design, then you just go refine it and implement it.
We’re working on a really like major new product line where. Things are not as well defined upfront, nor they can they be. It’s just too big of an undertaking to like really have a waterfall process, right? And we’ve adapted our process to, it’s much more iterative. We’re not building like the final product right [00:11:00] away.
We are, we’re calling it roughing in let’s just rough in it’s bed ui. We’re never gonna go live with. But it’s enough for stakeholders and pr, PMs to see where it’s going and adjust as we go. We’ve also run some, even with rough ui, we’ve run some end user tasks like very early in the project, which actually we’ve learned stuff and pivoted the project.
But if you look at it from the engineering process side, it’s very different from your typical sort of project, it’s almost a blast for me to say, but we’re writing less tests because code’s gonna change two weeks later. We’re allocating time towards the end of the project to go back and solidify things.
But that’s a very different process than for a feature that’s understood upfront. Interesting.
Amir Bormand: I, you mentioned, obviously there’s two. Main drivers missing delivery, which could have various factors or areas you can improve. I [00:12:00] guess missing deliveries. That’s obvious.
That becomes obvious. Like you can e you can see it, right? Somebody’s identifying, hey, the date slipped or the quality’s looking poor. There’s somebody that can identify it’s a little bit, maybe more reactive cuz it’s already happened. Areas to improve, as you mentioned you could tinker with it too much.
Like you could overthink, I love the fact that you said process as a means to an end. Keep it as simple as it needs to be. To get it done. That little tinkering piece of coming up with, the process improvement, the minimal amount you talked about the, the lean component to it.
When you’re looking to improve a process that you’re like, Hey, I have sense that this is, something we can work on, we can improve on. How’s that process work for you? Is it you a lot of collaboration with the. Is it you going off and thinking about some of the areas of opportunities and coming back to the team how does that relationship or how does that coordination of that, like improvement in process
Jack Kora: work?
Overseeing multiple teams. I’ve actually, I’ve tried to personally go in and [00:13:00] get the teams excited when it’s a funny story, but when I just started a D Scout. I saw some potential for improvement. And I’m a, as far as the scientific component of process, I like lean and specifically there’s this leading lean software development book by Mary Pique, which is I think really good.
So I organized book club, tried to get people rallied. Now the book makes a lot of references to the Toyota Way because that’s where Lean came from. And at some point a couple people asked me, why are we reading about car manufacturing? And for me there was kinda a big moment of. As a vp, you can’t personally drive this.
You gotta find champions on the ground on the teams, people who will be interested and then will lead their smaller teams which is what eventually happened. Now, People are actually using some of [00:14:00] those lean techniques. Took a couple years, but there were a few champions who at some point were like, why we’re all doing like this scrum for three years in a row?
Let’s experiment. And I think there is value in some experimentation. You don’t wanna do it needlessly too much, but just to stay nimble, right? Just to not get too static. Even just a different way to do retros, right? There’s like a million, if you Google how to do retros, there’s a million different, like fun ways just rotating that just to stay nimble and agile, and not that in your ways. I,
Amir Bormand: I and I get actually, I really like that. Thank you for sharing that cuz I think the one thing I was gonna ask you to talk about, and you mentioned that was when the executive. Wants to have too much influence over process. Especially if you’re new and you’re coming in from the outside and you have a toolbox, a history of seeing things done.
Other places, obviously depending on the size of the team has, working dynamics, [00:15:00] tinkering with those working dynamics obviously will cause potential friction. You mentioned champions, which I think is a very good way of looking at it. And I guess as you look back at your approach and you obviously noticed that champions are very, IM important.
I guess there’s a danger of you could inadvertently slow the team down, right? Not only is it, obviously they’re missing deliveries. You do, you have problems, you gotta fix those anyways. But in the case where you’re trying to be proactive and improve a process, I guess when you’re coming in, or even if it’s existing team, you have a danger of slowing down your team, which you obviously could have.
Downward implications. And how much do you think about that? Is it important if the area improvement’s big enough, is it one of those where, hey, listen, it’s an investment. How do you go about looking at that?
Jack Kora: You touched on a good part of like new versus not new. I think when you’re new things are a little different.
You have to build trust first before you can like really try to push ideas. At this point though, where, I’ve been here for a while. [00:16:00] I don’t really get involved in process other than just super high level. And even then, mostly where what I discussed with the teams is the outcomes. Like you have to deliver like within time constraints and with quality.
How are you gonna do that? Let’s I’m here to discuss, but I’m not gonna tell you what to do. In fact I frequently say, here’s my thought. Based on my experience, but you decide because it’s your team, it’s your project. You have to deliver. What, where I focus on is encouraging experimentation, right?
Encouraging free thinking and continuous learning, which is part of Agile. I also frequently post articles and Slack, Hey look, this is an interest article. Take a look to encourage.
Amir Bormand: And that’s interesting. I like that. I think that’s a really forward wave.
Forward wave thinking as your own maturation as a leader. If you were to reflect back how long did it take here? What was the journey like to [00:17:00] realize you are there to provide that oversight to understand but let the team. Drive itself. Cuz obviously sometimes as managers, especially earlier stage managers, you wanna jump in, be a part of the process.
You wanna, you still wanna get your, your time into that area cuz that was where you were most comfortable until you start realizing actually your role’s a little bit different. H how did that maturation come about for you?
Jack Kora: That’s another fun story. Yeah.
Yeah. And this is let’s say you’re a first time manager. I think there is a lot of good reasons for you to still be involved. I’m speaking from like the point of view of when you’re like VP or maybe director. I also wanna qualify right In the past, not at this job, but in past jobs, I’ve sometimes inherited teams that were like in pretty bad shape.
There I had to I absolutely, this wasn’t the right time to be like you guys decide. No. I had to step in and be a little more authoritative in saying, no, this is, let’s do this. [00:18:00] At Dsco, we have a great team, which is why I have the luxury of not being involved. But my journey, I had an interesting journey which is partly because I’ve had a lot of like bad teams in the past.
That I had to help kinda improve. And so when I joined Dsco, I had a bit of that mindset like, oh, I need to improve things quickly or need to show off, my skills and started pushing some of these ideas, like the car manufacturing book and I gotta say subconscious I felt.
The relationship with the team wasn’t going well after I started. And we ran like an employee satisfaction survey, like a pretty classic standard HR survey. And it didn’t have the best results for me, for my department, which was the big aha moment. And then the company helped to get a executive coach for me.
And [00:19:00] that’s where, It really clicked that the coach was very helpful. I’m sure you’ve heard the term servant leadership but more generically I love this it’s a really old Harvard Business Review article talking about styles of management and it’s like servant leader and it’s like authoritative leader.
And there were six styles and just like I was talking about the process and the right tools for the job, the same with management styles, right? You should have your default. And hopefully it’s not authoritative. But there is a time and a place for every management style. So at D Scout as a company, our default is servant leadership, empowering, our employees.
But let’s say there’s production incident, it’s probably when you, or maybe someone else needs to really step in and take charge and not be like too much Hey, what do you want to. So again, with management styles, it’s also important to recognize when’s the right time [00:20:00] to use what style?
Amir Bormand: Absolutely. No, I like that. That’s actually a great way to look at it cuz your toolbox has all these different. Options and what you pull up and what tool you use at the time is probably as important as anything else. Which is that, it’s paint management’s more of an art than the science cuz there is no prescriptive way of going, this is the right thing to do.
It’s experience, like you said, different teams, different level of teams. I guess as you’re like looking back on this and I’m always curious. Lessons learned and what you’ve taken away as you’ve seen, your experience in incorporating processes and, watching the changes.
Is there anything that you think you can share about, some of the, I wish I had done this differently in the past, and I do it differently now, type of moments.
Jack Kora: This was the one where I joined D Scout and started pushing for change too quickly, was definitely a huge learning moment where I realized, and it’s a funny thing cuz you know, I’ve read [00:21:00] about it a million times before that Yeah, you have to build trust before you, like really start asking people to change things, but it didn’t click right.
I guess I, I could say I didn’t have it internalized until that story, so that was a big one. And. In retrospect the changes I was pushing for were the right changes, and we’re doing some of that now, actually. So it’s not the changes I was pushing for it’s that I didn’t build trust and it’s how I was pushing for them.
So as a manager, obviously you need to be sure in what you’re asking the team to do that it’s the right thing to do, but it, a very important part is how you’re asking something more recent, I would say. More of the same around being promoting curiosity. Promoting experimentation is how you just keep your org at the cutting edge, just not letting it get too [00:22:00] static.
Cuz then once you are static, it’s hard to get going. If you are constantly doing little experiments, it’s very easy to say let’s try this. It doesn’t, didn’t work. It’s okay. We’ll go back. I
Amir Bormand: like that. That’s a good one. I think you’re right. I think. That not only within team dynamics, but human beings in general.
I think that curiosity factor is not easy to flip the switch on and off. So I think that’s a very good one you’re mentioning Jack, I was gonna say man, I could keep chatting with you. I appreciate your time. You’ve shared a ton. I love the examples. I can’t thank you enough for being on.
I like to ask every guest this question I would want to ask you as well as we’re wrapping up here. If you could ask a future guest to cover a topic that you’d be interested in hearing more about what would that be for?
Jack Kora: For me, this would be how do you scale even further? So I manage around 60 people.
But what if you’re like at 200? I’m pretty sure it’s different. Like what you do day to day is different and what you focus on. [00:23:00] So I would love to hear what’s the jump like like the next order of magnitude.
Amir Bormand: Awesome. I like that one. I think, yeah, as you go through those miles, Yeah, it’s one thing to learn on the fly.
Others have a sense of what’s coming. So I like that one a lot. If someone wants to touch base with you on anything you mentioned on the podcast or anything in general what’s a good way of getting in touch with you?
Jack Kora: I would say LinkedIn. Okay. You’re not a recruit, like if you’re not a recruiter, she tend to ignore.
I think like all of us I will respond, especially please mention the podcast. I will make sure to respond.
Amir Bormand: All right. So fair enough. Yeah, obviously we’ll post the, your LinkedIn handle in the show notes. Everyone can find it easier, but obviously we prefer it if someone reached out because of the podcast.
Jack again, thanks for being on. Thanks for sharing a super interesting topic and I appreciate your time. Yeah, thanks Amir. All right. That’s it for this episode.[00:24:00] We back again, different topic, different guests. Until then, two things. One, If you or someone you know, can talk about, some of those challenges as you scale further, if you’ve, if you’re further along within a startup, a mature startup, and you go back and think about, hey, those days of being at 50, at two 50, at 500, how those days.
Changed as a manager and as a manager and your responsibilities, I think that’d be great to cover. I think a lot of people going through that growth would love to hear about that. So reach out, let me know. I’d love to have you on. Secondly, if you found the podcast useful share it with somebody else.
That’s how the podcast has grown. We don’t do a ton of social around it. We like the organic growth. Give it a review wherever you listen to it. That’s the thing that I know they love the most to keep promoting the podcast. But other than that’s it. Back again. Thank you and goodbye.