In this episode of the Scrum.org Community Podcast – Value Delivered Series, host Dave West is joined by Carmit Ophir, Senior Director at StoreDot, and Professional Scrum Trainer Michal Epstein to explore how StoreDot leveraged Professional Scrum to tackle the complex challenges of developing ultra-fast-charging batteries for electric vehicles.
Faced with low collaboration and siloed teams of chemists, engineers, and system experts, StoreDot turned to Scrum to foster transparency, cross-functional teamwork, and faster feedback loops. The results? Accelerated innovation, milestones delivered ahead of schedule, and a cultural shift driven by leadership support and a commitment to continuous improvement.
Whether you’re navigating R&D in a highly technical space or looking to drive transformation in your organization, this conversation is full of insights and practical advice.
Key Takeaways:
- Why R&D teams can embrace agility
- The importance of leadership support in Scrum adoption
- How a culture of feedback and experimentation accelerates value delivery
Tune in to hear how StoreDot is literally charging ahead with Scrum.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Lindsay Velecina (00:00):
Music. Welcome to the scrum.org community
(00:04):
podcast, a podcast from the homeof Scrum. In this podcast, we
feature professional scrumtrainers and other scrum
practitioners sharing theirstories and experiences to help
learn from the experience ofothers. We hope you enjoy this
episode.
Dave West (00:20):
Hello and welcome to the scrum.org community podcast.
I'm your host. Dave West, CEO,here@scrum.org in today's
podcast, we're very lucky,because we're going to be
talking to store dot limitedabout how they use professional
scrum to develop fast chargingbatteries for electric cars. Now
I'm an electric car drivers. SoI feel the pain. Actually, my
(00:43):
children and my wife feel thepain more. I love being able to
sit for an hour and doabsolutely nothing, but they get
very grumpy with me and and italways causes fights. So so I'm
really excited that we've beenable to help store dot really
improve how they delivered theirelectric batteries, fast
(01:05):
charging, electric batteries, sobut, you know, I don't know much
about what's happening@store.soI'm lucky to have to be joined
today by kameet offer a seniordirector R and D program manager
at store. Dot, welcome to thepodcast. Comment,
Carmit Ophir (01:25):
Hi, how are you?
Dave West (01:26):
I'm good, all the better for seeing you today and
and we're also lucky to haveMikhail Epstein, a professional
scrum trainer who worked withstore. Dot, welcome to the
podcast.
Michal Epstein (01:38):
Macau, thank you, Dave, nice to be here. It's
Dave West (01:42):
awesome that you could both take the time.
Because I'm super, you know,interested in the application of
professional scrum in real worldcontext, obviously, but, but
also in these sort of high techR and D science sort of context.
Because I do see, and we've hada few podcasts on this, you
(02:04):
know, I do see organizationsreally benefiting from
professional scrummorg in thosein those scenarios. So for our
listeners and coming you'llprobably be the best person to
set the scene. Our listenerswould really like to know a
little bit about store dot andwhat you do and and
Carmit Ophir (02:22):
bit of context.
Okay, so, first of all, we arestartup. We are located in
mainly in Israel, with the smallARD branch in USA, total of just
112 workers. And we aredeveloping the chemistry, the
(02:43):
chemistry level of cells,battery cells for extreme fast
charging of electrical electricvehicles, like 100 miles in five
minutes of charge. This is thisneeds a really out of the box
thinking a lot of innovation,just like inventing new
(03:11):
chemistries altogether. So tell
Dave West (03:16):
me a little bit about the composition of the company.
Is it? There's chemists, there'sengineers, there's people that
know a lot about electricvehicle stuff, who you know? Who
are those 100 people? Yeah, so
Carmit Ophir (03:30):
we, most of the company, composing the R and D
unit, which we have, chemistry,a synthetic of material
formulation, development a celldesign, development of cycling
(03:53):
procedures and engineers thatdevelop the cell packing itself
the level of its ability tointroduce into existing BMS and
battery packs that have existingcars. So system engineers, we
(04:18):
have process development becausewe need to mix all these
materials and and this isnatural. Wow.
Dave West (04:29):
So the reason why I just wanted to lean into that
for a second was because it'snot just a bunch of software
engineers wandering around,which is obviously where scrum
often is. You're talking aboutthe whole gamut from like,
really serious chemists, youknow, super like interesting
characters there, I'm sure, allthe way through to systems
(04:51):
engineers and process engineerswho are very, very different
from chemists and from, youknow. So you've got a very, very
varied or. Audience, as it were,which is, which is super, super
interesting. So all right, nowyou've got all these people that
they're building the nextgeneration of battery
technology. What were thechallenges? Why did you think
(05:15):
you know what we need? We need adifferent way of working. Let's
look at Scrum. What were thechallenges you faced? Yeah, so
Carmit Ophir (05:22):
first of all, you can understand that the level of
uncertainty is huge becauseyou're inventing materials, and
you don't know how they willconnect and how they will work
together. And at the beginning,started was a was built as
professional teams working inpower on we had the general
(05:46):
requirements, and they worked inParliament, solutions and
different different parts of thebattery. What we what we face,
is that in some cases, thesesolutions were not working
together, and we discovered itin, like very, very late in the
in the for in the progress, likemonths after the development has
(06:10):
been progressed, because therethese were professional teams
that worked in parallel. So thelevel of collaboration was very,
very low data sharing betweenteams. Feedbacks of concerns
were raised very late in thedevelopment stages like flex,
(06:31):
that could have been raised muchearlier, low level of
transparency of what is going onat every second moment, what are
the results in real time?
Because we were like meetingonce in a quarter to review the
results, like in the waterfallscheme of project management,
(06:54):
each of the each of theseprofessional teams had dominant
managers setting the tones whichexperiment what we're going to
do. So we had like 85researchers. But in practice,
like five were setting the tonesof instead of using all the
(07:16):
minds that are available. For meas a program manager, it was
very, very hard to prioritizeand manage the resources,
different tasks, and it wasvery, very hard to measure the
progress, because we managedmeasured it only once in and an
(07:39):
impact of all these challengeswith we suffered from continuous
delays in the timelines andachievement and achievement of
the masters.
Dave West (07:55):
Yeah, so, I mean, so you had these domain specialist
sort of teams, you know, whetherit's some sort of Chem,
chemistry for some part of theprocess, or whatever. And each
of those had their own sort ofagendas and leadership, and R
and D was being driven by a few,a few people, five you say that
(08:16):
are actually making decisionsabout the experiments you're
going to focus on. Yeah, thatit's funny, as you were saying
that we did this podcast with acompany called Dino
therapeutics. They're usingmachine learning and genetic
CRISPR technology, not justCRISPR now, but every knows
CRISPR, sort of genetic stuff.
And they had exactly the sameproblem. They that was exactly,
(08:38):
I mean, obviously doingsomething slightly different
biology rather than chemistry, Iguess, though, at the end of the
day, I think it's all chemistry,but that's, that's another
topic. And so, you know, theywere, they're focused on these
real, really horrible geneticdiseases. And, you know, they
(08:58):
just couldn't all work together,so they built an organization.
They changed the organizationbecause of that, and use
professional Scrum. Mikhail, youyou were, yeah, you were there.
Tell, tell me your perspectiveas you, as you first came into
store. Dot, yeah,
Michal Epstein (09:17):
so as you said, it's not a software company. I
have a lot of experience with aapplying agility in software, a
in the software industry, butthen I came to them, and they
speak chemics, and I don't speakthe language of chemics,
although already, I alreadyspeak a little bit now. But then
(09:38):
I didn't know anything aboutthat, and it was really hard,
because I can compare it to theto the medicine to medicine.
Okay, it's like having aoncologist and cardiologist and
an orthopedic working alltogether. They are all doctors.
They are all looking at the samehuman body, and yet they speak
(09:58):
totally different languages. Andit's really hard to understand
the impact of one domain toanother. And so I think it was
a, it was a very a difficult andimportant challenge, but
eventually, I think we weresuccessful to overcome it. And
committee will talk more aboutthat?
Dave West (10:21):
Yes. So you built cross functional I assume, and
obviously this is sort of likethe maybe later on in the story,
but I want to get here quitequickly. So you built cross
functional teams, I assume,across all these domains. How
did you organize? I mean, that'sreally, really challenging when
you've got specialists whohistorically always want to work
(10:43):
with specialists. So tell me alittle bit about when you
started introducing the ideas ofScrum, some of the main changes
that that you put in place.
Carmit Ophir (10:53):
Yes, so first of all, the concept of
representatives from thedifferent domains in the same
team. Was not very natural foreveryone and but really, really
fast they understood, they, theyhave a mutual target and a
(11:19):
mutual goal, and they understandthe benefit of working together
and understanding the gapstogether. And actually,
collaboration was likeskyrocketing, like, very, very
fast. So very, very fast, thedifferent domains, the
(11:44):
professional domains, workingtogether in teams, understand
the level of benefit that theycan get from one another and the
collaboration and thetransparency and the aspects
that different professionalteams could give as feedbacks
(12:08):
for results of the differentdomain, the collaboration and
transparency. Transparency leveljust like skyrocket. And the
amazing thing was that one ofthe things that the developers
said that they felt as if thepower, the innovation, the
(12:32):
thinking was shifted towardsthem, instead of like getting a
the ideas from their managersand they and the feeling of
contribution was amazing. Theyfelt like they are part of the
company. They are now an activeparticipant.
Dave West (12:56):
It's so funny you say that comment, because the reason
why I love scrum isn't, youknow, because we can deliver
amazing products. I mean, yes, Ido like that. It isn't because,
you know, we're empirical allthat. Yes, that's all great,
too. It's because of theempowerment. When I've seen
really effective Scrum teams,they sort of break down the
(13:20):
traditional barriers of who'son, who's in charge, but who's
who's delivering value, youknow, that sort of classical the
manager, and then the people areworking for that, and they're
doing it all changes. But inscience, that can be
challenging, because people,there's a lot of hierarchy in
science, right? Did that? Didyou is that did you? When I was
(13:44):
talking to Dino, one of thebiggest challenges they had was
traditional research scientistsfrom Harvard and MIT were very
sort of like they like to holdtheir cards quite close to the
chest and do the experiments andonly really talk about it
openly, if it's been successful,really, which caused some
(14:04):
issues. Did you have similarproblems come out? I
Michal Epstein (14:07):
have to say that as their consultant, I saw the
difficulty of the seniorresearchers that were previously
the managers of the domains. Itwas very difficult for them to
support and consult their teams.
The junior researcher other thantell them what to do. However,
(14:28):
the other researchers that oneof the most prominent things
that happened very fast in theprocess, is that all the
researchers, or at least themajority of them, really felt
they have an impact on thefuture product. Everybody came
(14:48):
to me, and I remember that oncethe VP of A, R and D, A, told me
that their CEO entered his roomand asked. Team, can you tell me
what's going on here? And hesaid, What do you mean? And he
said, I see everybody huddling,gathering together in the
kitchen, talk to each other. Ihaven't seen this movement in
(15:08):
the office before, before that.
And he said, Well, it's actuallycan be seen the collaboration
between the people that theAgile transformation did there.
So what did you do with
Dave West (15:22):
those senior science researchers? How did they? How
did they come around? It took.
It took quite a while at Dino, Imean, and it took some
incentives. It took, it took alot of cajoling, a little bit of
mass sergeant of egos. There wasall sorts of things. How did you
how did they come around? Yeah,so
Carmit Ophir (15:45):
there were some difficulties at the beginning,
but quite fast, the teamleaders, the professional team
leaders, they understood thattheir contribution is profound.
Through their developers, theybecame a professional mentors.
(16:10):
Also I as a product owner, Ikeep coming to them. I ask them,
I need you to address this gap.
Please talk with your team.
Think of ideas. I continuously,you know, recruit them to be
our, our support, supportsystem, and in reflection to
(16:35):
what you said about that, thatresearchers doesn't want it,
don't want to share bad results.
This is also a process that wetalked about. What is an
increment, even understanding ifsomething doesn't work, this is
an increment, and it's somethingthat we continuously say to the
(16:55):
researchers, please come withbad results, bad in like
brackets, because this isincrements in science, something
that doesn't work. It's data,and they, they constantly
understand that, and they bringall the results to the table,
(17:16):
and we discuss everything veryopenly, and there's no just,
there's almost no hiding ofresults or or some and I think
that also the in terms of theunderstanding that we are all
part of one product, nobodyfeels as if he holds the key by
himself. There's the feel isthat nobody tries to over shine
(17:42):
or to over to over achieve overhis a with over his colleagues.
It's really not the spirit.
Teams are very, very they havetheir own unity and the spirit
(18:04):
of the team. They have their ownchat and they have their own
inside jokes. And it's really,really nice to see how each time
new team is being developed,it's been created, it's just
amazing to see thecollaborations and the new
interactions that being
Michal Epstein (18:26):
interacted very, very fast. That's I have to add
to that, yeah, I have to askthat from my perspective, one of
the the reason that it's worked,that it worked and the senior
researchers really knew how tobring the team to work together
(18:46):
collaboratively. Is that thesenior management, the VP of R
and D, the P of HR, were 100%minded to the process. They
really believed in that theyreally wanted that to happen,
and this is the unconscious andconscious message that they
provided to the teams. There isno other way to do that. They
(19:11):
invested a lot of time inhelping these managers Okay, to
get the tools to help the teamgrow spend hours of mentoring
and coaching and supportingthem, so it takes a lot of time
and attention, but they werefully minded to that, and it
(19:32):
doesn't work in 100% some ofthem did not accept the process,
and eventually they left thecompany, and the senior
management was able to take thatrisk, so the purpose will be
able to flourish. Yeah, it's
Dave West (19:48):
funny. I was somewhat I observed from, you know, Dino
therapeutics was exactly thesame. The executives, the
founders, in this case, theywere a bit smaller than than
store dot one. Had started.
They're now a lot bigger. Butyou know that the that found
those founders, that CEO reallyjust drove this message, and the
(20:08):
people that didn't fit, youknow, obviously we have a in
Boston, we have a very bigbiotech, CRISPR kind of
community, so they just left andfound companies that are more
traditional. I also do think,though, there was an element of
being a startup helps, becauseeverybody's on that journey to
build this amazing company andand it kind of like your own
(20:32):
personal needs. I wouldn't saythey're less important.
Obviously they're important, butthey become, you become part of
this journey. I mean, you know,there's, I was in a startup,
and, you know, we were sharingrooms, we were getting the
cheapest flights. We were allvested in that, in that journey,
and it just felt like we allcared about everything, and
(20:57):
we're willing to do anything foreach other. I think that hasn't
an impact. So, so I'm assumingcoming that we've got, you know,
that we're starting to actuallydeliver more innovation, where
we're delivering more stuff.
Tell me a little about theresults
Carmit Ophir (21:16):
well. So the impact of the distribution was
just amazing. We started toachieve the milestone on time,
and in some cases even ahead oftime. And I must emphasize that
the milestones that that weregiven to us are very, very
(21:38):
challenging, and we are keepbeing amazed by the fact that we
are achieving them, and it ispart of the fact that we are
inspecting and adapting daily.
We are understanding thechallenges. Something that was
relevant yesterday is notrelevant today. Reprioritizing,
(21:59):
reprioritizing just like in aday to day actions. And it shows
we are not wasting time onthings that are not relevant
anymore. The usage of theresources is much more
efficient, because again, we areprioritizing, and also we are
(22:21):
looking at the full picture ofwhat is most urgent and most
important, and we are puttingthe efforts there, interaction,
collaboration, a lot ofcommitment. The developers are
united and and they are really,really want to achieve and to
(22:45):
push the team forward, achievingthe goal and the amount of ideas
they are coming so from not onlythe developers, we have, we have
set a meeting called preplanning, which is, you know,
this is not part of the usualScrum, but yeah, in this
(23:09):
meeting, it's like 30 peoplecoming together in one room, and
they look at the goal, and theybring ideas, and we discuss
manager stakeholders, the powerto initiate and innovate are in
the hands of many others. Andthat open brainstorms and and
(23:33):
the discussions and and also itbrings all the stakeholders to
be also part of progress andalso part of the development for
transparency and understandinggaps all through the way. It's
(23:56):
just truly amazing, and theresults are shown.
Dave West (24:09):
Yeah, sorry, go ahead, there you go, Mecca,
okay,
Michal Epstein (24:14):
so I want to add, from the process and agile
perspective, the success, thesuccess story here is, first of
all, they understand that it'snot a project with a start and
finish line. It's a continuousprocess of always improving and
always searching for moreimprovement. They did not accept
(24:36):
expect to get an Agile Coachhelp them do the project and
then bye, bye. So we worktogether very closely for about
two years, I think, but we'restill working together every now
and then to challenge them tohave another point of view. They
are still working and theagility and inspection and
adaptation become theorganization DNA. It's never
(24:57):
perfect, but there are alwaysdo. Challenging their pain
points, trying other ways toimprove. And they really
embraced agility as anorganizational DNA. And I think
this is the main success of thisorganization. That's
Dave West (25:13):
super interesting.
It's funny, the the when, justto compare it to what happened
at die now, because I think it'sinteresting to see these two
very different domains dosomething very, very similar.
Ultimately, that continuousimprovement ethos ended up where
the COO basically now it'scontinuously running that kind
(25:35):
of philosophy into theorganization which is, which is
really, really interesting, andI think making sure that
organizations appreciate that itit is continuous, it isn't a
project that it doesn't startand end in the same way, I
think, is a huge change and anda really, really exciting one
(25:55):
that is Awesome. Alright, so weare to keep these unfortunately
short, and I, I could talk forhours about this, but if imagine
our listeners, you know, maybethey're in, you know, the some
sort of technical R and D inbiotech or in chemistry or in
(26:17):
electronics, or in anything likethat, and they're sitting there
and they're they're seeing thechallenges that you so
eloquently described around sortof the domains being separate
that sort of conflict. Theyended up a lot of waste in the
system. What should they startwith? Where should they begin
(26:38):
this journey? What would youWhere would you tell them to
start come out?
Carmit Ophir (26:44):
I would say, first of all, try to find the right
mentor that will be able tounderstand that there's no one
suit that suits everything andeach domain of the industry. We
(27:06):
also started with a differentcompany, and we understood very
fast that they don't understandus. And then we got to have so
first of all, find and find yourpartner. Find your partner. I
think it's a it's reallyimportant, because there are
differences between companiesand R and DS, and there's never
(27:32):
a good time to start, becausepeople don't like changes and
but if you truly believe in thatyou need a change. Time is now,
and it requires time and courageand consistency and keep on
(27:54):
going and inspect and adapt andand we are continuously doing
that in each R and D managementdiscussion, we are saying we are
trying something new, andactually, the teams are so
familiar with changes that we'resaying this is a change we will
(28:16):
inspect, and if we need, we willadapt. And nobody's like
screaming. Their heads up. Theyunderstand we were continuously
exploring. And the timing, forexample, for us, the timing for
the initiation of the of theprocess was really, really
crazy. It was the first days ofCOVID We are in at home, and
(28:41):
everybody was in zoom, and allthe, all the, the initial
meetings with the withintroduction, and the teams were
initiated in zoom, and nobodycould meet. And it was crazy to
start something, say so new andchange the organization a
(29:06):
correct character, but there'sno, no timing,
Dave West (29:14):
right? Good
Michal Epstein (29:16):
time. Yeah. I think another thing that, from
my perspective, tip for otherorganization, you have to
believe and own the process andin store that they definitely
did that their R and D knew whatAgile is all about. He knew that
this is the way that he can getover the pain points of the
(29:41):
organization, and he owned that.
He was willing to invest time,money and attention in the
process for it to work. Heworked in that, and I think it
is a very important key forsuccess, because, unfortunately,
many. Managers, even though theypay me as a consultant, they are
still not really a 100%
Carmit Ophir (30:07):
owning the process. Yeah, that's what
Dave West (30:10):
that they're sort of outsourced, outsourced owning it
to you, because that's whatthey're paying you for. But at
the end of the day, it's justlike a fitness coach or a doctor
or whatever you have, you can't,you can't make somebody fitter.
Doesn't matter how exactly,
Michal Epstein (30:27):
just like going to a dietitian, you can get the
menu and you need, he needs tomotivate you. But eventually, if
you want to lose weight, it'syour work to do in 100% of the
time. And they are that's
Dave West (30:39):
very disappointing to know about that. I know I wish,
I wish, sorry, of my life.
Unfortunately, the case. Yeah, Ithink. And also the COVID point,
I think, come out, you know,that that might have been
actually a blessing. I mean,obviously COVID was horrible,
and millions of people died. SoI'm not saying that COVID was a
(30:59):
blessing by but that that inthat moment created everybody.
Was everything was changing. Sochanging this as well was just
like, well, you know, I have noidea what's going on in the
world, so let's, let's try thiscraziness as well. So it is
funny that there's never a righttime, but every time is the
right time. You know, it's that,that moment because, because, if
(31:22):
you do it, you know, just thinkhow much waste is being done in
these systems today, and you'vemanaged to eradicate that and
and you're going to see thebenefits. And maybe I'm going to
see the benefits as I get intomy electric car. And it only
takes five minutes or 10 minutesto charge. Which would be, which
(31:42):
would be great? Yeah,
Carmit Ophir (31:47):
we really hope so we have, we have the we have the
the batteries, where we are, weare there. So it's really,
really exciting. And the levelof progress during this year was
truly crazy and amazing, and wehope that you will hear about
this very, very soon. I
Dave West (32:09):
know that we will.
I've got every confidence, andyeah, what I want, as well, is
electric lawn mowers. So we'rehoping this can be applied into
lawn mowers, because that,that's a whole nother issue,
Michal Epstein (32:27):
the electric laundry folding, please,
Dave West (32:31):
yes, there is, there is. That's actually my, my job,
so I'm actually quite good atthat. I'd be worried as well my
my wife would throw me out if Istopped folding the laundry, but
we will see so fantastic. Thankyou for sharing your journey
today. I really, reallyappreciate you taking the time.
(32:52):
I know you're incredibly busy.
Come out and Macau, you're, youknow, very, very busy. So thank
you for taking the time. I thinkour listeners will really,
really, really appreciate it.
Carmit Ophir (33:05):
Thank you for having us. Thank you very much,
Dave, welcome so
Dave West (33:10):
and that's that's a wrap for today. Thank you.
You've heard from store dotlimited a company designing the
next generation of fast chargingbatteries and our professional
Scrum, increased collaboration,transparency among scientists
and engineers, increasedcommitments, and actually
created a space that thatallowed for innovation, which
(33:32):
is, which is, at the end of theday, what, what Scrum is all
about. I was fortunate today tohave two awesome co presenters,
as it were, we had comment froma senior director, r, d, manager
at at store dot and MichaelEpstein, a professional scrum
(33:53):
trainer who worked with store.soand listeners, thank you for
listening. If you liked what youheard, please subscribe and
share with friends, and ofcourse, come back and listen to
some more. I'm lucky. I'm theluckiest guy in the world.
Actually, I get to listen to avariety of guests sharing their
journeys in the areasprofessional Scrum, product
(34:13):
thinking, and, of course, agile.
Thanks everybody, and Scrum onyou.
Music. Welcome to the scrum.org community
(00:04):
podcast, a podcast from the homeof Scrum. In this podcast, we
feature professional scrumtrainers and other scrum
practitioners sharing theirstories and experiences to help
learn from the experience ofothers. We hope you enjoy this
episode.
Dave West (00:20):
Hello and welcome to the scrum.org community podcast.
I'm your host. Dave West, CEO,here@scrum.org in today's
podcast, we're very lucky,because we're going to be
talking to store dot limitedabout how they use professional
scrum to develop fast chargingbatteries for electric cars. Now
I'm an electric car drivers. SoI feel the pain. Actually, my
(00:43):
children and my wife feel thepain more. I love being able to
sit for an hour and doabsolutely nothing, but they get
very grumpy with me and and italways causes fights. So so I'm
really excited that we've beenable to help store dot really
improve how they delivered theirelectric batteries, fast
(01:05):
charging, electric batteries, sobut, you know, I don't know much
about what's happening@store.soI'm lucky to have to be joined
today by kameet offer a seniordirector R and D program manager
at store. Dot, welcome to thepodcast. Comment,
Carmit Ophir (01:25):
Hi, how are you?
Dave West (01:26):
I'm good, all the better for seeing you today and
and we're also lucky to haveMikhail Epstein, a professional
scrum trainer who worked withstore. Dot, welcome to the
podcast.
Michal Epstein (01:38):
Macau, thank you, Dave, nice to be here. It's
Dave West (01:42):
awesome that you could both take the time.
Because I'm super, you know,interested in the application of
professional scrum in real worldcontext, obviously, but, but
also in these sort of high techR and D science sort of context.
Because I do see, and we've hada few podcasts on this, you
(02:04):
know, I do see organizationsreally benefiting from
professional scrummorg in thosein those scenarios. So for our
listeners and coming you'llprobably be the best person to
set the scene. Our listenerswould really like to know a
little bit about store dot andwhat you do and and
Carmit Ophir (02:22):
bit of context.
Okay, so, first of all, we arestartup. We are located in
mainly in Israel, with the smallARD branch in USA, total of just
112 workers. And we aredeveloping the chemistry, the
(02:43):
chemistry level of cells,battery cells for extreme fast
charging of electrical electricvehicles, like 100 miles in five
minutes of charge. This is thisneeds a really out of the box
thinking a lot of innovation,just like inventing new
(03:11):
chemistries altogether. So tell
Dave West (03:16):
me a little bit about the composition of the company.
Is it? There's chemists, there'sengineers, there's people that
know a lot about electricvehicle stuff, who you know? Who
are those 100 people? Yeah, so
Carmit Ophir (03:30):
we, most of the company, composing the R and D
unit, which we have, chemistry,a synthetic of material
formulation, development a celldesign, development of cycling
(03:53):
procedures and engineers thatdevelop the cell packing itself
the level of its ability tointroduce into existing BMS and
battery packs that have existingcars. So system engineers, we
(04:18):
have process development becausewe need to mix all these
materials and and this isnatural. Wow.
Dave West (04:29):
So the reason why I just wanted to lean into that
for a second was because it'snot just a bunch of software
engineers wandering around,which is obviously where scrum
often is. You're talking aboutthe whole gamut from like,
really serious chemists, youknow, super like interesting
characters there, I'm sure, allthe way through to systems
(04:51):
engineers and process engineerswho are very, very different
from chemists and from, youknow. So you've got a very, very
varied or. Audience, as it were,which is, which is super, super
interesting. So all right, nowyou've got all these people that
they're building the nextgeneration of battery
technology. What were thechallenges? Why did you think
(05:15):
you know what we need? We need adifferent way of working. Let's
look at Scrum. What were thechallenges you faced? Yeah, so
Carmit Ophir (05:22):
first of all, you can understand that the level of
uncertainty is huge becauseyou're inventing materials, and
you don't know how they willconnect and how they will work
together. And at the beginning,started was a was built as
professional teams working inpower on we had the general
(05:46):
requirements, and they worked inParliament, solutions and
different different parts of thebattery. What we what we face,
is that in some cases, thesesolutions were not working
together, and we discovered itin, like very, very late in the
in the for in the progress, likemonths after the development has
(06:10):
been progressed, because therethese were professional teams
that worked in parallel. So thelevel of collaboration was very,
very low data sharing betweenteams. Feedbacks of concerns
were raised very late in thedevelopment stages like flex,
(06:31):
that could have been raised muchearlier, low level of
transparency of what is going onat every second moment, what are
the results in real time?
Because we were like meetingonce in a quarter to review the
results, like in the waterfallscheme of project management,
(06:54):
each of the each of theseprofessional teams had dominant
managers setting the tones whichexperiment what we're going to
do. So we had like 85researchers. But in practice,
like five were setting the tonesof instead of using all the
(07:16):
minds that are available. For meas a program manager, it was
very, very hard to prioritizeand manage the resources,
different tasks, and it wasvery, very hard to measure the
progress, because we managedmeasured it only once in and an
(07:39):
impact of all these challengeswith we suffered from continuous
delays in the timelines andachievement and achievement of
the masters.
Dave West (07:55):
Yeah, so, I mean, so you had these domain specialist
sort of teams, you know, whetherit's some sort of Chem,
chemistry for some part of theprocess, or whatever. And each
of those had their own sort ofagendas and leadership, and R
and D was being driven by a few,a few people, five you say that
(08:16):
are actually making decisionsabout the experiments you're
going to focus on. Yeah, thatit's funny, as you were saying
that we did this podcast with acompany called Dino
therapeutics. They're usingmachine learning and genetic
CRISPR technology, not justCRISPR now, but every knows
CRISPR, sort of genetic stuff.
And they had exactly the sameproblem. They that was exactly,
(08:38):
I mean, obviously doingsomething slightly different
biology rather than chemistry, Iguess, though, at the end of the
day, I think it's all chemistry,but that's, that's another
topic. And so, you know, theywere, they're focused on these
real, really horrible geneticdiseases. And, you know, they
(08:58):
just couldn't all work together,so they built an organization.
They changed the organizationbecause of that, and use
professional Scrum. Mikhail, youyou were, yeah, you were there.
Tell, tell me your perspectiveas you, as you first came into
store. Dot, yeah,
Michal Epstein (09:17):
so as you said, it's not a software company. I
have a lot of experience with aapplying agility in software, a
in the software industry, butthen I came to them, and they
speak chemics, and I don't speakthe language of chemics,
although already, I alreadyspeak a little bit now. But then
(09:38):
I didn't know anything aboutthat, and it was really hard,
because I can compare it to theto the medicine to medicine.
Okay, it's like having aoncologist and cardiologist and
an orthopedic working alltogether. They are all doctors.
They are all looking at the samehuman body, and yet they speak
(09:58):
totally different languages. Andit's really hard to understand
the impact of one domain toanother. And so I think it was
a, it was a very a difficult andimportant challenge, but
eventually, I think we weresuccessful to overcome it. And
committee will talk more aboutthat?
Dave West (10:21):
Yes. So you built cross functional I assume, and
obviously this is sort of likethe maybe later on in the story,
but I want to get here quitequickly. So you built cross
functional teams, I assume,across all these domains. How
did you organize? I mean, that'sreally, really challenging when
you've got specialists whohistorically always want to work
(10:43):
with specialists. So tell me alittle bit about when you
started introducing the ideas ofScrum, some of the main changes
that that you put in place.
Carmit Ophir (10:53):
Yes, so first of all, the concept of
representatives from thedifferent domains in the same
team. Was not very natural foreveryone and but really, really
fast they understood, they, theyhave a mutual target and a
(11:19):
mutual goal, and they understandthe benefit of working together
and understanding the gapstogether. And actually,
collaboration was likeskyrocketing, like, very, very
fast. So very, very fast, thedifferent domains, the
(11:44):
professional domains, workingtogether in teams, understand
the level of benefit that theycan get from one another and the
collaboration and thetransparency and the aspects
that different professionalteams could give as feedbacks
(12:08):
for results of the differentdomain, the collaboration and
transparency. Transparency leveljust like skyrocket. And the
amazing thing was that one ofthe things that the developers
said that they felt as if thepower, the innovation, the
(12:32):
thinking was shifted towardsthem, instead of like getting a
the ideas from their managersand they and the feeling of
contribution was amazing. Theyfelt like they are part of the
company. They are now an activeparticipant.
Dave West (12:56):
It's so funny you say that comment, because the reason
why I love scrum isn't, youknow, because we can deliver
amazing products. I mean, yes, Ido like that. It isn't because,
you know, we're empirical allthat. Yes, that's all great,
too. It's because of theempowerment. When I've seen
really effective Scrum teams,they sort of break down the
(13:20):
traditional barriers of who'son, who's in charge, but who's
who's delivering value, youknow, that sort of classical the
manager, and then the people areworking for that, and they're
doing it all changes. But inscience, that can be
challenging, because people,there's a lot of hierarchy in
science, right? Did that? Didyou is that did you? When I was
(13:44):
talking to Dino, one of thebiggest challenges they had was
traditional research scientistsfrom Harvard and MIT were very
sort of like they like to holdtheir cards quite close to the
chest and do the experiments andonly really talk about it
openly, if it's been successful,really, which caused some
(14:04):
issues. Did you have similarproblems come out? I
Michal Epstein (14:07):
have to say that as their consultant, I saw the
difficulty of the seniorresearchers that were previously
the managers of the domains. Itwas very difficult for them to
support and consult their teams.
The junior researcher other thantell them what to do. However,
(14:28):
the other researchers that oneof the most prominent things
that happened very fast in theprocess, is that all the
researchers, or at least themajority of them, really felt
they have an impact on thefuture product. Everybody came
(14:48):
to me, and I remember that oncethe VP of A, R and D, A, told me
that their CEO entered his roomand asked. Team, can you tell me
what's going on here? And hesaid, What do you mean? And he
said, I see everybody huddling,gathering together in the
kitchen, talk to each other. Ihaven't seen this movement in
(15:08):
the office before, before that.
And he said, Well, it's actuallycan be seen the collaboration
between the people that theAgile transformation did there.
So what did you do with
Dave West (15:22):
those senior science researchers? How did they? How
did they come around? It took.
It took quite a while at Dino, Imean, and it took some
incentives. It took, it took alot of cajoling, a little bit of
mass sergeant of egos. There wasall sorts of things. How did you
how did they come around? Yeah,so
Carmit Ophir (15:45):
there were some difficulties at the beginning,
but quite fast, the teamleaders, the professional team
leaders, they understood thattheir contribution is profound.
Through their developers, theybecame a professional mentors.
(16:10):
Also I as a product owner, Ikeep coming to them. I ask them,
I need you to address this gap.
Please talk with your team.
Think of ideas. I continuously,you know, recruit them to be
our, our support, supportsystem, and in reflection to
(16:35):
what you said about that, thatresearchers doesn't want it,
don't want to share bad results.
This is also a process that wetalked about. What is an
increment, even understanding ifsomething doesn't work, this is
an increment, and it's somethingthat we continuously say to the
(16:55):
researchers, please come withbad results, bad in like
brackets, because this isincrements in science, something
that doesn't work. It's data,and they, they constantly
understand that, and they bringall the results to the table,
(17:16):
and we discuss everything veryopenly, and there's no just,
there's almost no hiding ofresults or or some and I think
that also the in terms of theunderstanding that we are all
part of one product, nobodyfeels as if he holds the key by
himself. There's the feel isthat nobody tries to over shine
(17:42):
or to over to over achieve overhis a with over his colleagues.
It's really not the spirit.
Teams are very, very they havetheir own unity and the spirit
(18:04):
of the team. They have their ownchat and they have their own
inside jokes. And it's really,really nice to see how each time
new team is being developed,it's been created, it's just
amazing to see thecollaborations and the new
interactions that being
Michal Epstein (18:26):
interacted very, very fast. That's I have to add
to that, yeah, I have to askthat from my perspective, one of
the the reason that it's worked,that it worked and the senior
researchers really knew how tobring the team to work together
(18:46):
collaboratively. Is that thesenior management, the VP of R
and D, the P of HR, were 100%minded to the process. They
really believed in that theyreally wanted that to happen,
and this is the unconscious andconscious message that they
provided to the teams. There isno other way to do that. They
(19:11):
invested a lot of time inhelping these managers Okay, to
get the tools to help the teamgrow spend hours of mentoring
and coaching and supportingthem, so it takes a lot of time
and attention, but they werefully minded to that, and it
(19:32):
doesn't work in 100% some ofthem did not accept the process,
and eventually they left thecompany, and the senior
management was able to take thatrisk, so the purpose will be
able to flourish. Yeah, it's
Dave West (19:48):
funny. I was somewhat I observed from, you know, Dino
therapeutics was exactly thesame. The executives, the
founders, in this case, theywere a bit smaller than than
store dot one. Had started.
They're now a lot bigger. Butyou know that the that found
those founders, that CEO reallyjust drove this message, and the
(20:08):
people that didn't fit, youknow, obviously we have a in
Boston, we have a very bigbiotech, CRISPR kind of
community, so they just left andfound companies that are more
traditional. I also do think,though, there was an element of
being a startup helps, becauseeverybody's on that journey to
build this amazing company andand it kind of like your own
(20:32):
personal needs. I wouldn't saythey're less important.
Obviously they're important, butthey become, you become part of
this journey. I mean, you know,there's, I was in a startup,
and, you know, we were sharingrooms, we were getting the
cheapest flights. We were allvested in that, in that journey,
and it just felt like we allcared about everything, and
(20:57):
we're willing to do anything foreach other. I think that hasn't
an impact. So, so I'm assumingcoming that we've got, you know,
that we're starting to actuallydeliver more innovation, where
we're delivering more stuff.
Tell me a little about theresults
Carmit Ophir (21:16):
well. So the impact of the distribution was
just amazing. We started toachieve the milestone on time,
and in some cases even ahead oftime. And I must emphasize that
the milestones that that weregiven to us are very, very
(21:38):
challenging, and we are keepbeing amazed by the fact that we
are achieving them, and it ispart of the fact that we are
inspecting and adapting daily.
We are understanding thechallenges. Something that was
relevant yesterday is notrelevant today. Reprioritizing,
(21:59):
reprioritizing just like in aday to day actions. And it shows
we are not wasting time onthings that are not relevant
anymore. The usage of theresources is much more
efficient, because again, we areprioritizing, and also we are
(22:21):
looking at the full picture ofwhat is most urgent and most
important, and we are puttingthe efforts there, interaction,
collaboration, a lot ofcommitment. The developers are
united and and they are really,really want to achieve and to
(22:45):
push the team forward, achievingthe goal and the amount of ideas
they are coming so from not onlythe developers, we have, we have
set a meeting called preplanning, which is, you know,
this is not part of the usualScrum, but yeah, in this
(23:09):
meeting, it's like 30 peoplecoming together in one room, and
they look at the goal, and theybring ideas, and we discuss
manager stakeholders, the powerto initiate and innovate are in
the hands of many others. Andthat open brainstorms and and
(23:33):
the discussions and and also itbrings all the stakeholders to
be also part of progress andalso part of the development for
transparency and understandinggaps all through the way. It's
(23:56):
just truly amazing, and theresults are shown.
Dave West (24:09):
Yeah, sorry, go ahead, there you go, Mecca,
okay,
Michal Epstein (24:14):
so I want to add, from the process and agile
perspective, the success, thesuccess story here is, first of
all, they understand that it'snot a project with a start and
finish line. It's a continuousprocess of always improving and
always searching for moreimprovement. They did not accept
(24:36):
expect to get an Agile Coachhelp them do the project and
then bye, bye. So we worktogether very closely for about
two years, I think, but we'restill working together every now
and then to challenge them tohave another point of view. They
are still working and theagility and inspection and
adaptation become theorganization DNA. It's never
(24:57):
perfect, but there are alwaysdo. Challenging their pain
points, trying other ways toimprove. And they really
embraced agility as anorganizational DNA. And I think
this is the main success of thisorganization. That's
Dave West (25:13):
super interesting.
It's funny, the the when, justto compare it to what happened
at die now, because I think it'sinteresting to see these two
very different domains dosomething very, very similar.
Ultimately, that continuousimprovement ethos ended up where
the COO basically now it'scontinuously running that kind
(25:35):
of philosophy into theorganization which is, which is
really, really interesting, andI think making sure that
organizations appreciate that itit is continuous, it isn't a
project that it doesn't startand end in the same way, I
think, is a huge change and anda really, really exciting one
(25:55):
that is Awesome. Alright, so weare to keep these unfortunately
short, and I, I could talk forhours about this, but if imagine
our listeners, you know, maybethey're in, you know, the some
sort of technical R and D inbiotech or in chemistry or in
(26:17):
electronics, or in anything likethat, and they're sitting there
and they're they're seeing thechallenges that you so
eloquently described around sortof the domains being separate
that sort of conflict. Theyended up a lot of waste in the
system. What should they startwith? Where should they begin
(26:38):
this journey? What would youWhere would you tell them to
start come out?
Carmit Ophir (26:44):
I would say, first of all, try to find the right
mentor that will be able tounderstand that there's no one
suit that suits everything andeach domain of the industry. We
(27:06):
also started with a differentcompany, and we understood very
fast that they don't understandus. And then we got to have so
first of all, find and find yourpartner. Find your partner. I
think it's a it's reallyimportant, because there are
differences between companiesand R and DS, and there's never
(27:32):
a good time to start, becausepeople don't like changes and
but if you truly believe in thatyou need a change. Time is now,
and it requires time and courageand consistency and keep on
(27:54):
going and inspect and adapt andand we are continuously doing
that in each R and D managementdiscussion, we are saying we are
trying something new, andactually, the teams are so
familiar with changes that we'resaying this is a change we will
(28:16):
inspect, and if we need, we willadapt. And nobody's like
screaming. Their heads up. Theyunderstand we were continuously
exploring. And the timing, forexample, for us, the timing for
the initiation of the of theprocess was really, really
crazy. It was the first days ofCOVID We are in at home, and
(28:41):
everybody was in zoom, and allthe, all the, the initial
meetings with the withintroduction, and the teams were
initiated in zoom, and nobodycould meet. And it was crazy to
start something, say so new andchange the organization a
(29:06):
correct character, but there'sno, no timing,
Dave West (29:14):
right? Good
Michal Epstein (29:16):
time. Yeah. I think another thing that, from
my perspective, tip for otherorganization, you have to
believe and own the process andin store that they definitely
did that their R and D knew whatAgile is all about. He knew that
this is the way that he can getover the pain points of the
(29:41):
organization, and he owned that.
He was willing to invest time,money and attention in the
process for it to work. Heworked in that, and I think it
is a very important key forsuccess, because, unfortunately,
many. Managers, even though theypay me as a consultant, they are
still not really a 100%
Carmit Ophir (30:07):
owning the process. Yeah, that's what
Dave West (30:10):
that they're sort of outsourced, outsourced owning it
to you, because that's whatthey're paying you for. But at
the end of the day, it's justlike a fitness coach or a doctor
or whatever you have, you can't,you can't make somebody fitter.
Doesn't matter how exactly,
Michal Epstein (30:27):
just like going to a dietitian, you can get the
menu and you need, he needs tomotivate you. But eventually, if
you want to lose weight, it'syour work to do in 100% of the
time. And they are that's
Dave West (30:39):
very disappointing to know about that. I know I wish,
I wish, sorry, of my life.
Unfortunately, the case. Yeah, Ithink. And also the COVID point,
I think, come out, you know,that that might have been
actually a blessing. I mean,obviously COVID was horrible,
and millions of people died. SoI'm not saying that COVID was a
(30:59):
blessing by but that that inthat moment created everybody.
Was everything was changing. Sochanging this as well was just
like, well, you know, I have noidea what's going on in the
world, so let's, let's try thiscraziness as well. So it is
funny that there's never a righttime, but every time is the
right time. You know, it's that,that moment because, because, if
(31:22):
you do it, you know, just thinkhow much waste is being done in
these systems today, and you'vemanaged to eradicate that and
and you're going to see thebenefits. And maybe I'm going to
see the benefits as I get intomy electric car. And it only
takes five minutes or 10 minutesto charge. Which would be, which
(31:42):
would be great? Yeah,
Carmit Ophir (31:47):
we really hope so we have, we have the we have the
the batteries, where we are, weare there. So it's really,
really exciting. And the levelof progress during this year was
truly crazy and amazing, and wehope that you will hear about
this very, very soon. I
Dave West (32:09):
know that we will.
I've got every confidence, andyeah, what I want, as well, is
electric lawn mowers. So we'rehoping this can be applied into
lawn mowers, because that,that's a whole nother issue,
Michal Epstein (32:27):
the electric laundry folding, please,
Dave West (32:31):
yes, there is, there is. That's actually my, my job,
so I'm actually quite good atthat. I'd be worried as well my
my wife would throw me out if Istopped folding the laundry, but
we will see so fantastic. Thankyou for sharing your journey
today. I really, reallyappreciate you taking the time.
(32:52):
I know you're incredibly busy.
Come out and Macau, you're, youknow, very, very busy. So thank
you for taking the time. I thinkour listeners will really,
really, really appreciate it.
Carmit Ophir (33:05):
Thank you for having us. Thank you very much,
Dave, welcome so
Dave West (33:10):
and that's that's a wrap for today. Thank you.
You've heard from store dotlimited a company designing the
next generation of fast chargingbatteries and our professional
Scrum, increased collaboration,transparency among scientists
and engineers, increasedcommitments, and actually
created a space that thatallowed for innovation, which
(33:32):
is, which is, at the end of theday, what, what Scrum is all
about. I was fortunate today tohave two awesome co presenters,
as it were, we had comment froma senior director, r, d, manager
at at store dot and MichaelEpstein, a professional scrum
(33:53):
trainer who worked with store.soand listeners, thank you for
listening. If you liked what youheard, please subscribe and
share with friends, and ofcourse, come back and listen to
some more. I'm lucky. I'm theluckiest guy in the world.
Actually, I get to listen to avariety of guests sharing their
journeys in the areasprofessional Scrum, product
(34:13):
thinking, and, of course, agile.
Thanks everybody, and Scrum onyou.
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