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!
About crossing the street and keeping things short
Today, I won't bother you with a wall of text as I was using the day to catch up with some stuff from school. But I thought I can not just write nothing or not entertain you at all.
Therefore, please find below a nice video. Sit back, relax and enjoy :)
After this video, I recognized that I was on the wrong side of the street now and had to get back to the other side again. So I made another video but it is unfortunately too big to upload on blogspot.
Maybe there is still one side remark I should give though. We had dinner at a nice Vietnamese restaurant. The temparature was about 28 degrees, the food was nice and spicy, the rice difficult to eat with chopsticks, the duck well cooked, ... and from the speakers (first I really thought my mind kind of tricked me) there were Christmas jingles. Christmas jingles all evening and all over the place!!! :)
Wish you all a Merry Christmas!
Tomorrow I'll visit some meetings again and will write a summary/review of my stay in Vietnam and visiting Axon Active Vietnam.
About a meeting with the smurfs, football, and an exciting dinner
Meeting with the Smurfs
The afternoon of this day was no less interesting than the morning. I attended a meeting of the team "Smurfs" (another cool team name).
The team Smurfs and 3 other teams are working together on a new freemium payroll system which is cloud based. The target customers for this program are small Swiss enterprises. I already had the chance to see the application in action. The aim of the meeting was to plan the course of action for the next months as the payroll system will communicate with governmental authorities (tax authorities, BFS (Bundesamt für Statistik), AHV (Alters- und Hinterbliebenen Versicherung), and private insurance companies (for the PK (Pensionskasse)). It will submit the required data automatically to these institutions over Swissdec. Swissdec is a non-profit joint project with the above mentioned institutions. At the same time, it functions as a certification center for such payroll systems to ensure that the necessary requirements for the automatic transmission are being met. To keep the long story short, the new program has to comply with the requirements of Swissdec.
The team meeting
The meeting was attended by the members of team Smurfs, Daniel (Head of Development at AXON IVY and my shadowing host), as well as Francesco who is also an employee at AXON IVY and is a specialist the operational requirements for such software. The meeting took place in a smaller meeting room and was very impressive to me. Francesco and Daniel explained to the team what needs to be done until the end of the year as the software should be on the market by then (since most companies do their tax declaration etc. during January). The team (like always) was very attentive. Daniel later told me, that the team just started to work on this project the beginning of this year. What was really interesting for me was how Daniel and Francesco explained to the team what had to be done and also why it had to be done. I think, one reason for the teams to be so motivated at Axon Active Vietnam is also that they get really involved in the projects and know exactly what the customer wants to have. This is basically the credit of the POs and Managers at Axon Active (like Daniel and Francesco). They do not just give orders to the team but really work as part of the team and also explain the projects in detail. It was amazing to hear that some of the team members had already gained quite some knowledge about the Swiss payroll and tax system. This fact also makes them not just working for a project but also contribute their thoughts and recommendations for improvements.
All in all, I can say that all the meetings I have attended so far were highly productive and that the Managers at Axon Active Vietnam (both, the ones from Switzerland and from Vietnam) are really able to motivate the team members and provide a good and efficient working environment.
Football and an outstanding fish dinner
After work, I accompanied Christoph and Nathalie (two POs of Switzerland) to watch the football game of some of their team members. We arrived at a huge area where they had about10 football courts and on every of them people were playing. They played very good but we couldn't really follow the scores as we also arrived a little late. In the end Hap Em, one of the team members of team Golden told us that they won 9:1.
I tasted snails for the first time in my life and they were
delicious!
A so called hot pot with fish, a very tasty sauce
and a lot of vegetables
After the football match we went to a restaurant with 3 current team members and two former ones. Christoph once told me that they left Axon Active but still stay in contact. They also say that Axon Active Vietnam is and stays the "employer of their hearts". Wow... I was just wondering if I ever, ever in my life in Switzerland heard someone saying something like that about a former employer :) I would say this really speaks for itself and for Axon Active Vietnam and of course for Christoph and Nathalie who work close together with the team. The food was outstanding and so were the conversations we had. We had quite some beers and were talking about the prices in Vietnam compared to Switzerland, all kind of alcoholic beverages, Fondue (they actually once brought Gerber fondue and had a team dinner), wedding plans, and investing opportunities in Vietnam. It was very entertaining and every 5 minutes we rose our glasses and shouted the typical “Mot, Hai, Ba, Yo” just as Vietnamese people do when they are drinking and spending an enjoyable evening with friends.
Thank you for the great evening guys (and sorry I forgot to
take a picture of the whole table)
I think the fish was as excited as
I was :)
At the end of the dinner I had to go to the toilet and everybody was laughing and saying that I should enjoy. I wasn't really sure what to think about that. They also told me to take a picture. This information confused me even more but I had my mobile with me anyway. So here's the picture :)
There were actually some more pictures but I thought one selfie is enough:)
When Nathalie went to the toilet as well, of course everybody was wondering what pictures the woman toilet had to offer. Turns out they just have the usual advertisements which you'd also get on a Swiss toilet...
I would like to thank Christoph, Nathalie and all the others for the opportunity to share such a nice evening with such nice people. I enjoyed every minute and it was a great experience!
About a typical morning, an interview with Markus Baur, and a savings account which deserves its name
My morning and an additional remark regarding lunch
Well, I don't know how your mornings usually start, but my mornings in Vietnam are pretty much the same as in Switzerland when it comes to unpleasant incidents. Luckily, it happened in the hotel so I was still able to change:)
At this point, I would also like to make a little addition to the lunch section of yesterday's post.
As you might imagine, lunch for around 100 employees isn't created magically out of nowhere. So I would like to show you the people who put a lot of effort in the delicious food we enjoy every day!
In the morning, there was no meeting planned so I was able to check what my classmates had done the last days while I am here at Vietnam. Well, I seriously shouldn't have done that... I guess I'll need more than a day to catch up again. But thank you guys for sending me all the info!
The meeting with Mr. Markus Baur, CEO of Axon Active Vietnam
Daniel told me, that Mr. Markus Baur (CEO of Axon Active Vietnam) was currently in the office. He immediately agreed to have a meeting with me. This meeting was incredibly interesting.
Some information about Markus and how to set up a company in Vietnam
CEO of Axon Active Vietnam
source: http://www.axonactive.com/company/#management
Markus lives in Vietnam since 8 years (seven years in Ho-Chi-Minh City and one year in Danang). As you may recall, Axon Active Vietnam exists for just seven years so he was setting the whole
company up in Ho-Chi-Minh City and also in Danang. The setting up of the company itself (with government regulations etc.) was not the main challenge as he had the chance to see into another company which was set up by Vietnamese people and then even improved this process.
What was really tough, however, especially when he was setting up the second branch in Danang, was to transfer the working culture from Ho-Chi-Minh to Danang. He called this task a back-breaking work which needed a lot of time, energy and resources.
Markus pointed out, that it is not possible to just come here and set up a company with no knowledge and connections. He also mentioned some company managers which opened a branch in Vietnam, stayed here some months and then tried to manage the branch remotely. As you probably can imagine, this didn't work out well.
The different branches of Axon Active Vietnam
For Axon Active Vietnam, however, things are obviously working quite well as they are expanding their office spaces and will even open a new branch in Can Tho. The map on the right shows the three locations of Axon Active Vietnam (Can Tho will go into operation soon).
You might be wondering why the company would want to open a new branch in Can Tho as from a geographical perspective it would maybe make more sense to focus more on the north of the country.
Markus told me, however, that in the very south (Can Tho region) of Vietnam the existing industry consists mainly of farming and no qualified jobs are available. Therefore, a lot of young, well educated people go to Ho-Chi-Minh City to make a living whilst their families stay in the south. As the Vietnamese culture has a strong focus on family, the plan is to find new, highly qualified employees, which may have left the region of Can Tho and eventually would want to live closer to their families again. Like this, the company can improve its employer branding and get access to more qualified workers.
You should be aware, that most of the people do not really want to live in Ho-Chi-Minh City. For a foreigner like me, of course it is exciting for some time but after a while I can understand that the busy, loud, and smoggy city is not the place of dreams for many people. Especially not if you want to start a family.
This is why Axon Active Vietnam has started a campaign to attract new workers for their Can Tho branch. I guess you can tell that the picture suggests that it is actually possible to combine nature, family and work. I personally think that this is a very clever approach to attract qualified employees. Markus mentioned also that the war for talents is very intense in Vietnam (as it is almost everywhere in the world). This leads me to my next topic.
Employer branding, benefits, and the search for new talents
As mentioned above, the war for talents is quite harsh and the fluctuation rate in Vietnam is pretty high. And with a high fluctuation rate I mean really, really fast changing conditions. Nathalie once told me that one developer had left their team to start in another company. He then worked there for not even a week (!) and again switched to another employer. And the case described is nothing unusual here. Of course, this is also due to the fact that there is a very high need for developers and they are always able to find a new job. Therefore, companies have to stay in the minds of potential future employees. This aspect is basically no different than in Switzerland. How Axon Active Vietnam is tackling this issue, however, was amazing to hear for me.
They are having several events and a very close cooperation with the universities. Apart from doing the usual sponsoring and seminars (as Swiss companies do as well) they do also provide actual courses for the students. These courses are a win win situation for both, the company and the students. The students get a practice oriented development course while the company is able to detect outstanding students early and keep in touch with them.
Furthermore, Axon Active Vietnam is hosting the biggest IT event in Vietnam once a year. It is called DevDay Danang and in 2016 there were about 1'200 participants.
Markus told me, that the expenditures in employer branding are as high as for the sales marketing of their products and services.
Benefits for employees
As the competition between the employers is quite harsh, the companies have to provide various benefits for the employees. In Vietnam, however, this is normal if you want to attract and retain highly qualified employees. When I asked Markus about this, he said that to some people it may not appear like a job but more of a stay with Club Med if one has a look at the "What we offer" section on their website. After my experience here, I can surely state that it is definitely no holiday to work for Axon Active Vietnam and all the people put a lot of effort into their work. From a Swiss perspective, however, I have to agree with him somehow :)
One difference to Switzerland that really strikes me is that there are a lot of team activities provided. Markus also told me that they also need to provide for weekend trips and dinners for the teams. If I think of teams in Switzerland, I would say that it is rather difficult to convince most of the people to spend their week ends with co-workers. This can surely be considered a huge cultural difference.
The free Kindergarten for the employee's kids may be considered special also in Vietnam. The company does that, in order to attract also more senior employees.
Markus also informed me, that the whole personal costs cover about 50% of all costs here in Vietnam. Even though employee retention and employer branding are very expensive compared to Switzerland, what a company gets out of it is worth the pain.
Axon Active is considered a very good employer and does also organise career days. They usually receive then around 300 CVs of which 100 are invited to a full assessment day (which consists of technical tests, intelligent tests, English tests, and some social games).
After this, around 40 people will be invited for interviews. From these 40, 10 to 15 eventually start to work for Axon Active Vietnam.
So we can say that out of 300 applicants, 10 to 15 are actually getting a job.
When browsing the Facebook page of Axon Active Vietnam, I came across the following post which may be an indication of how the company is perceived by graduates:
The wedding example, power distance and what Vietnam could learn from Switzerland and vice versa
During the meeting with Markus, we of course also got into the topic of differences between the Vietnamese and Swiss culture. He then gave me a very nice example of a wedding in Vietnam compared to Switzerland.
In Switzerland, I think all my Swiss readers would agree, you'd communicate the date of the wedding as early as possible in order to make sure that the majority of the people is able to visit the day of your life. This is quite different in Vietnam. He told me, that if you would invite the people even just 3 weeks before the wedding you'd probably have no visitors at the wedding because they would already have forgotten it again. This is why, in Vietnam an invitation to a wedding is communicated somewhat 5 to 7 days before the actual event takes place in order to make sure that someone even shows up.
At least in my hotel I don't have to worry about not having
enough fire-extinguishers at hand even though they
are all located in the ground floor
Another example of cultural differences may be the fact, that most of the people cook with gas in Vietnam. But... NOBODY has a second gas bottle at home. This would not be imaginable in Switzerland. So if you run out of gas you'd just call the "gas delivery service" (even though it might be 2 a.m. on a Monday morning) and have your gas delivered.
Markus made a very true statement I think when he said:" Vietnam is an instant culture". Planning a long time in advance is not something which is done here and it also doesn't need to be done because everything works somehow out.
When I asked Markus about the leadership skills in Vietnam he said that you have to lead them more tightly. This goes into the topic of power distance which is in Switzerland, depending on the company, quite low but kind of high in Vietnam. But, compared with other Asian countries, the power distance in Vietnam is still one of the lower ones.
Daniel once told me, that in the beginning, the teams at Axon Active Vietnam always told the POs on what tasks they are currently working. Daniel then informed them that they don't need to do this as they trust that the outcome would be fine. If they had any questions, however, they could always ask. This was very difficult for some employees to understand as it is usually not the case in Vietnam.
Markus also pointed out that self-motivated working is not something which is usually the case in Vietnam. From what I saw at Axon Active Vietnam, I would not agree to that but I guess it needed a lot of effort until the working culture arrived at the outstanding level as it can be observed today.
When I asked Markus what Vietnam could learn from Switzerland and vice versa he said that it would be nice to have any legal certainty in Vietnam as corruption is still an issue. For example, as of 2015 foreigners are officially allowed to buy a house (this was not the case before) and all the newspaper were writing about it. Well, there is actually no foreigner owning a house in Vietnam so far, because even though the law exists, the detailed process has never been defined. He put the situation as follows: In Swiss law, we try to eliminate as many uncertainties as possible when implementing a law. In Vietnam, they try to maximize the scope of interpretation within their laws.
About what Switzerland could learn from Vietnam, he said, that this would most probably be the spontaneity and the short-term thinking to not over plan everything which in the end leaves to no, or very clumsy outcomes. I personally couldn't agree more.
This reminds me of another story about the instant culture. Sebastian (CIO) told me, that on a Sunday evening, around 10 p.m. he had a problem with his motorbike. In Switzerland it would be quite difficult to find someone fixing your bike at such a time. Well, in Vietnam he just drove to the official representative of his motorbike brand and got the bike fixed immediately.
As written before, Markus has lived in Vietnam for 8 years now. Quite surprisingly for me, however, was the fact that he had his crisis after 3 years' time which seemed quite late to me. He said that the crisis phase was triggered by a chain of events which just hit him more or less instantly.
My classmates should know the graph on the right. I wasn't aware, however, that the crisis phase may strike after such a long time. I thought that the whole transition stages were taking place in a shorter timeframe. Markus also informed me, that most expats he knows, respectively knew were leaving the country after 5 years again.
I would like to thank Markus Baur for the very interesting and valuable meeting and the time he took to give me an insight into the life as an expat and CEO in Vietnam! And I am also very happy about the merchandising products he gave to me from Axon Active Vietnam. On Friday, my last day at the office I will certainly wear the polo shirt with the Axon Logo :)
Lunch and getting a loan in Vietnam
After the interview it was almost time for lunch. Lunch was again delicious and fast :)
On the way back to the office, some guy stopped me (just like the guys of Greenpeace do at Zurich Main Station) and said: " Sir, would you like to have a loan or a mortgage from ANZ?" (ANZ is a Vietnamese bank). I was quite confused by this question and told him that I am a student and that they would probably not want me as a debtor. He then told me that he is studying economics as well and we had a really nice conversation. Turns out, in Vietnam you get 5 to 7% interest on your savings account. When I told him about how much we would get in Switzerland (and Europe) he laughed and said that he thinks that the plan of the European Central Bank was doomed to failure in his opinion. First of all, I was impressed that he knew so much about the European fiscal policy and second of all, that I couldn't agree more with his statement :)
SCRUM, SCRUM, SCRUM, lunch, high and low context cultures, and... something which really enlightened my day. You'll see :)
As promised, the building where Axon Active Vietnam is located (10th floor)
Okay, now I will go straight into Scrum (seriously) so you understand how the teams at Axon Active Vietnam work.
As already mentioned yesterday, Scrum is a framework which helps to cope with complex projects.
At Axon Active Vietnam, everything is organised based on Scrum which is why I feel that you should know a little bit about this approach.
1) The Product Owner (PO) could also be described as the customer who has a demand for a certain product. He is responsible for the WHAT. In an optimal case the PO is really the customer and an active part of the team. As a PO you also have to prioritize the different tasks (User Stories).
In Scrum, everything is broken down in to small pieces so people do not lose themselves in unnecessary details. Therefore, the PO writes so called "User Stories". These stories are kept rather simple and are built up as follows:
As a <user role>? (--> who?)
I want <goal>? (--> what?)
So that <reason>? (--> why?)
A typical user story could be:
As a student at FHNW I want to have the possibility to import my personal timetable directly into my calendar So that I don't have to spend time to copy all entries manually from the excel sheet
This story might already be a little bit too complex as it involves more than one step. So the team would probably not be satisfied with my User Story or would have to break it down in separate stories.
As mentioned, the PO is responsible for prioritizing the different user stories and defines what the result should be like.
2) The Implementation Team members play obviously also an important role in Scrum. They are responsible for the HOW. A team consists of 5 to 9 people and is responsible to implement the User Stories. Every morning the teams get together and have a meeting and all the team members explain:
1. What did I do yesterday that helped the Development Team meet the Sprint Goal?
2. What will I do today to help the Development Team meet the Sprint Goal?
3. Do I see any impediment that prevents me or the Development Team from meeting the Sprint Goal?
The term Sprint refers to the actual working phase during which the different user stories are realized. The team alone decides how many user stories it is able to realize during one Sprint (a Sprint takes 2 weeks).
For those more interested in the comic than in Scrum :)
As mentioned above, every team decides how many stories it will be able to cover during a Sprint. To make the effort per story somehow tangible, each story receives so called "Story Points". The process of assigning Story Points to the different User Stories sounds awesome. It is a "poker game" (you can also see this in the video I posted yesterday). I really hope I will be able to see this on my own while I am here.
The team has a meeting where they review all the Story Points which came from the PO. Then, for every User Story, every team member estimates how much effort this particular story implies. Every team member then places the card which has the estimated effort on it in front of him or her faced down, so the other members are not influenced in their decision. When everybody has decided on their estimation, they uncover the cards and compare and discuss the results. If there are huge differences in the estimated effort, it can be an indication that the User Story has not been understood the same way by the members and that a clarification with the PO is necessary. Like this, it can also be avoided that certain requirements are misinterpreted.
The POs have specified their desired outcomes within a digital backlog. The teams have displayed these backlogs also on their boards. In the following pictures you can see some backlogs of the Sprints. Be aware that this is always one Sprint on each of the boards.
The printed papers on the left are user stories
and the post-its are then tasks to be done related
to the user story. This team is at the very beginning
of a Sprint.
Team "WOW!" is actually quite at the end of a sprint but you can nicely see that on the very left, they have the user stories,
which are then specified into tasks and eventually move on to "in progress" and "done".
The backlog of team "next"
I am actually pretty excited about this way of project tracking. If you walk by the the different boards you can immediately see if a team is at the beginning or the end of a Sprint and if they seem to be stuck with some particular issue. The Burndown chart (part of every Backlog board) also indicates how the team is on track during their Sprints.
You can see that the team was experiencing some
difficulties in the beginning where the points to be done
actually increased tona higher level than it was at the beginning.
Right know, however, they seem to be on track to finish the Sprint on time.
The Burndown chart shows the progress in a Sprint. This means, that the Story Points assigned to each story in the first planning meeting (poker game) are added up, and every day, the progress is updated in the Burndown chart and the tasks are moved accordingly over the board. This happens every morning in the daily meeting I have mentioned at the beginning of this section about the Implementation Teams.
Updating the backlog board for the
current Sprint at the daily meeeting
Uptdating the Burndown chart for the
current Sprint at the daily meeting
This leaves us now with the last role of the Scrum team.
3) The Scrum Master has a very important role! He is as important as every other team member and you should not underestimate his function. The Scrum Master is the trouble shooter and the order keeper. He makes sure that everything works fine and also takes care that the team members are able to do their work and do not get disturbed by external influence factors. He reduces redundancy steps and should be an example to team. His main tasks basically include:
- Responsible for increasing productivity
- Responsible for using scrum framework
- Facilitates and coaches the team
- Owns the impediment Backlog
These are the roles which are immediately involved in the Scrum model applied at Axon Active Vietnam. Additionally, I already mentioned some specific tasks. The following picture shows again a short overview of the different roles:
As I have already covered quite some steps of the Scrum organization, the next part should be a little less complicated (at least for me to write it :) ).
Scrum means basically that you break down a big project into smaller parts. Like this, you are able to focus on the different steps in detail and also get the steps done (I guess we all know projects where there seem to be endless meetings but finally nothing happens at all). So the circle you can see below (which I posted already yesterday), has to be considered as one part (which consists of several small tasks) of a complex project.
Planning Part I (what?) 2 hours:
This step is basically the meeting with the poker cards. During this planning meeting the attendance of the team and the PO is absolutely mandatory in order to achieve a common understanding.
Planning Part II (how?) 2 hours:
During this meeting, the team is on itself (PO is not allowed at the meeting and the Scrum Master not required). The team then defines the architecture and does the detail planning.
Please do note, that these two meetings are basically the whole planning phase. As you can see in the PDCA (Plan, Do, Check, Act) circle this does just take 4 hours in total. So after 4 hours the whole planning for a part of the project is done and the Scrum Team will go into the Sprint. I personally think that this, if it is properly applied is an incredibly efficient way of going through the planning of a project.
Sprint 2 weeks:
About the Sprint I basically already told you. It is the actual work which is done and tracked with the Backlogs and Burndown charts introduced above. The teams work on the different stories and will try to finish all of them by the end of the two week Sprint. Daniel told me that since the teams have set their own targets they are highly motivated that those targets are also met.
Review, 2 hours:
At the end of each Sprint there is a review. The teams then show what they have actually achieved and for each story it is decided whether the case can be closed or not. Daniel explained to me that a story cannot be closed even if there is just the documentation of one line of code missing.
The points which couldn't get closed go then into the next Scrum circle (Sprint respectively) and the whole process starts over again. If you are interested in more details (yes, this was actually just a more or less broad overview) you can have a look at the following PDF which is called SCRUM ON A PAGE: http://cdn.axonactive.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/PDF-Scrum-on-a-Page.pdf
I hope I covered the main points of Scrum. Otherwise, I hope someone will let me know if I missed some important facts or did misinterprete something.
Daniel also introduced me to the concept of Kanban which I primarily know from production planning. I will now go into an even longer and more detailed description of this process. . .
I'm just joking guys :) I guess those of you who are not really into this stuff suffered enough by now so I will go to another topic now which almost everybody likes; FOOD:)
Lunch
At Axon Active Vietnam, the employees are provided with lunch by the company. This is just one of the various benefits a company has to provide here if it wants to be considered a good employer. But I will go into that another day.
However, today I went for lunch with the employees the first time. At 11:50 (not one minute later) everybody got up from their chairs and we were walking to the Axon Active house (they have a house where the POs can stay during their time in Vietnam). There, everybody took off their shoes (yes, not only in Switzerland it is considered rude to enter a house with shoes). I am happy I didn't wear flip flops though because otherwise I would probably never have found my own ones again :) Lunch was delicious and I had some very good conversations about Uber. Turns out, the Taxi drivers and the government in Vietnam are as unhappy as they are in Switzerland about the whole Uber situation. But Lunch was as delicious as it was fast. After just 10, or a maximum of 15 minutes everybody got up from the table again and left.
So let me give a quick side remark to my friend Nicholas from Switzerland who will visit Vietnam as an exchange student next year and is one of the slowest eaters I've ever met. " You better learn to eat fast dude!" :) :) :)
After lunch, it became clear that we had to leave the house because the second "lunch shift" from Axon Active Vietnam was already arriving. They always eat in shifts as there is not enough space in the house (some already had to eat in rooms upstairs) to cater for all of the employees at the same time.
A question isn't necessarily a questions and a "yes" not necessarily a yes
Today I attended two meetings from which one was very technical and the other one more of an administrative nature. The latter was very interesting in terms of cultural differences as there was a situation where the supervisor asked one of the staff members if he could take care of a certain task. The staff member then replied with a yes but I could actually tell that the yes was not really a yes but more of a "I am not really sure if I can do that". After the meeting I asked Daniel whether my impression was correct. He then said to me that I was probably right but that I should also be aware that the question was not really to be considered as a question.
I was already wondering about that before, because from my experience it is difficult for Vietnamese people to say "no" (in fact, this is also difficult for some Swiss people but that's a different story). At Axon Active Vietnam, however, this was one of the first times where I had the impression that a "yes" was not meant as a real "yes". Daniel informed me that a lot of people are actually working for the company quite some time which is why they have learned that a "no" can also be okay (see also the poker cards).
Day 4: About shadowing, Axon Active Vietnam, different approaches in construction site planning and a true working philosophy
Today was the first day I actually saw into the company of Axon Active Vietnam. Therefore I will give some background information about the companies structure, its tasks and my shadowing host.
First of all my cousin wrote me today and said that he really enjoyed reading my blog. His next question then was: "And why are you doing this"? So for those not from my class I will provide a quick description of what the so called "Shadowing Experience" is about and what the aims are.
I am studying International Management at the FHNW in Brugg/Windisch. As part of my studies I have to gain some intercultural ECTS points. Those can be earned by different context modules, study trips, or a semester abroad. As I am not able to participate in a semester abroad I had to find other ways to gain my intercultural experience of which one is this Shadowing Experience.
The aim of the Shadowing Experience is to gain an insight into a foreign working culture. This means to visit a company abroad and to act as a "shadow" of a manager and observe the different working culture. I have to write a blog (yes, this one) and in our next semester also a work experience paper which will also focus on intercultural working environments.
Start of the Shadowing Experience: An introduction to the company and my shadowing host.
As mentioned above, the company I visit is called Axon Active Vietnam. It is part of the Axon Group which has its headquarter in Lucerne, Switzerland (http://www.axonactive.ch/en/). Axon Active has many subsidiaries of which I will focus on two of them as they are immediately relevant to my experience here.
Axon Active Vietnam (http://www.axonactive.com/)
is an Offshore Development Center (ODC) and also an Offshore Testing Center (OTC). It has two offices of which one is located in Ho-Chi-Minh City (that's where I am) and another one in Da Nang. In total, the company employs more than 300 developers in Vietnam!
The two branches (Da Nang, and Ho-Chi-Minh City) are organized in departments and from the departments you can already tell that the headquarter of the company is most probably located somewhere in Switzerland.
The office spaces are located at the 10th floor in a building near the airport (a picture of the building will follow). I personally have to say that I did not expect such a modern working environment in a Vietnamese company. The desk space per person is rather small but the technical standard is very high (even better than in many companies I have worked in so far in Switzerland). This, however, is of course necessary if you have to be connected to Switzerland for meetings and a meeting room crowded with no less than 27 people participate in a meeting with 6 other people from Switzerland via Skype (I will come back to the actual meeting).
Mr. Daniel Gauch; my shadowing host
Daniel Gauch is my "shadowing host" during my time here. He is the Head of Development at Axon Ivy (http://www.axonivy.com/ch-en/), a subsidiary of the Axon Group. Axon Ivy provides IT solutions for Intelligent Business Process Management (IBPM), Case Management, Business Intelligence, and Banking Cloud. Daniel told me today that they even earned a place in the Gartner 's Magic Quadrant for intelligent solutions in business process management with their IBPM Suite. As far as I have understood, if you are mentioned by Gartner (http://www.gartner.com/technology/home.jsp) it is as if you were a restaurant and would be awarded a 5 star rating in the Michelin Guide.
So it is for sure a reason to be proud of, especially because the company actually made it within the first try which is not common at all as the criterias to be met are very tough.
I met Daniel at a coffee shop near the office and he arrived together with the CIO of Axon Active Vietnam, Mr.
Sebastian Sussmann. Sebastian also wanted to know what some Swiss student is doing in Vietnam and I explained to him the aim of the shadowing experience. He is actually living in Ho-Chi-Minh City and when I asked him for how long he already lived here he told me that he doesn't really know because the work in Vietnam got more and more and it slightly shifted to the point when he spent more time in Vietnam than in Europe.
The three of us then had an interesting talk about how fast Vietnam is changing. I-ve already visited Vietnam in 2010 and when I went into the city center this Saturday I was baffled as I didn't really recognize the city I was visiting in 2010. So many new buildings and especially skyscrapers mushroomed out of nowhere. Sebastian then stated that he sometimes goes to Europe for some weeks and when he comes back there are several new buildings. If I compare that to Switzerland (think of the Gubrist tunnel) where they are planning for some years how to proceed and then spend even more years to actually work on the construction site... I am pretty sure when the tunnel in Switzerland will be finished around 2022 (or probably even later), they already have to plan the next expansion because the traffic will have increased exponential by then. We came to the conclusion that probably things in Vietnam are not as properly planned as they should be and things in Switzerland are massively overplanned so that the requirements which were valid during the planning phase will most probably be totally different when the project is finished.
Changing requirements is a perfect transition to my next topic which needs to be covered because it has quite some influence on the working environment:
SCRUM
I guess most of my classmates from Switzerland are now scratching their head and think "that sounds somehow familiar". That is because we already had a look at this topic with Markus Fischer in BIS II and III. I will not go too much into detail but to understand the working structure at Axon Active Vietnam it is of some importance to at least remind you of the basics of this concept.
SCRUM is an agile framework which helps to cope with complex projects and today was actually the first time in my life I saw into a real life SCRUM based project management. It seems to me that with this approach we would have been much more efficient with our own assignement in BIS II and III.
It would be really important to go into the topic in detail and how it is really done at Axon Active Vietnam but I am getting pretty tired and should not drink another coffe right now. Because otherwise I will not sleep at all this night and would probably write some thousands more words about SCRUM. I will therefore postpone this particular topic and will come back to it tomorrow when I will try to present it to you in a short and interesting way. Maybe by then, I already had the chance to observe one of the two planning parts and can also share some real experience. For those of you who want to get into the topic already can also watch this entertaining and explanatory video which can also be found under http://www.axonactive.com/how-we-work/.
The first meeting
When we arrived, Daniel already needed to participate in a meeting and I was invited to go as well. We were sitting on small wooden chairs and were connected to 6 people from Switzerland via Skype and Team Viewer. As mentioned earlier, the meeting room was crowded with about 27 people (me included). Daniel told me before, that it was a little bit a special situation because there were 4 teams participating in the meeting. When I asked him whether this is usually not the case he told me that
there is no "usual" because this would basically be a direct conflict with the Agile work environment which is the embodiment of flexibility. So, what needs to be done, needs to be done and in this particular case there were 4 teams working on one project (whereas each team usually works on its own and the merger happens at a later stage) and there needed to be done some clarification with the different stakeholders. The meeting took about 90 minutes and I won't go into the details. What I would like to point out, however, is that all the participants were highly focused. Each team was showing directly in the Team Viewer what they had worked on and sometimes the people from Switzerland would ask some questions which could be clarified right away. They also showed the responsive design of the product from a tablet perspective. You should know what this means as we have to create also a website with responsive design this semester:). Daniel, from time to time summarized the points which were still to be done and all members in the meeting nodded their heads. Before the call with Switzerland ended, one of the Vietnamese employees closed the meeting with the suitable statement: "LET'S GO OUT AND ROCK!" , which for me confirms my initial impression that the employees are really dedicated to their work.
At this point I'd like to show you the philosophy of Axon Active Vietnam:
The people left the meeting room very quickly and I am sure that they went back to their desks and rocked!
Some further impressions and a wrapup of my first day "at work"
During the meeting there were some people wearing face masks as the people here usually do on the motorbike. While it makes sense to me to wear such a mask on a motorbike to protect yourself from the dust it seemed a little odd to wear it during a meeting. Daniel, however, told me afterwards that they were not protecting themselves from something but that they were actually not feeling well and protecting the other employees from getting sick as well. After this explanation I have to admit that this would also make sense in Switzerland. People too often go to work when they are not feeling well and then, week after week some other person gets sick and needs to stay home. If this could be avoided so easily it seems to be a very, very valid approach. Therefore, if I will visit a next lecture with a mask, don't give me some puzzled looks but thank me for my thoughtful behavior!:)
In a nutshell, my first day was highly interesting, exhausting, packed with a lot of information and impressions and also included a crash course in Agile and SCRUM development (I will get back to that more in detail). I look forward to another awesome day tomorrow and will also try to take some more pictures. I guess you can understand that I did not take too many pictures today. Or would you run around with a camera and take a picture of everything while the people are actually focusing on their work on your first day in a new company? Or the other way round... Would you appreciate some guy walking around your desk and taking pictures of you while you are at work?
But we stayed in the office quite late so I was able to get some impressions after some of the people had already left.
