Day 8: About chocolate, playing poker, and an incredibly valuable experience

About chocolate, playing poker, and an incredibly valuable experience

Please also note that I proudly wear the
official Axon Active shirt :)

In the morning, I checked out of the hotel and then went to the office. In the parking lot I gave some chocolate to the nice security guy who was always up for a talk and to the lovely women who sell coffee there. The security guy can speak some English and was translating some burning questions for one of the woman about Switzerland.
She wanted to know whether it is true that in Switzerland everybody is rich and happy. I told her that most people in Switzerland usually do quite have some money but that everything is also much more expensive than compared to Vietnam. About the happiness, (and I had this discussion hundreds of times in other countries) I told her, that Swiss people are usually not so happy. Or at least most of them do not make the impression of being happy when you see them walking on the streets.
She nodded her head and made a really funny move! She said: "Vietnam" and started to dance and then said "Switzerland" and sat on a chair. Somehow I was surprised how fast she got the point. Of course, I know that it is in everybody's own responsibility to have a good and happy life but I think a culture of a country or even a region may strongly influence how one encounters life. But I don't want to go into some Buddhist maxims right now.

The planning meeting with team Pixels’ and Alexandra Reich

Team Pixels' is playing Scrum Poker

I attended the planning meeting (the one with the poker cards explained in day 5) with team Pixels’ and the PO, Alexandra Reich (Alex). In the beginning, Alex introduced the different Personas relevant for the User Stories so everybody knew the target user who was finally working with the program. During this meeting, I learned just how important the role of the Scrum Master is. Huy, the Scrum Master was always reflecting the stories introduced by Alex very carefully in order to make sure, he and the team understood everything right. His calm, reasoned and competent comments to the topics made it quite obvious that he has great experience in his job. At least that was my impression when I heard him talking and I was quite impressed during one round when they estimated the effort for a particular story and everybody awarded one point to it but one person had the impression that it was more of a two. Huy asked why the person was rather pessimistic on the topic and the developer explained that he thought there might be some unknown challenges coming with the story. Huy then told him that they should always estimate based on what is known and not on what is not known. It is quite difficult to explain in words why the way he mediated between the team and Alex (who finally also represents the stakeholder or end-user) impressed me quite a lot. I guess it is probably because I have never attended a meeting where such challenging tasks were discussed in such a calm way. My experience from Switzerland is that such planning meetings do also always have some kind of emotionality attached.

Alex always stated that she is also always open for other ways to solve a problem than proposed by her. This, once more showed me that the teams are really able to give their own inputs and that the POs are doing a great job by giving them the freedom necessary to come up with solutions which could be some "out the of the box" thinking. 

Team Pixels' is playing Scrum Poker

At one particular story, the team was very divided in their views about how many Story Points should be awarded. After a very long discussion between Alex and Huy, Huy looked at the team and asked: " What about you team? What do you think?". When nobody really said something, he added: "Are you scared?". I had to laugh but was pretty much the only one so I shut up again :)

The meeting, once more confirmed my impression that the way of how things are done and communicated by the POs, the Scrum Masters, and the teams are leading to an open communication and a very creative problem-solving approach which is highly valuable for all people involved in the projects. 

A summary of my stay in Vietnam

I was able to see inside the work of more than one team leader and got the chance to experience the very motivated teams of Axon Active Vietnam. At this point, again I'd like to point out, that everybody at the company which I have met was very motivated and it was a pleasure to see them work and to attend the productive meetings. 

The view from the smoking terrace

As for working in Vietnam, my impression from this one week's visit is, that work itself stays work and it doesn't really matter where in the world one is located. What is different, however, is everything around the working time. For example, instead of having your coffee in the office or in a cantina you can have the after lunch coffee at one of the various coffee shops and sit outside with nice, hot temperatures. 

Also, the little pleasures like getting some street food on the way home or having a beer with the dinner were maybe a little more frequent then they are in Switzerland. 

What is also different from Switzerland, is the whole working culture. People are not complaining at all about work, like (some) people in Switzerland do. Maybe, this is also because I wouldn't have understood it if they had complained in Vietnamese but my impression was really, that the people at Axon Active Vietman are proud to be a part of the organization.
Nevertheless, work stays work whether one does it in Switzerland or in Vietnam. 

I can, however, imagine that for a manager like Daniel, it is highly rewarding if the employees are so dedicated to projects and put so much effort into their work. 

A picture outside of the office of
Axon Active Vietnam.
Finally, I do not only understand,
but also agree to it :) 

During my stay here, I might not have been able to do a lot of sightseeing, which is somehow a pity, but on the other hand, I had the real "management experience" of how it is to take a 15-hour trip to the other side of the world, rush from one meeting to another (especially during the first days), having dinner with the team and colleagues, do some more work in the evening (for me this was the blog writing), get up again and start over again. All people at Axon Active Vietnam have my utmost respect for their dedicated work. The management team from Switzerland, from whom each is flying to Vietnam around 10 times a year, deserves some special credit for their tough work.

After this week, I can honestly say, that everybody who's got the impression that working abroad might be a piece of cake should really overthink that again. But, of course there are also a lot of nice things and the positive overweighs the negative (or not so exciting) aspects by far.  

A special thanks 

I would like to thank Daniel for his effort and the time he took for me during my stay in Vietnam. I was able to really see into the daily life of a work as a manager abroad and he always took time to answer my questions and gave me some background information on certain topics. His untiring efforts to get me to know also some more complex topics (like Scrum) were extremely valuable for me. Thanks to him, I was also able to get in touch with people like Markus Baur (CEO), Sebastian Sussmann (CIO), and many other people of the whole Axon Active Vietnam family. I would also like to thank Christoph and Nathalie for taking me to the football game and the dinner with some of their team members. Businesswise, this trip was probably the most enriching and valuable experience I have ever had in my life and I would not want to miss it. 

To say it with the words of MasterCard: 

Return flight to Ho-Chi-Minh City: CHF 600.- 

A delicious meal and a coffee at a charming restaurant: CHF 8.-

The knowledge, impressions and experience gathered during my short time here: priceless

I hope you enjoyed reading my blog and if you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact me!