Alexandre Cuva

Monday, November 12, 2012

Agile Tour Vietnam - Ho Chi Minh 2012

Just return from the Agile Tour 2012 Vietnam Ho Chi Minh. It was a fantastic experience, I meet some awesome peoples from the audience and speakers.

The Start key note we had Ken Schwaber (One of the founder of Scrum, for who don't know him :)), in remote because unfortunately for us, Ken decided for 1 year to stay home and not take plane. I wish him all the best for his 1 year no travel.


Then the sessions started and I went to see a local speaker Duong Trong Tan (Academic Head, FPT University). And his presentation about Agile Education in Vietnam. It was an interesting topics, I wish we have such topics in Switzerland or Europe. I tink Jean-Pierre from the HES Sierre would be happy to listen on such topics. Tan presented what's happens in Vietnam this last month, and then presented what are the different options to improve Learning. Most of them where learning tools we already use in Agile (Coding Dojo, Agile Workshop, Serious Game...)

It was then my turn, I presented a Management 3.0 Introduction with the Vietnam culture in background (http://www.slideshare.net/GToronto/management-30-excellence-agile-hcmc). I explain in the working the actual environment, most people where not happy and we need to change, so we can improve performance and company with improvement in humans. I show them that Vietnamese peoples had a special power, they where self-organized people, when you see how people drive in the street. It is an example of Complex Adaptive System (CAD). Then I presented what should learn a Leader to be a great Manager with Agile teams, with example from Jurgen Appelo Management 3.0 training.
 
In the afternoon I facilitate a Coding Dojo C# and show to the audience, good practice about TDD, pair programming and tools like SpecFlow one of the best tools for BDD in .NET. This first session was quite hard. But with the help of my interpret (Duc Nguyen) we where able to get a few pair to work on the software. One of the greatest team was a pair of Java Developers who for the first time they tried C#.  I had different feedback from the session:

  • I don't like to write C# code with a Swiss-French keyboard
  • From this dojo, I learn one thing, I need to learn TDD now and not tomorrow.
  • ...
I propose next year I come with a French Keyboard, it will be a lot more funny than the Swiss keyboard. Who will die first, the keyboard or the pair ?

The second day I present my workshop Dice4Agile. A workshop where audience learn how to estimate sprint point, measure velocity, prepare a Release plan and then play the sprints, by preparing before each sprints their next 3 sprints content. It is a great opportunity for the teams to learn to self-organize and found solution their self.

I then went to see Kiro Harada (Lean and Toyota Production System Expert), he present a subject about eXtreme FD. It was quite interesting to see Agile with Electronic components. I feel completely useless in the training but amazing about the expertise from the audience.

And finally I had my last session, Energize People, I presented the Moving Motivator a game from the Management 3.0 training I give. The people like it a lot, it show how a Manager or any other person can learn the 10 Intrinsic desires from their employees, colleague or himself.

I used the same game with one of the volunteer who had a question about her future. In the second par I used a Team spirit game to elevate energy for all the participant. I think they never laugh so much in their working life.

We had a Open Session for the closing session, with Daniel Teng (First CSC of China)

I would like to thanks all the team from Agile Vietnam, the Vietnamese and other countries audience, all the sponsor for awesome Agile Tour 2012 we had in Ho Chi Minh (Saigon).

See you all at the Agile Tour 2013 Vietnam the 8th-9th nov 2013