Alexandre Cuva

Monday, October 7, 2013

My new agile adventure in Vietnam Part 3

Part 2

Monday 17th June 2013
That's it, this afternoon we will fly to Vietnam, to meet my teams. I'm coming with our Business Development Director (BD). A few last thing to do in the office and let's go to the Airport. Around 3:15 pm, our flight take-off to Dubai.
Midnight we land in Dubai, 1:00 am we are at the Marina to drink and eat something.
First time in Dubai, thanks to our BD, I have a fast Dubai visit in Car and a Diner at the Marina.

Then return to the Airport, wait at the Lounge and finally take-off to Saigon. We finally arrived exhausted in Saigon, but happy.

It's not my first time in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), but first learn to BD how to cross the street in Vietnam. It is not an usual way for most of the foreigners. The first time you are quite frightened, all this car and motorcycle everywhere and no one stop to let you pass. In Europe, you wait the green light and then you cross the street. Here you wait the green light and no one will stop to let you pass. :(
In Asia, you cross the street, not running, walk, never stop, so the driver knows how to avoid you. If you stop, go backward, it's the beginning of an accident. In Europe, you do the same, you are dead. Driver are not ready to avoid you, they will try to stop in front of you :)

Ho Chi Minh, here we are...
First time for BD in Vietnam, so much thing to see, I become a tourist guide. Thanks to friend Than who presented me HCMC last year. We take a cab, visit the oldest HCMC Pagoda (Buddhist Temple), the Notre Damme Church, the Old Post Office, the luxury shop and Ho Chi Minh place.


A small break at the Nguyen Coffee place, for an Ice Saigon coffee and then we run at the Saigon Hub for my Scrum Coffee session with Agile Vietnam


Tomorrow we will fight to Da Nang.

Tuesday, September 3, 2013

My new agile adventure in Vietnam Part 2

Part 1 <-> Part 3

I had the main ideas on how to put in place the IT's in this new company. Who will not jump on the occasion to put in place all he always wanted to see.

Some of you may ask why I decided to have my teams in Vietnam, why not somewhere more near Europe, like Eastern Europe or some Latin countries. The first time I came in Vietnam, I was invited by the Agile Vietnam Community to present subjects for the HCMC Agile Tour 2012. I had so much great moment. I talk with foreigners and Vietnam people. I loved the Vietnam culture and the most important one I meet a company with a business model as I like. The CEO believes in Agile and he his one of the major agile promotion company. They give free training to the University in two big cities. They are mostly the main Sponsor on all the Agile / Lean event. It's easy all their customers need to work with Scrum. The customer brings the Product Owner, they bring the team and the Scrum Master.
As a Product Owner you don't have just a team of project and that's it. As a Product Owner it's your team, you participate with them at all the team building, you part of the team. You are not someone, a stranger.

Before leaving for Vietnam, I needed to put in place diverse remote tools to promote communication between the teams and me. As a Product Owner I need to be near the team, even if we have thousand kilometers between us and the time zone.  I decided to put some tools I like and I used for many years and also because their business model was interesting for small teams :
  • JIRA + Agile JIRA: To follow the Epics and Stories
  • Confluence: The wiki
  • Bitbucket: the GIT Server
  • Crucible: the review tool, a must if you want to participate with the team in the review of the code
Within JIRA I create different project :
  • Program Management: A Kanban board, I follow the Epics, from their open, confirmed, selected, in progress, In Review, Ready to Release, Close
  • Beagle Scrum Team: A Scrum Board for the Beagle team, only Epics in Progress, In Review appear here.
So here we are, ready to leave for the Vietnam...

Before leaving, I had a first Sprint in remote. I still remember that first day. I was so exited and in the same time anxious. My wife pushes me out of the bed, I could not sleep. It was my first true experience as Product Owner with a team in Vietnam.

6:00 am
That's it, GotoMeeting is on, I hear some sound in the back, I think they are like me. Who will be the PO, he is cool ? How the team will be ? 
After some time of thinking and knowing the team better, I found out that they join the best people for my team. They know I am an Agile Coach, I was an XP Programmer.

The rest of the time I presented the vision of the Product as much I can, it is true I didn't know as much I know now. I present the Epics and the User Story I think they will work on the first Sprint. 
I put also a technical task: put in place the commit stage in the continuous delivery.

To continue...


Wednesday, August 21, 2013

My new agile adventure in Vietnam

Part 2

Since already 2 months I have been working in Vietnam with a Scrum Team. It is not only a short project, it is a huge project where I will be the main actor in the implementation of Agile practices, culture Hacking, Lean, Kanban and a lot more that I will have the chance to put in place.

So one of my Agile friends told me I should post on my Blog what's happened here.

So here I am Gael I start....

Once upon the time, there was a Freelance Agile Coach, who received a request from another friend : Alex I am working to create a new great Financial Company and I would like to have you to be part of this fantastic journey. Here the product... Are you In ? Of course that Product make sense to me I believe we can create a great company together with the two others. But in one condition, I want to manage my team in my way and have the Scrum teams in Vietnam.

My first job was to think about how we will manage Scrum teams in Vietnam and having most of the end customers back in Europe. Early in June I went to DARE 2013, great event about anything and Culture Haking with a lot of great people to meet. So there I meet Dean Leffingwell, author of two great books "Agile Software Requirements" and "Scaling Software Agility". So Dean presented a subject about the Scaling Software Agility. That was the subject I needed.

Dean in is presented, show us how to use Lean and Agile together and it makes sense. There are parts that Lean is great and make more sense than Scrum. Dean explains in Big company you have 3 phases:

  • 1st Layer "Portfolio Management", it is around Lean and Kanban
  • 2nd Layer "Program Management", some Lean, some Scrum and a Road Map around the features
  • 3rd Layer "Scrum Teams"
It depends then on the size the company.

That's it, I had the main ideas, ok my company is small, but it is highly distributed to the different office around the world and having a Scrum Product Manager for each office and a Scrum Master per team. It makes sense to me. The 1st Layer is too ambitious, but the 2 others are a good start.

To continue...