Being Agile in a Cross Cultural Environment - XP Day 2015 @ Vietnam - Nguyen Vu Hung

A Case Study at Septeni Technology:

Being Agile in a Cross-Cultural Environment

XP Day 2015 @ Da Nang, Vietnam2015/04/18Nguyen Vu Hung, CTO, Septeni Technology

AGENDA

1. Introduction2. Highlighted Case Studies in Random Order

a. Toolsb. Processesc. Best practices

3. Q&A

2014/04/18, XP Day Vietnam 2015 @Da Nang, Vietnam - Nguyen Vu Hung

About Septeni (Technology)

➔ HQ Septeni Group: 1990/10➔ Sep Tech: 2013/03➔ 50 staffs➔ Web service developement



Self Introduction

1. Nguyễn Vũ Hưng, 19782. CTO, Septeni Technology 3. POS:

a. Agileb. Open Sourcec. Project Managementd. Bridge SE (!)

"Nguyen Vu Hung is the CTO of Septeni Technology, a development center of Tokyo based Septeni Group that focuses on developing and operating, mostly, web-based online advertisement systems. He has numerous years of IT and software development, project/product management in both Japan and Vietnam. Considering himself as a FOSS and Agile evangelist and being a Agile lover and an CTO, he is also interested in not-so-related domains such as human resource management and (organization) (re)structuring."

www.facebook.com/nguyenvuhung

[email protected]

+84-904-28-7878


Disclaimer

What is talked and discussed here is my personal opinion and is NOT the opinion of my employer(s), associations and/or groups I join.


Disclaimer (2)

I am too young to understand XP.And I am here to talk what I think when looking back to XP. And not about XP itself.


What (NOT) to Cover?

1. In this session, we share our experiences, tools, practices,

2. We don’t cover basic information, defintion such as “what is Agile?”, “Is this really Agile or scrum-butt?” here,

3. XP and Scrum. We follow Agile principles but not only XP and Scrum practices.

“At Septeni Technology, we've been trying to apply Agile practices and and its principles for over two years for IT projects as well as web-based services since the beginning of the company. In this session, as a case study, with the purpose of sharing our knowledge, I would like to share our best practices for applying Agile, the tools we are using, the mindset we must have for applying Agile successfully.”


Who Should Join This Session

1. Basically, everyone can enjoy this session,2. However, a little experience with software

development, Agile/Scrum practices will make you feel more comfortable with this session,

3. You are in a (offshore/outsourcing) development center in Vietnam.


OK, Let’s Start


Which came first?

1. Agile,2. Scrum,3. XP?


Which is Most Important?

1. People,2. Process (quy trình),3. Tools?


People


Tool

Process

JapaneseVietnamese

AgileScrumXP

JIRAWikiSkype

The Organizations

1. Septeni Groupa. Based in Tokyob. (Internet) Marketing

2. Two development centersa. Japan/Tokyo (~50 staffs)b. Vietnam/Hanoi (~50 staffs)

3. Operation centersa. (Mainly in) Japanb. U.S.c. EU, Korea, APAC


Project::Communication GapO

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Gaps in Definition of Done

1. Be proactive2. We define our DoD and defense it3. Clear DoD is a good thing4. Ambiguity for rooms of improvement5. Have an RACI table6. Done when reviewing is finished.


Problems of Language Gap

1. 80% understandable2. English, Japanese and Vietnamese3. We are not English native speakers4. Speakings & Writing

a. Criticial cases: Native languagesb. English is OK

5. When to speak and when to write?6. TV Conferences7. Translators/Bridge SE


The Importance of Business Analyst

1. We don’t BA officially2. Bridge SE, PM, PO have to act as BA3. Fill the business gaps between business and

technical


Getting Things Done is not Enough

1. Japana. More process oriented than,b. Result oriented

2. Vietnama. Which one is more importance? Process or Result?

3. Scrum (as a process) is a (Agile) toolkit or the goal?

4. Balacing the two5. Short-term and long-term goals


Seeking for a Standard

1. Does it exist: “Standard” Scrum?2. The Scrum way in Japan,3. The Scrum way that make Vietnamese

happy?4. Customized Septeni Scrum way.


Meetings and Reports

1. Do we need 2 daily meetings?a. Morning meetings,b. Afternoon meetingsc. Why?

2. Issues/Progress tracking for all stakeholders3. Managers/PO in Japan and Vietnam can

track easier,4. Prepare for Overtime if needed


Test Automation

1. Not directly improve quality2. Types of AT

a. Unit levelb. Function levelc. Integration Test (IT), UAT

3. Toolsa. Selenium/Web Driveb. Cucumberc. Shouldbee (?)

4. The goalsa. +80% coverage for unit testb. +50% coverage for IT, UAT (webapps), by number

of test cases2014/04/18, XP Day Vietnam 2015 @Da Nang, Vietnam - Nguyen Vu Hung

Test Automation (Developers)

1. PHP Unit2. Ruby: Rspec3. Scala: Scalatest4. The goals

a. +80% coverage for unit testb. +50% coverage for IT, UAT (webapps), by number

of test cases


Test Automation (Manual Testers)

1. Selection criteriaa. No or little programming skills requiredb. Quick learn, low cost to start

2. What to applya. TDD, BDD

3. Shared goals among testers/developersa. +80% coverage for unit testb. +50% coverage for IT, UAT (webapps), by number

of test cases


Cultural Transition

Note: Thanks Kakeya-san for the slide

Most of the audiences agree that Vietnamese must/should and is more Amerian-like that Japanese.


Culture Comparation (2)




Note: Thanks Kakeya-san for the slide2014/04/18, XP Day Vietnam 2015 @Da Nang, Vietnam - Nguyen Vu Hung




(Task/Collective) Ownerships

1. Main responsiblity for each process is defined in RACI table

2. Each task/process has ONE person to take ownership on it

3. Team members help each other, but main ownership belongs to only ONE

4. “Trách nhiệm liên đới"/連帯責任5. "Cha chung không ai khóc"/"

bóng ở giữa sân"

Project organizational chart


Rhythms of Agile (Scrum)1. Asa-kai (朝会=morning meeting)

a. All company staffs join2. Product P

a. Daily meetingi. Morning: Task for Yesterday and

today, issuesii. Evening: Do we need to work

overtime today?b. Teirei meeting (JP/PO/VN)

3. Release weekly on Tuesday4. Bug statistics at the end of every

months5. zabbix alert statistics at the end of

every weeks

Regular meeting calendar of a month.

Type of reports

Type of meetings


Platform Team - The Next Target

1. DOsa. Build technical common foundation through our

companyb. Adopt it to application development with

communicating with application development team2. DONTs

a. Develop applications


DDD: Domain-Driven Design

1. Ubiquitous language to fill the cutural gaps

2. Business and technical friendly3. New and still immature4. Why not try it?5. Full cycle: from requirements to operation


Scala: New Development Stack

1. (Ubuntu)2. Scala 23. JDK/JRE 84. Play Framework

a. backend, application server5. IntelliJ IDEA6. Amazon AIM Linux (server)7. Frontend: AngularJS8. Amazon MySQL RDS9. Specs2

10. Vagrant, VirtualBox2014/04/18, XP Day Vietnam 2015 @Da Nang, Vietnam - Nguyen Vu Hung

Kanban

1. Big Backlog2. 4 lanes: Todo, Doing, Resolved,

Done3. “Release” with Jira Kanban4. One-week iteration5. Limit WIP (TBD)6. Mainly for operation and research

tasks

Planning Poker

1. 1, 2, 4 8... vs. 1, 2, 3, 5, 8…2. Qualitative Measure3. Planning poker cards4. 10 months from ideas to

implementation

Typical Vietnamese :)

1. Resistance to change2. Always start with a “NO” statement3. Don’t speak4. Don’t open

DRIVE THEM!

(Some) XP Rules We Follows

1. We follow most of XP Rules2. Test first (TDD)3. Automation Test4. Small Iteration5. Unit test

Let’s Vote for the Next Topics


Topics in DetailA. Organizational:1. Organzation structure2. Technology overview3. KPIs (Key Performance

Indicator)4. Roles and Responsibilities5. Report Lines6. Bridge SE7. (TBD) Scaled Agile

B. Management:1. Knowledge

Management/Transfering

2. Result-Oriented Management

3. Planning4. Estimation5. Review Process

F. About the Project:1. Project P. Overview2. Agility in project P.

D. Important quality practices:1. TBD: Software Metrics to

Measure2. Quality = Measurement

C. Best practices:1. Jenkins - Continuous

Integration2. Integrated Test Automation3. Source Code Quality4. Code Coverage5. Unit Test - PHPUnit6. Test Code7. Test Driven Development8. Source Code Refactoring9. Source Code Quality

10. (git) branching modelE. Tools:1. Jira - Ticket Management2. JQL: Powerful Ticket Queries3. Collaboration with Confluence4. Stash - a git Repository5. Chatwork - Realtime Instant

Messenger6. Google Drive - Realtime

Collaboration Tool

G. Other1. Book we read2. What are the gaps?


WE ARE HIRING



APPENDIX


Organzation Structure

1. Infrastructure2. Human Resource/Back Office3. Developement

a. Project P. We will talk about this project


Technology Overview

1. Infra: Amazon EC,2. Framework: CakePHP, 3. Database: MySQL RDS, 4. External interface: Facebook API


Project P Overview

1. Japan sidea. 01 Product ownerb. 02 facilitators

2. Non-technicala. 01 Project managerb. 03 Project leadc. 01 Quality assurance leadd. 01 Bridge SE

3. Technicala. 10 developersb. 08 testersc. 120 KLOC


Agility in Project P.

1. Customized scrum practices2. Big team to run scrum? (~30 persons)3. 01 PMs, 01 Bridege SE4. 3 teams

a. One project leader in each teamb. One scrum master in each time

5. A half is QA6. A half is developers

Note: We are going to make this structure more flat and cross-functional


Knowledge Management/Transfering

1. Confluence (wiki)2. Blog labs.septeni-technology.jp3. Training (external, internal)4. Pair programming5. Review processes


Planning

1. Long-terma. 3-month after the FB API update

planb. (For development) We don’t plan

longer than 3 months (the market changes too fast)

c. New requirements are queued on the backlog

2. Mid-termsa. Per projects

3. Short-termsa. Weekly, per-sprintsb. Daily Product backlog for a quater


Estimation

1. We have not yet using planning poker

2. Consensus-based estimation

3. Quite buffered by individuals

4. Must follow FB’s deadlines

Topic: What is the accuracy of the estimation

Estimation by team member, at man-day level, using GDrive

Estimation, Gantt chart wth Jira


Test Code

1. 1534 + 1115 tests / 116 KLOC

2. Using PHPUnit3. Integrated with Jenkins4. A part of test automation


Test Driven Development

1. This is a technical debt we are paying

2. We applied it late, not in the first place

3. We keep updating test cases/test code during development

4. Code coverage is an KPI we measure how good is TDD/test code

Failed test cases

Stack trace for a failed test case

Test result trend: failed test cases over builds

Source Code Refactoring1. This is a technical debt we

are paying 2. The sooner the better3. What we (will) do?

a. Remove dead codeb. Optimizationc. Simplify the source

code (logic, function)d. Keep all test cases

“green” (don’t break TC)4. Jenkins’ pmd code size

rules are the KPI for refactoring

PMD evaluation result

Duplicated code warning using DRY plugin

Notes: Image taken from jenkins-ci.org


Source Code Quality

1. Source code quality metricsa. Degree of code duplicationb. Degree of code complexityc. Number of warnings by code static analysis toolsd. Coding conventions (naming rules)

2. Toolsa. Jenkins’ plugins (such as pmd, dry…)b. Sonar’s pluginsc. <Your tools?>

Bonus: Cyclomatic Complexity (CC)


(git) Branching Model1. Based on Vincent Driessen’s git

branching model,2. Defined use of earch branches,3. Mapping betweens (servers’)

environments and branches,4. Defined input/output, definition of

done, RACI on each phases, processes,

5. Sample flow for hotfix and single/multiple projects developments

Original git flowSepTech’s custimized process

Branching for hotfix Branching for multiple projects


TBD: Software Metrics to Measure

(Some) software metrics used for measuring source code quality:

Duplicated codeCoding standards

Unit testsComplex codePotential bugsCommentsDesign and architectureLines

Lines of codeComment linesClassesFunctionsStatementsPublic API

Cyclomatic Complexity

Note: We are planning to do it with Sonar


Review Process

1. Basically,we review all output2. “Cusomters”/PO involves reviewing3. Review group

a. Source codeb. Release note

4. Design document reviewed bya. Cross-reviewb. Project leadc. Japan side


Roles and Responsibilities

1. As clear as possible.2. But not so clear to encourage

cross-functionality.3. RaR (RACI) based on output.4. RaR (RACI) based on steps in

software/system development process.

RACI matrix for all roles in projects


Report Lines

1.


Bridge SE

1. Fill the communication/language gap between Vietnam and Japan,

2. A must-have position when working with Japanese,

3. Communication skill is important,4. We require BrSE to be good at Vietnamese,

Japanese and English.


TBD: Scaled Agility

1. Scaled Agile Framework ("SAFe") by Dean Leffingwell,

2. Disciplined Agile Development (DAD), by Scott Ambler,

3. Large Scale Scrum (LeSS), by Craig Larman and Bas Vodde.

Being agile at team-level is not enough. We should be agile at organizational level.


Result-Oriented Management

1. Đánh giá bằng kết quả?2. Hay đánh giá bằng quá trình?3. Hay đánh giá bằng mục tiêu?4. Với phần mềm, có thể đánh giá bằng KPI

cứng không?

Note: This slide is in Vietnamese


Quality = Measurement

1. Common KPIs to measurea. Product KPIsb. Project KPIsc. Operation KPIsd. Customers’ satisfaction

2. Specific KPIs in our producta. Number of operation

bugs after releaseb. Number of alert emails

after release Number of system monthly alert

Number of system monthly bugs


Jenkins - Continuous Integration

We are learning about Jenkins, a powerful CI tool. Here is the list of major plugins in we are using

1. PHP messy detector: pmd2. Code duplication: dry3. Code coverage: clover4. Automation test WebDriver5. Unit test: PHPUnit


Integrated Test Automation

1. (headless) browsersa. htmlunit, phamtomjs, b. Firefox (runs on a slave machine)

2. 97 test cases (simple and complicated)3. Integrated with Jenkins4. Run with cronjob5. Coding in Java is a little pain


Source Code Quality

We (aim to) measure source code quality 1. Without human being involved2. Automatically generated by Jenkins’ plugins by

● Degree of code duplication● PMD (PHP mess detector)


Code Coverage1. Source code static analysis2. Visualized trending 3. Code coverage

a. Targeted: i. Minimum: 80%, ii. Better 90%

b. Actual: 80% and 61% (for C0 - statement coverage)

4. PHP_CodeCoverage, integrated with Jenkins

5. Clover PHP6. TODO: Build triggers on

commits7. Run by cronjob

Code coverage report for module “Controler”

Coverage tree map

Coverage report

Images taken from: jenkins-ci.org


Unit Test - PHPUnit

1. Training/seminar2. Integrated with Jenkins3. Number of test cases

a. Batch: 1115 casesb. Web: 1543 casesc. Failure rate: < 1%

4. TODO: Build triggers on commits5. Run by cronjob


Jira - Ticket Management1. Jira is the heart of our team

a. Ticket (task) managementb. Project management

2. Master tasks3. Gantt chart4. Text

a. Richtext formattingb. Tablec. Quotingd. Collaboration: Tagging

5. Watching: update notification by email

6. Dashboard7. JQL: JIRA query language8. Scrum board, Kanban,

Master ticket

Gantt chart

Dashboard

Note: Images taken from atlassian.com


JQL: Powerful Ticket Queries

Issues in last 24 hoursproject = PPP and createdDate > -24h AND parent IN (pyx-669) ORDER BY createdDate ASC

Tasks to remind customersproject = PPP and createdDate <= -2w AND parent IN (ppp-142,ppp-669,ppp-124) AND status not in (closed, reject) AND assignee in(po1, custumer1, customer2) ORDER BY createdDate ASC

Remind us important issuesproject = PPP and createdDate <= -2w AND parent IN (ppp-142,ppp-669,ppp-124) AND status not in (closed, reject) AND assignee in(po1, custumer1, customer2) and priority in (critical, blocker)

My tasks:project = PPP and assignee = currentUser() AND status not in (Closed, Reject)


Collaboration with Confluence1. Collaboration wiki2. Tracking changes/history3. WYSIWYG richtext editor4. Integrated with JIRA5. Lots of plugins

a. Source code beatifulizerb. Tablec. Diagramd. Table of content

6. Process document7. Detail design8. Rules & guidelines


Stash - a git Repository

1. Following git-flow branching model2. Commit (pull request)/source code

review3. Source code browsing4. Merging permission5. Fork, clone, download6. All in one place

a. Everyoneb. Everything

7. Integrated with JIRA, Confluence

Code Review in Action

Branching “network”

Note: Images taken from atlassian.com


Chatwork - Realtime Instant Messenger

1. Realtime2. Tagging3. TODO/Scheduling/reminder4. Text/message quoting5. Cloud-based webapp6. TV conference (sucks on Linux)7. 20+ chat groups for project P8. RESTful API9. Suports mobile (iOS, Android) 1. Group chat

2. Mobile support

Picture take from http://www.kddi.com/business/cloud/cloud-app/chatwork/


Google Drive - Realtime Collaboration

1. (One of) the best real-time collaboration tool2. Cloud based, only requires a browser3. Real-time editing my multiple people4. Review-and-resolve feature5. Tracking document changes/history6. Good for Q&A7. Sharing with permission8. We mostly use

a. Google Sheetsb. (and sometimes) Google Docs


KPIs

1. KPI for an online servicea. Number of bugs reported by usersb. Numbers of zabbix alerts

2. KPI for (development) projectsa. Customer satisfaction surveyb. Number of bugs

i. On production serverii. Operation/Integration test phase

c. Deadline

Zabbix: An open-source (network/OS/service) monitoring system


Books We Read

Ngũ Luân Thư (五輪の書) Continuous Delivery

Management 3.0

Agile Product Management with Scrum

Programming in ScalaDomain-Driven Design:

Tackling Complexity in the Heart of Software


What are the Gaps?

1. Technical 2. Languagues3. Culture4. Knowledge5. Background

A case study at Septeni Technology:

Being Agile in a Cross-Cultural Environment

XP Day 2015 @ Da Nang2015/04/18Nguyen Vu Hung, CTO, Septeni Technology

References

http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?ExtremeProgramminghttp://www.extremeprogramming.org/rules.htmlhttp://xpday.vn/https://www.facebook.com/groups/agilevietnam/

http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?ExtremeProgramming

http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?ExtremeProgramming

http://www.extremeprogramming.org/rules.html

http://www.extremeprogramming.org/rules.html

http://xpday.vn/

http://xpday.vn/

https://www.facebook.com/groups/agilevietnam/



Leadership & Management

Being Agile in a Cross Cultural Environment - XP Day 2015 @ Vietnam - Nguyen Vu Hung