Value Delivered: How StoreDot Used Scrum to Accelerate Electric Vehicle Battery Breakthroughs

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.

Transcript

Lindsay Velecina  0:00  
Music. Welcome to the scrum.org community podcast, a podcast from the home of Scrum. In this podcast, we feature professional scrum trainers and other scrum practitioners sharing their stories and experiences to help learn from the experience of others. We hope you enjoy this episode.

Dave West  0:20  
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 limited about how they use professional scrum to develop fast charging batteries for electric cars. Now I'm an electric car drivers. So I feel the pain. Actually, my children and my wife feel the pain more. I love being able to sit for an hour and do absolutely nothing, but they get very grumpy with me and and it always causes fights. So so I'm really excited that we've been able to help store dot really improve how they delivered their electric batteries, fast charging, electric batteries, so but, you know, I don't know much about what's happening@store.so I'm lucky to have to be joined today by kameet offer a senior director R and D program manager at store. Dot, welcome to the podcast. Comment,

Carmit Ophir  1:24  
Hi, how are you?

Dave West  1:26  
I'm good, all the better for seeing you today and and we're also lucky to have Mikhail Epstein, a professional scrum trainer who worked with store. Dot, welcome to the podcast.

Michal Epstein  1:38  
Macau, thank you, Dave, nice to be here. It's

Dave West  1:41  
awesome that you could both take the time. Because I'm super, you know, interested in the application of professional scrum in real world context, obviously, but, but also in these sort of high tech R and D science sort of context. Because I do see, and we've had a few podcasts on this, you know, I do see organizations really benefiting from professional scrummorg in those in those scenarios. So for our listeners and coming you'll probably be the best person to set the scene. Our listeners would really like to know a little bit about store dot and what you do and and

Carmit Ophir  2:22  
bit of context. Okay, so, first of all, we are startup. We are located in mainly in Israel, with the small ARD branch in USA, total of just 112 workers. And we are developing the chemistry, the chemistry level of cells, battery cells for extreme fast charging of electrical electric vehicles, like 100 miles in five minutes of charge. This is this needs a really out of the box thinking a lot of innovation, just like inventing new chemistries altogether. So tell

Dave West  3:16  
me a little bit about the composition of the company. Is it? There's chemists, there's engineers, there's people that know a lot about electric vehicle stuff, who you know? Who are those 100 people? Yeah, so

Carmit Ophir  3:30  
we, most of the company, composing the R and D unit, which we have, chemistry, a synthetic of material formulation, development a cell design, development of cycling procedures and engineers that develop the cell packing itself the level of its ability to introduce into existing BMS and battery packs that have existing cars. So system engineers, we have process development because we need to mix all these materials and and this is natural. Wow.

Dave West  4:28  
So the reason why I just wanted to lean into that for a second was because it's not just a bunch of software engineers wandering around, which is obviously where scrum often is. You're talking about the whole gamut from like, really serious chemists, you know, super like interesting characters there, I'm sure, all the way through to systems engineers and process engineers who are very, very different from chemists and from, you know. So you've got a very, very varied or. Audience, as it were, which is, which is super, super interesting. So all right, now you've got all these people that they're building the next generation of battery technology. What were the challenges? Why did you think you know what we need? We need a different way of working. Let's look at Scrum. What were the challenges you faced? Yeah, so

Carmit Ophir  5:21  
first of all, you can understand that the level of uncertainty is huge because you're inventing materials, and you don't know how they will connect and how they will work together. And at the beginning, started was a was built as professional teams working in power on we had the general requirements, and they worked in Parliament, solutions and different different parts of the battery. What we what we face, is that in some cases, these solutions were not working together, and we discovered it in, like very, very late in the in the for in the progress, like months after the development has been progressed, because there these were professional teams that worked in parallel. So the level of collaboration was very, very low data sharing between teams. Feedbacks of concerns were raised very late in the development stages like flex, that could have been raised much earlier, low level of transparency of what is going on at every second moment, what are the results in real time? Because we were like meeting once in a quarter to review the results, like in the waterfall scheme of project management, each of the each of these professional teams had dominant managers setting the tones which experiment what we're going to do. So we had like 85 researchers. But in practice, like five were setting the tones of instead of using all the minds that are available. For me as a program manager, it was very, very hard to prioritize and manage the resources, different tasks, and it was very, very hard to measure the progress, because we managed measured it only once in and an impact of all these challenges with we suffered from continuous delays in the timelines and achievement and achievement of the masters.

Dave West  7:55  
Yeah, so, I mean, so you had these domain specialist sort of teams, you know, whether it's some sort of Chem, chemistry for some part of the process, or whatever. And each of those had their own sort of agendas and leadership, and R and D was being driven by a few, a few people, five you say that are actually making decisions about the experiments you're going to focus on. Yeah, that it's funny, as you were saying that we did this podcast with a company called Dino therapeutics. They're using machine learning and genetic CRISPR technology, not just CRISPR now, but every knows CRISPR, sort of genetic stuff. And they had exactly the same problem. They that was exactly, I mean, obviously doing something slightly different biology rather than chemistry, I guess, though, at the end of the day, I think it's all chemistry, but that's, that's another topic. And so, you know, they were, they're focused on these real, really horrible genetic diseases. And, you know, they just couldn't all work together, so they built an organization. They changed the organization because of that, and use professional Scrum. Mikhail, you you were, yeah, you were there. Tell, tell me your perspective as you, as you first came into store. Dot, yeah,

Michal Epstein  9:16  
so as you said, it's not a software company. I have a lot of experience with a applying agility in software, a in the software industry, but then I came to them, and they speak chemics, and I don't speak the language of chemics, although already, I already speak a little bit now. But then I didn't know anything about that, and it was really hard, because I can compare it to the to the medicine to medicine. Okay, it's like having a oncologist and cardiologist and an orthopedic working all together. They are all doctors. They are all looking at the same human body, and yet they speak totally different languages. And it's really hard to understand the impact of one domain to another. And so I think it was a, it was a very a difficult and important challenge, but eventually, I think we were successful to overcome it. And committee will talk more about that?

Dave West  10:20  
Yes. So you built cross functional I assume, and obviously this is sort of like the maybe later on in the story, but I want to get here quite quickly. So you built cross functional teams, I assume, across all these domains. How did you organize? I mean, that's really, really challenging when you've got specialists who historically always want to work with specialists. So tell me a little bit about when you started introducing the ideas of Scrum, 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 the different domains in the same team. Was not very natural for everyone and but really, really fast they understood, they, they have a mutual target and a mutual goal, and they understand the benefit of working together and understanding the gaps together. And actually, collaboration was like skyrocketing, like, very, very fast. So very, very fast, the different domains, the professional domains, working together in teams, understand the level of benefit that they can get from one another and the collaboration and the transparency and the aspects that different professional teams could give as feedbacks for results of the different domain, the collaboration and transparency. Transparency level just like skyrocket. And the amazing thing was that one of the things that the developers said that they felt as if the power, the innovation, the thinking was shifted towards them, instead of like getting a the ideas from their managers and they and the feeling of contribution was amazing. They felt like they are part of the company. They are now an active participant.

Dave West  12:56  
It's so funny you say that comment, because the reason why I love scrum isn't, you know, because we can deliver amazing products. I mean, yes, I do like that. It isn't because, you know, we're empirical all that. Yes, that's all great, too. It's because of the empowerment. When I've seen really effective Scrum teams, they sort of break down the traditional barriers of who's on, who's in charge, but who's who's delivering value, you know, that sort of classical the manager, and then the people are working for that, and they're doing it all changes. But in science, that can be challenging, because people, there's a lot of hierarchy in science, right? Did that? Did you is that did you? When I was talking to Dino, one of the biggest challenges they had was traditional research scientists from Harvard and MIT were very sort of like they like to hold their cards quite close to the chest and do the experiments and only really talk about it openly, if it's been successful, really, which caused some issues. Did you have similar problems come out? I

Michal Epstein  14:07  
have to say that as their consultant, I saw the difficulty of the senior researchers that were previously the managers of the domains. It was very difficult for them to support and consult their teams. The junior researcher other than tell them what to do. However, the other researchers that one of the most prominent things that happened very fast in the process, is that all the researchers, or at least the majority of them, really felt they have an impact on the future product. Everybody came to me, and I remember that once the VP of A, R and D, A, told me that their CEO entered his room and asked. Team, can you tell me what's going on here? And he said, What do you mean? And he said, I see everybody huddling, gathering together in the kitchen, talk to each other. I haven't seen this movement in the office before, before that. And he said, Well, it's actually can be seen the collaboration between the people that the Agile transformation did there. So what did you do with

Dave West  15:21  
those senior science researchers? How did they? How did they come around? It took. It took quite a while at Dino, I mean, and it took some incentives. It took, it took a lot of cajoling, a little bit of mass sergeant of egos. There was all 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 team leaders, the professional team leaders, they understood that their contribution is profound. Through their developers, they became a professional mentors. Also I as a product owner, I keep 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, support system, and in reflection to what you said about that, that researchers doesn't want it, don't want to share bad results. This is also a process that we talked about. What is an increment, even understanding if something doesn't work, this is an increment, and it's something that we continuously say to the researchers, please come with bad results, bad in like brackets, because this is increments in science, something that doesn't work. It's data, and they, they constantly understand that, and they bring all the results to the table, and we discuss everything very openly, and there's no just, there's almost no hiding of results or or some and I think that also the in terms of the understanding that we are all part of one product, nobody feels as if he holds the key by himself. There's the feel is that nobody tries to over shine or to over to over achieve over his a with over his colleagues. It's really not the spirit. Teams are very, very they have their own unity and the spirit of the team. They have their own chat 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 the collaborations 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 ask that from my perspective, one of the the reason that it's worked, that it worked and the senior researchers really knew how to bring the team to work together collaboratively. Is that the senior management, the VP of R and D, the P of HR, were 100% minded to the process. They really believed in that they really wanted that to happen, and this is the unconscious and conscious message that they provided to the teams. There is no other way to do that. They invested a lot of time in helping these managers Okay, to get the tools to help the team grow spend hours of mentoring and coaching and supporting them, so it takes a lot of time and attention, but they were fully minded to that, and it doesn't work in 100% some of them did not accept the process, and eventually they left the company, and the senior management was able to take that risk, so the purpose will be able to flourish. Yeah, it's

Dave West  19:47  
funny. I was somewhat I observed from, you know, Dino therapeutics was exactly the same. The executives, the founders, in this case, they were a bit smaller than than store dot one. Had started. They're now a lot bigger. But you know that the that found those founders, that CEO really just drove this message, and the people that didn't fit, you know, obviously we have a in Boston, we have a very big biotech, CRISPR kind of community, so they just left and found companies that are more traditional. I also do think, though, there was an element of being a startup helps, because everybody's on that journey to build this amazing company and and it kind of like your own personal needs. I wouldn't say they're less important. Obviously they're important, but they become, you become part of this journey. I mean, you know, there's, I was in a startup, and, you know, we were sharing rooms, we were getting the cheapest flights. We were all vested in that, in that journey, and it just felt like we all cared about everything, and we're willing to do anything for each other. I think that hasn't an impact. So, so I'm assuming coming that we've got, you know, that we're starting to actually deliver more innovation, where we're delivering more stuff. Tell me a little about the results

Carmit Ophir  21:16  
well. So the impact of the distribution was just amazing. We started to achieve the milestone on time, and in some cases even ahead of time. And I must emphasize that the milestones that that were given to us are very, very challenging, and we are keep being amazed by the fact that we are achieving them, and it is part of the fact that we are inspecting and adapting daily. We are understanding the challenges. Something that was relevant yesterday is not relevant today. Reprioritizing, reprioritizing just like in a day to day actions. And it shows we are not wasting time on things that are not relevant anymore. The usage of the resources is much more efficient, because again, we are prioritizing, and also we are looking at the full picture of what is most urgent and most important, and we are putting the efforts there, interaction, collaboration, a lot of commitment. The developers are united and and they are really, really want to achieve and to push the team forward, achieving the goal and the amount of ideas they are coming so from not only the developers, we have, we have set a meeting called pre planning, which is, you know, this is not part of the usual Scrum, but yeah, in this meeting, it's like 30 people coming together in one room, and they look at the goal, and they bring ideas, and we discuss manager stakeholders, the power to initiate and innovate are in the hands of many others. And that open brainstorms and and the discussions and and also it brings all the stakeholders to be also part of progress and also part of the development for transparency and understanding gaps all through the way. It's just truly amazing, and the results 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, the success story here is, first of all, they understand that it's not a project with a start and finish line. It's a continuous process of always improving and always searching for more improvement. They did not accept expect to get an Agile Coach help them do the project and then bye, bye. So we work together very closely for about two years, I think, but we're still working together every now and then to challenge them to have another point of view. They are still working and the agility and inspection and adaptation become the organization DNA. It's never perfect, but there are always do. Challenging their pain points, trying other ways to improve. And they really embraced agility as an organizational DNA. And I think this is the main success of this organization. That's

Dave West  25:13  
super interesting. It's funny, the the when, just to compare it to what happened at die now, because I think it's interesting to see these two very different domains do something very, very similar. Ultimately, that continuous improvement ethos ended up where the COO basically now it's continuously running that kind of philosophy into the organization which is, which is really, really interesting, and I think making sure that organizations appreciate that it it is continuous, it isn't a project that it doesn't start and end in the same way, I think, is a huge change and and a really, really exciting one that is Awesome. Alright, so we are to keep these unfortunately short, and I, I could talk for hours about this, but if imagine our listeners, you know, maybe they're in, you know, the some sort of technical R and D in biotech or in chemistry or in electronics, or in anything like that, and they're sitting there and they're they're seeing the challenges that you so eloquently described around sort of the domains being separate that sort of conflict. They ended up a lot of waste in the system. What should they start with? Where should they begin this journey? What would you Where 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 to understand that there's no one suit that suits everything and each domain of the industry. We also started with a different company, and we understood very fast that they don't understand us. And then we got to have so first of all, find and find your partner. Find your partner. I think it's a it's really important, because there are differences between companies and R and DS, and there's never a good time to start, because people don't like changes and but if you truly believe in that you need a change. Time is now, and it requires time and courage and consistency and keep on going and inspect and adapt and and we are continuously doing that in each R and D management discussion, we are saying we are trying something new, and actually, the teams are so familiar with changes that we're saying this is a change we will inspect, and if we need, we will adapt. And nobody's like screaming. Their heads up. They understand we were continuously exploring. And the timing, for example, for us, the timing for the initiation of the of the process was really, really crazy. It was the first days of COVID We are in at home, and everybody was in zoom, and all the, all the, the initial meetings with the with introduction, and the teams were initiated in zoom, and nobody could meet. And it was crazy to start something, say so new and change the organization a correct character, but there's no, no timing,

Dave West  29:14  
right? Good

Michal Epstein  29:15  
time. Yeah. I think another thing that, from my perspective, tip for other organization, you have to believe and own the process and in store that they definitely did that their R and D knew what Agile is all about. He knew that this is the way that he can get over the pain points of the organization, and he owned that. He was willing to invest time, money and attention in the process for it to work. He worked in that, and I think it is a very important key for success, because, unfortunately, many. Managers, even though they pay 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 what they're paying you for. But at the end of the day, it's just like 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  30:26  
just like going to a dietitian, you can get the menu and you need, he needs to motivate you. But eventually, if you want to lose weight, it's your 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, I think. 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. So I'm not saying that COVID was a blessing by but that that in that moment created everybody. Was everything was changing. So changing this as well was just like, well, you know, I have no idea what's going on in the world, so let's, let's try this craziness as well. So it is funny that there's never a right time, but every time is the right time. You know, it's that, that moment because, because, if you do it, you know, just think how much waste is being done in these systems today, and you've managed to eradicate that and and you're going to see the benefits. And maybe I'm going to see the benefits as I get into my electric car. And it only takes five minutes or 10 minutes to charge. Which would be, which would be great? Yeah,

Carmit Ophir  31:46  
we really hope so we have, we have the we have the the batteries, where we are, we are there. So it's really, really exciting. And the level of progress during this year was truly crazy and amazing, and we hope that you will hear about this very, very soon. I

Dave West  32:09  
know that we will. I've got every confidence, and yeah, what I want, as well, is electric lawn mowers. So we're hoping 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 at that. I'd be worried as well my my wife would throw me out if I stopped folding the laundry, but we will see so fantastic. Thank you for sharing your journey today. I really, really appreciate you taking the time. I know you're incredibly busy. Come out and Macau, you're, you know, very, very busy. So thank you for taking the time. I think our listeners will really, really, really appreciate it.

Carmit Ophir  33:03  
Thank you for having us. Thank you very much, Dave, welcome so

Dave West  33:09  
and that's that's a wrap for today. Thank you. You've heard from store dot limited a company designing the next generation of fast charging batteries and our professional Scrum, increased collaboration, transparency among scientists and engineers, increased commitments, and actually created a space that that allowed for innovation, which is, which is, at the end of the day, what, what Scrum is all about. I was fortunate today to have two awesome co presenters, as it were, we had comment from a senior director, r, d, manager at at store dot and Michael Epstein, a professional scrum trainer who worked with store.so and listeners, thank you for listening. If you liked what you heard, please subscribe and share with friends, and of course, come back and listen to some more. I'm lucky. I'm the luckiest guy in the world. Actually, I get to listen to a variety of guests sharing their journeys in the areas professional Scrum, product thinking, and, of course, agile. Thanks everybody, and Scrum on you.

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