A Model for the Right Salesforce Leadership Structure

Plan, Build, Run Requires Leadership

Most Technology Leaders are familiar with the Plan, Build, Run (PBR) framework.

But implementing the right team to execute on that model is a different story.

And it all starts at the top.

How does Plan, Build, Run work?

At a high level, this is a framework used to categorize, prioritize, and streamline the delivery of projects on Technology teams. It divides the service management process into three distinct phases, each with its own set of activities, responsibilities, and objectives.

• Plan: Define the strategy, goals, and requirements for the future state of your Salesforce roadmap.

• Build: Architect, develop, and test the solutions based on the pre-defined roadmap and requirements outlined during planning.

• Run: Deploy, adopt, and support the new Salesforce functionality, ensuring its performance and the satisfaction of day-to-day users.

Whether you refer to it as a "PBR framework" or not, this process should guide how every Salesforce team operates - big and small.

And it all starts with planning.

Everything falls down if you aren’t building the right things.

Leadership Plans

This is the most critical layer to achieve success with any Enterprise platform.

It’s what allows for your team to set a true vision for Salesforce and lay a long-term strategic roadmap, rather than reactively building any ad hoc request that comes in.

The critical members of Toast’s team leading these efforts:

• Nishanth Chandrasekaran (Director of Enterprise Applications)

• Amanda Halliday (Sr. Manager, Salesforce Architecture)

• Along with 6 Salesforce Product Owners.

Architects + Developers Build

But you know what they say about the best-laid plans, right?

They’re nothing without the ability to fully execute.

And this not only requires talented Engineers and Architects to execute but a strong Leadership layer to guide the efforts, marrying the strategy and execution.

At Toast, this primarily falls on:

• Andrew Barash (Director, Salesforce Engineering)

• Alex Abdou (Director, Salesforce QA & Dev Ops)

• Sai Inavolu (Technical Delivery Manager)

• Along with 20+ Salesforce Engineers and QAs.

Administrators Run

✅ Strategic roadmap in place

✅ Beautifully designed and implemented solutions

Now, it’s all about supporting and maintaining what has been deployed.

At this scale, you can’t simply wait for bugs and urgent tickets to surface. This is specifically what creates friction in your day-to-day operations, negatively impacts the usability of Salesforce, and crushes your adoption.

You need to get ahead of it, which Toast achieves with:

• Zack Custovic (Sr. Manager, Enterprise Application Support)

• Along with 15 Salesforce Administrators.

You can’t run if you don’t consistently build.

And you can’t build without knowing where you’re headed.

It takes the right team in place at every step of the journey and starts at the top.