OnThePeiroll Podcast #21 – Tokeer Ahmed Part 1

Have you ever had a conversation that was so interesting you had to schedule another one? It seems to be that way for my last few podcasts!

Episode 21 of my #podcast with Tokeer Ahmed is now out!

My old colleague from Capgemini is now Head of Functional Salesforce and I had such a great conversation.

We dig into what makes a successful project, and the critical skills that Functional Consultants need to have to be successful… such as being …

A chameleon communicator – that’s a new phrase I’ll be using from now on, Tok! 😁🦎

If you’re someone looking to level up your skills and work for a global GSI (Global Systems Integrator), then I suggest you might want to listen in on our conversation. Link 👇🏻

Enjoy!

#OnThePeiroll

Transcript

Pei Mun Lim 

Hello, Tok! Welcome to my welcome to my my podcast OnThePeiroll. How are you today?

Tok 

I’m really good. Thank you, Pei. And thank you very much for having me on.

Pei Mun Lim 

I actually quite excited to see because I haven’t seen you in quite a while even though we’ve kind of connected every so often on LinkedIn. But we work together at Cap, and I really enjoyed working with you. Yeah, likewise. But let me let me allow you the opportunity to get into it. Because just as I start every podcast is I’m very interested in my guest. And the first place to begin is Tell me about your journey about your career and how you got to where you are today, which is head of the UK functional Salesforce division within Capgemini.

Tok 

Yeah, so I guess pay if I, if I take it back to two when I graduated, right. So I graduated in 2004. with a degree in computer science, and it was probably a lot, a lot different back in, back in 2004. But But yeah, so you know, new, new, new graduate looking for opportunities, you know, in the kind of it, you know, industry in this sector, etc. And I happen to actually apply for lots and lots of jobs, just like all graduates do. Got some, got a fair bit of rejections. Got few interviews, and eventually, I ended up working for Stanley Black and Decker. So they’re the they’re the children come, Howard. That’s it. Yeah. So it was their kind of internal IT department. At a plant that was based in based in Birmingham, which is from my accent, you can probably tell that that’s where I’m from. Right. So yeah, so internal IT team. And I was primarily doing kind of tech support. Right. So that’s what how I spent my initial couple of years kind of doing that kind of day to day tech support, you know, software hardware. And there was a lot more hardware back then as well, as opposed to as opposed to now, right. So, you know, lots of light kick to look after. And then I guess, a couple of years into the role, I started to go more towards a kind of like, analyst type role. So it was like tech support. And unlike analysts, and started looking at some of their systems that they used, you know, internally know, the story goes with Salesforce, is that there was a guy that worked in the same company in the same department, right? And he was going to look after this implementation of this snazzy new CRM tool. Right. And he was going to be, I guess, the the company was split across Europe. And we had, we had various departments across all of Europe, right? So he was going to look after the sales force kind of implementation for just for just the UK. Right. And the story goes that a month before the project was about to kick off, the guy decided to leave the company. Right? Which at that point, the powers that be at that company said, Oh, talk, actually, you wanted to get more involved from like a, you know, a kind of software, you know, business change perspective. This was one of your things that you were talking about around career progression, how’d you feel about doing this? And I was like, straight on it. Brilliant, you know? Absolutely. I would love to do so. So that’s kind of how I got got on board, not having any idea what Salesforce was, etc. So, it was a very kind of, I guess the learning curve was quite intense. Because I had to really get up to speed around what Salesforce was. And back then it was primarily Sales Cloud. So we’re looking at 2007. And it was primarily a Sales Cloud implementation. So yeah, that’s how I kind of got got into Salesforce, I ended up being the Salesforce administrator. And I also ended up implementing our, you know, our, I guess, functionality to some of all the other European countries as well within that company. So I ended up owning quite a lot of the Salesforce implementation in that company. Which, which probably leads me to like around 2011. So spent spent about three or four years kind of owning that implementation. And then unfortunately, they decided to close that particular plant in Birmingham. So why was coming up to like, a redundancy, essentially? Right. And then I guess, it’s just, I guess it’s weird, right? How I sometimes think of the film sliding doors with Gwyneth Paltrow. Because it’s always really weird how certain decisions that you make in your life. And then sometimes, you know, the consequences are, like, very different, right? Because so there was this random call that happened. And it was late 2011, when somebody called me and and basically said, Look, Salesforce is like a really boom market at the moment, we can see that you are a Salesforce admin, but what we’re finding is a lot of Salesforce admins are actually, you know, looking to become consultants as well. Right. So how would you feel about going into consultancy? And I was quite nervous, right, because I thought, well, I know the product, you know, I, you know, I can deal with the products etc. I’m not quite sure about, you know, like implementing it on on from a consultancy perspective. So, I guess long story short, that’s how I that’s how my journey with Capgemini began. So it was in 2012, successfully got in as, as a I would say, almost almost a junior founder consultant, in 2012. And then started working with like, helping clients to actually implement Salesforce. And I think the naivety back then was that I think back then, I did not realize that all the skills and all I guess, my, my kind of communication skills that I’ve got my kind of appetite to kind of help people, etc. All that I used to do right back in my previous role. And I think the naivety back then was that how easy it was to translate that into a consultancy, right? Because actually, what I actually found out quite quickly, was actually, I did I’ve been doing all this for years, right? But just with one particular company, and what was now really exciting was that I got the opportunity to do with lots of different companies, right, as part of a console as part of a consultancy, and also kind of guide people. And something that you can probably tell right I’m really passionate about, and I love that I love looking at, like the problem helping people. And then that for me, the cherry on top is always that when when you see the end, product and the and the result, right. And you can literally like walk away and feel really good that actually, can you remember when that client was at that literally at ground zero, and now they’ve got this whole shiny kind of Salesforce instance. So sorry, I know I’ve just dive very much early diverted from your initial question, but yeah, I guess that’s, that’s my kind of journey into Salesforce and my continuing journey in Salesforce. No, it’s

Pei Mun Lim 

okay. I love it, though. I love that. Your natural passion comes out when you’re answering the questions and that’s absolutely fine. So you’re saying that the transition was an easy one from an employee To consulting, would you say that you’re, you found it quite easy because of the skills that you picked up? Is that any different anything surprised you? at all?

Tok 

Yeah. So so I think I think everyone’s probably going to have a slightly different journey. Right. And I think for me, because I was quite young, because I’m quite a people person. Right. And what I, you know, I admit, what I do is I heavily rely on that. So that that’s how I love to make the connections. Right. So, and I think consultancy, a lot of it is is exactly that, right? It’s making that connection. And, like, that’s how you kind of build that your trust with somebody. Right? And you might and, you know, you get that safe feeling. And the trusted pair of hands. And, and I think, and I again, I think naively, I didn’t realize that I already did that. Right? previously. So I think that was probably why I felt it quite easy from from that perspective, where I think to answer your question pay were probably was a challenge was, I think, some of the kind of when I initially started some of the big name clients that we had, right. And I think there was a bit of nervousness around that. Because you’d sometimes turn up to meetings, and you’d be a little bit, you know, either almost feel a little bit like imposter syndrome, right? It’s like, it’s like, wow, okay, they’re asking, I’m like, What to back then I was like, watch, like, you know, 2930 or whatever. Right? And it’s like, you know, you know, they’re these clients are asking me for my opinion, right. So, you know, I would say, but there always be that element where you think will say if I say something that that’s not right, right, or say if I advise on something that that’s not right. So I think there was a little bit of pressure around that. And I guess something that we all find a little bit challenging. Anyway, we Salesforce even even now, is that there’s so much of it. And there’s so much functionality, that what I’ve learned to live with now, is that actually, you’re not going to know that A to Zed of every single thing about Salesforce. Right? And I think back then, if I was to tell my, you know, previous self, it would be that’s okay. Right. But But I think again, naively Back then, I would like think, Oh, no, but stay fast. Ask me about forecasting in reports. I haven’t got a clue. Right? To be fair, seek slight secret, I still haven’t got a clue. But you know what I mean? And I think back then I would kind of like, get quite worried that say if this comes up, but I don’t know, where is now? I, you know, I think it’s it’s realistic, right? To think that you’re not going to know the H A Zed? and and you know, you can you can take it away and investigate. And actually, that’s the fun part. Because you can take it away. And you can actually say, you know, I spent a couple of days looking at that. And this is what I think, you know, this is how I think Salesforce might might kind of help you know, there’s

Pei Mun Lim 

really good, there’s a lot to unpack there. So if you allow me to do so. And you’ve you’ve strayed into a territory that I find really fascinating, in something that I’ve been talking about recently, which is around emotional intelligence, especially around consulting. And it sounds like this is a skill that you already had. And when you use the phrase earlier on, if I might paraphrase, you said, You leaned very heavily on the fact that you’re a people person to kind of get by in the consulting world when you transition. And then you went on to say, Well, actually, that’s the biggest part of it. I think there’s something that I agree very strongly that what makes us truly and deeply successful in what we do is the people part of it, and not just for consulting. But I think that’s true of any role. The connection and safety as you’re talking about, that you create with your client, and with your team allows you and everyone around you to achieve so much more and the competence or the ability or the knowledge base is important, but not as important as what a lot of people think. So just, you know, going in from that, I’m just going to stray out a little bit and out and bring it back into what you were talking about, which is if you look at the job descriptions for Salesforce nowadays, why do you think that such a big emphasis is on the hard skills, all the things you must know, and the soft skills which are so critically important? Rock Bottom as an afterthought, like, you know, being able to work well with teams, able to be responsible, blah, blah, blah, but it’s a few one lines, why do you think there’s still an emphasis on hard skills over soft skills?

Tok 

Your I think, again, I think a part of it is like, it’s like that conflict? I think that the as, as I guess, recruiters, or people that deal deal with resourcing, I think it’s like having that comfort that people know about the product? And I think a lot of it is, is is on that, right? And I guess, as the years have gone by, especially the last, I guess, three to four years, you know, there’s been a huge increase in in certifications, as well. Right. And, and, you know, there’s been an emphasis around, you know, really, really knowing knowing that product, right. But, um, I’m going to, I mentioned the certifications, because what I find pay is that sometimes, that’s, that’s not it, though, right? So you can, you can have somebody that that might have 25 certifications, right? And you’ll think, brilliant, you know, this, this person is going to be fantastic, right? And then actually, when you kind of get into a conversation with them, it turns out that they are very much textbook, right. And then when you try to kind of delve into the consultancy aspect, that’s where, to your point, pay the things that you were mentioning, at the you know, at the bottom of that list, that’s where you suddenly start seeing that the application of that isn’t happening. Right. So it’s all very, it is all very textbook. I do think it’s, it’s primarily because people want to have that comfort that people know the product. But I think the bit that people sometimes aren’t realizing is that in order to apply the knowledge, you need to have all of the other skill set as well. So you could know it all in your head. Yeah. And you could be you could be Einstein, right? No pun intended. Right. So you could be Einstein, right? But if you can’t then apply it and speak Salesforce, to potentially a person that has never heard of it before. Right? I think that that’s where I think that’s where sometimes on paper, and stuff like that is missed, right? Because it’s very, it’s a challeng e, right? It’s very hard to kind of formulate that and put it into a bullet point, right. It’s almost like saying The X Factor over you know, you can’t you can’t really say that. And I think that’s why sometimes on paper, particularly when you look at job roles, etc, you know, the E, somebody can just read that as communication skills. And that will be it right? And if I saw that, I’d be like, Wow, that is such an oversight to communication skills, if I ever saw somebody just right. have good communication skills, right? It’s all about perception, right? Somebody could walk away and think good communication skills means I can just read off a page and that’s it. Right? And then another person might actually think no good communication skills is, you know, how do you get that trust? How do you, you know, take a client on that journey. Right. And so yeah, I think on paper, to your point, Peggy’s, I think the perception sometimes that that’s where it can get get a bit confusing, right. And Pete, people read that bullet point and just think, yeah, I’ve got good communication skills, because that’s all it said, right. And there’s no elaboration of actually what is what is good communication,

Pei Mun Lim 

right? Absolutely, I think that’s, that’s, that’s doing a disservice by to the candidate and to the company itself, because it’s so much more anything that makes a consultant. I like the fact that he said X Factor. I didn’t think about it that terms before. But you’re right, that’s something that is very difficult to articulate in terms of what makes a really good consultant. And he also mentioned imposter syndrome. So I’ve spoken to quite a few people on my podcast, quite a few directors at Salesforce. And this is something they mentioned as well. And I don’t think it’s escapes us, it’s, I feel that anyone who encounters this feeling, are actually very conscientious and care very deeply about quality of the work that they produce. And if anyone don’t feel like that they’ve either reached the pinnacle of being incredibly self aware. Or they’re just not that good as they think they are. So

Tok 

and to be fair, paid something that I only realized, probably end of last year, starting this year. So I’ll wholeheartedly admit this, right, being completely honest, is that that imposter, how to deal with the imposter kind of syndrome situations is something that the penny only dropped, like, very early this year, where I had a bit of coaching, right? And, and the the kind of result of that coaching was actually exactly how you’ve just said pay it, it’s it’s not likely, it’s not a bad thing. It’s actually, you know, somebody is actually thinking it through, you know, it shows that somebody is actually thinking it through kind of milestone and get in their head. Yeah. And also, it’s, it’s, it’s what you do next, that counts. So even if you do get it, it’s like, okay, it’s there. But so what, right, it’s like, if you let it affect you, it’s a ways of managing it, right? That is actually what what you might need to do. So having it there, I don’t think is an issue. How do you manage it? So I have my internal voice. And I manage it by actually turning it around and saying, okay, so why have you flagged to this? And is there anything that you might need to just highlight buck, you know, as a one liner, just to kind of, you know, make sure that you know, you’re aligned, or, you know, just just do that kind of temperature check, right? So, if you know, your body’s obviously, you know, alarmed you for a reason. So, do a temperature check? Yeah. And then Normally, I kind of do the internal voice and just say, No, it’s just because, you know, you’re being a bit too cautious in your mind. So carry on, you’re on the right track, you’re the trusted one, etc. So I do use a lot of my internal voice. You usually to kind of deal with it.

Pei Mun Lim 

Excellent stuff. just just just extending the, what you were saying about how you felt you said, you felt you had the imposter syndrome is when you first started and you were in meetings with big clients, big logos, and felt like oh, you know, they’re asking for my advice. And I think when I when I first started out, it was a bit like that. And also the fact that there’s a question in my head. Am I good enough to play with the big boys as well? There is that in my head, but from the experience that I’ve had, is that every company has their own issues the same time, there’s still how I think to myself is even if I was speaking to the queen, she still has to work the shoe my trousers. Sure, I’m sure. I’m sure. I’m sure she does, at some point in her day. She still has to put one foot in before the other just like the rest of us. And I think, for me, that’s a way that I deal with it. And I’ve had some meetings with people who have been quite what I felt was out of my league in that’s how I kind of deal with my imposter syndrome. Oh my god. I’m rushing be here, they’re all really big weights. But when when you talk to them, they’re still kind of able to, they’re not as intimidating as my voice told me beforehand. Absolutely. Thank you for letting me share that. And so we’ve done projects together. And we’ve also done projects outside, you know, experience. And we’re now on a topic that I am really passionate about. Can you share with me, you don’t have to give names or anything like some projects have been truly character building, that you’ve taken some lessons of went from it, because it was quite challenging, or it was very tough in different ways. Are there some stories you can tell us about that?

Tok 

Yeah, absolutely. So I guess, one of them was around a kind of utilities client that that we had. And, again, right, so they were very new to Salesforce. And it was, you know, a new client that we had as well, a kind of a kind of new new logo, so to speak. And I think, for that particular one, it was getting the kind of buying and the alignment, right, which is really key. So what I guess what we always should have in kind of larger implementations is that you want a kind of specified product owner, right, who is kind of empowered into, you know, be the be that decision maker. Right. And as an as I guess, a consultancy, you know, we are, you know, assisting them in that journey. And, you know, they might be they might have never have done it before, right? In most cases, they probably haven’t. Right. But, you know, we’re there to kind of guide them. And I think one of those experiences was the fact that there was the lack of that, that ownership, right. And then it almost became like, a bit like too many cooks, right? Because on kind of these larger scale implementations, it is absolutely key that you have somebody that, you know, the kind of book stops with, right? Who can then basically say, when there’s like, you know, seven or eight people’s kind of requirements, and everyone is saying, My requirement is the best one, no, my requirement is the best one, right? You need somebody that can that can basically, you know, take that as the kind of executive decision and say, actually, all your requirements are gray. But I’m actually going to take a, b and c first, and then we’ll do D, E and F. Right. And that’s it, right? decision made. And I think that was a really good example of where we didn’t have that. And then there were a lot of challenges, we had identified that we needed that person, got that person in, collaborated with them, coach them. And the end result was actually, after 910 months, implementation was really well, and they had, you know, and they had a really high, you know, uptake of Salesforce. So I guess that that’s, that’s one that springs to mind. character building for me, I think, having to kind of deal with lots of different people with, I guess, strong opinions. So for me, it was literally, I mean, I have to admit, sometimes I just felt like man in the middle, right. And I think that’s what a lot of functional roles usually are, right? But this one felt so much that was a man in the middle all the time. And I was, you know, going in between different teams, but great character building, really good experience. You know, at the end of it did lots of hours as well, we can working all of that stuff, right? Which at the time, you know, was was a bit of a challenge. But when after you look at the 910 months, you know, it is something that I still go back to now, and think actually, you know, how did I deal with that situation? Let’s Let’s Let’s go back, you know, and kind of just think about how we could apply that for the for the better in in future roles, I guess.

Pei Mun Lim 

You said interesting phrase, I’d like to flesh it out a bit more when you say man minimum as functional consultant, can you just provide some context? And some more examples for the listeners, please?

Tok 

Yeah, absolutely. So what’s really important, I guess, in the functional space, is is that you need to be able to collaborate with various stakeholders, right? Now, those can be directly with a business, right? People that will not know anything to do with Salesforce, right? So you need to be able to, you know, get requirements from said people, yeah, be able to kind of understand them from a business perspective. But then you apply what I call like the Salesforce filter on right. So then you you start to kind of augment them into how will this look in Salesforce? Right. So that so that’s the first kind of, I think that’s the first key part where you are the person in the middle, right? Because what you’re then doing is you’re kind of potentially going to a Salesforce architect, or a Salesforce tech team. Yeah. And you’re actually saying, right, these, these are the requirements. This is what I think a solution could look like, out of box. Yeah. What is your kind of guidance on this? What are the, you know, dependencies, etc, right? What what are the risks of doing this way? Right? So straightaway there, you have that you’re in the middle, right? Because you’ve got your business, and then you’ve got architects and technical teams, right. So from a initial solution perspective, you are the person that’s then going to have to speak the speak with the architect to make sure that they understand exactly what the requirement is. But then you have to go back to the client and go, Hello, Mr. Beast, Mr. or Mrs. Business, right? This is how Salesforce is going to look for you. And look, you know, your requirements have been fulfilled. And look, it’s it’s adding that business value, right. So I guess that that’s the kind of first part secondary to that is there are other teams as well involved, particularly in larger implementations of Salesforce, which are, for example, once the solution has been made, then you might have a whole development team. And sometimes that development team is in a different country, right. And then after that development team, the solution might get tested. And then you might have a whole testing team, right. And, again, that testing team might not be in the same country. So again, you’ve now got another two teams, where the functional role is so critical, because you’re you’re primarily doing the same thing, right? You’re relaying requirements solution to particular teams, right? But the way in which you orchestrate that and back to that team, you almost have to be a chameleon, right? Because you have to use slightly different skill, slightly different way of communicating, right? Because, you know, with a technical team, you might have to actually go a little bit further under the bonnet, right, and talk a little bit more about Salesforce, which you wouldn’t do back to the client, right? You would never say to a client, I’ve built this particular item in a in a in a process builder. And, you know, I remember to check that little little flag that checks back that it’s not clashing with that, because the client would basically say, you know, that that’s, that’s pointless information for me, right. But that’s something that you might have to mention to a technical team. And you’d probably would mention it to an architect because we all know architects, you know, want to have that bird’s eye view. Right? So I guess yeah, it’s, it’s been that kind of chameleon I guess. Making sure making sure you know who your audiences is very key, I think to being a successful functional consultant.

Pei Mun Lim 

You just made my mind just pinged so many different directions with Sorry, no, no, no, no, no, don’t be sorry, it just actually means that we need part two of the podcast because I can’t fit all my questions in this one. But if you if you allow me to indulge my curiosity here, hmm, one of my very favorite topics is around methodologies. And I know that at Capgemini, you’ve worked on medium to really large projects. One of the things that I’ve always kind of said is that methodology is fine. So waterfall is fairly outdated in the way that it was practiced. But Prince, pure agile works in some situations. And the examples that come to mind are if you’re a product company, like Salesforce, potentially, and you are incrementally in continuously providing value through releases. However, from a consulting engagement point of view, it kind of has to be a hybrid is my opinion. But I’m always open to being wrong. So I know that at cap, I haven’t had I haven’t had the opportunity when I was there to work on any of the large scale projects that were scaled agile, for example, have you been involved in any of these have projects that has been agile in the way that it’s been conceived? Or were they more hybrid? That’s what I like to

Tok 

use. So it’s probably more of a hybrid, I would have thought, with a lot of Agile with a lot of Agile flavor two, right. So I think, I think what works really well, and what has worked on some of the larger scale implementations is the part where you build test, deploy, right, so that that kind of piece, or or I should kindly say, build test, kind of play back. Right. So that that kind of piece, I think, works really well. In in that kind of add with that agile mindset. And, you know, a lot of the kinds of successful projects. If I think about them, they’ve had, they’ve had that kind of loop, right? where, you know, you’ve got a set of requirements that have been shaped to really well got some really good acceptance criteria that’s been augmented correctly, with with the client product owner, very key, like I said before, once that bits done, I think the build kind of test and deploy part that the I would say is, is the bit of you know, that, I find that I think that from the Agile perspective, very, very key, and something that has been used in our engagements to success. Because you want to have that you want to be able to increment on on a build, right? You want to be able to showcase. Yeah. And you want to be able to show value back to a business quite quickly, right? to kind of say, actually, look, this was part of the problem. Yeah, this was part of the problem statement. But within two months, actually, this, this piece of functionality, he’s actually going to solve quite a large chunk of what your problem statement was. So look at the business value. And I think that’s really important, particularly in the, the in the kind of market that we, you know, or I guess the world that we live in today, right? We have so much choice, right? When you go into a supermarket, etc, there’s so much choice, but I think we’ve become a society where we want, we want the quick wins, right? We want instant, right? We want to press the button. It’s like the vending machine mentality, right? We literally, you know, see the vending machine. And, you know, we we look at the item and then straight away Oh, product in hand. And we and we run away, right? without really happy with our product in hand. And I think from from an implementation perspective, I think that’s what a lot of businesses want. And I think what agile allows you to do is really showcase that

Pei Mun Lim 

I fully embrace that concept because as you say, when they see the value, then you get the buy in. And it’s quite a lovely virtuous cycle. Where I’m trying to get to is a couple of things. One is I think, so I, you know, I just want a perspective on this from a consulting engagement point of view, those build, test and deploy, iterations are wrapped with a discovery upfront, in an overarching planning, especially if it’s an enterprise program, where you’ve got multiple partners, and potentially quite a bit UAT to testing at the end before a full blown deployment. Whereas internally, you could have that small BDT iterations to show the improvements. So that’s kind of where I want to get to, I feel that for larger implementation, it’s quite hard to, to hold on to the principles of you one of the principles of Agile is they welcome change at every stage, in some times I feel changes have cost impact, and it ripples through so you might have your iteration now. And if they change their minds later on, to make that corrections elsewhere, it might accrue more technical debt. So do you still see that in a large implementation? Or is there something I’m missing in how they implemented where you don’t get that situations at all?

Tok 

Yeah, so absolutely, by so it is a challenge to kind of work with with that hybrid model. But I think there’s two things there. Right. So the first thing is, the bit I mentioned around having those fully augmented kind of requirements, acceptance, where I keep criteria, making sure that your product owner is completely on board. Right. So that is absolutely key to have before you go into a build. Right. The other thing is, is what there should be an upfront definition around zero to about 5 around the change element that you mentioned. Right? So it should be – You can do some tweaks, but it can’t be, you know, going from a square to a circle, right? Perhaps you might make this square into a rectangle, maybe. Right. But it can’t become a circle. Right? So I think those two things are very key. But I agree with you pay on larger scale implementations, it can be a challenge, if you don’t have that, right. Because then what you don’t want to have, is that what you said, at the start with all your requirements, ends up actually being like, you know, a number of CRS, a number of change requests at the end, because actually, the requirements have suddenly just become a completely different beast. Right to what you originally thought. But I, I would say, again, is that from a governance perspective, it would be silly not to have those checkpoints right. Throughout throughout the months, because you can’t, you can’t in all realistic, you know, purposes go from one piece to another, right? It might have just got tweaked along the way slightly, but it can’t be two different things. So I would question the governance on those types of programs, if it did become something completely different. Because surely in like month two or three, you should have clicked on that this isn’t what we originally thought, right? And that’s when, you know, I know, from from your project, experience day, that’s when you would replan, right. Because the plans not not not go right. So that’s when you’d start replanning. I think, what would you be, you know, what would be the biggest challenge and not particularly a great experience is is like if you only found that out without any alarm bells, like from one month one to like, month nine. You know that that wouldn’t really be a great experience. I don’t think

Pei Mun Lim 

Think thank you for that, actually, because you’ve added a couple more, you’ve added a lot more context that allows me to frame that in my mind in in a better way. So the two things that you’ve mentioned are basically more solid requirements that are based on a tighter collaboration with product owner in the business to solidify what they really want. You talked about well developed user stories, and really solid an accurate acceptance criteria. And that’s key, I think a lot of people don’t do that well enough. And a lot of people think, or they understand agile in a very surface in a very shallow manner, and just take the 12 principles at face value, oh, you know, I can change my mind next week, I can change the data type, or I can change different fields that I want, and etc, and not realizing there’s so much impact on data migration, and integration, and so on, so forth. And as you say, potentially change the beast. And without that sort of clarity, so one was really tight understanding of the requirements. And secondly, I want to say governance, but it wasn’t governance. It was something. Secondly, it was the I’m trying to think what I actually said, secondly, it was being able to last now, we’ll go the transcript. But I think I think that’s it, it’s just really understanding of what the requirements are. Isn’t it a problem definition? Yeah, absolutely. Got it. So Secondly, it was the allowance of change between zero

Tok 

to five? Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. And some something around that. Because, you know, you need to, you can do the tweaks, but you need to have a boundary, right. And where I mentioned about square, potentially becoming a rectangle, but it can’t become a circle, right.

Pei Mun Lim 

So if you if it was that way, I think that there was a problem right in front in identifying what the issues were. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. You know, what, I was having so much fun, and I just looked at the time, and I want to be very mindful and very respectful. I have a whole bunch of questions that I want to get into, would it be okay to have a pot to the absolutely up. So I would love that. So, so much. There’s quite a lot of things. Just to delve into your current role and how you got here and what shaped your values, which are the things that I find most fascinating and interesting. But for today, thank you so much. I, like I said, you know, Henry lies the time. I just really enjoyed it so much. Thank you for sharing us part of your journey, which we’ll go into in a second session at some point when you’re able to make some time for me. So I appreciate the opportunity to talk to you topic that I’ve missed quite a bit. how brilliant Thank you. Bye. Thanks very much for having me. It’s really great to speak to you again. Fantastic. There will be a part two