3 Days of Lean and Kaizen

This week, from March 4th to 6th, the first Lean Mindset Workshop and Kaizen Camp Gathering in HCMC was held. The Agile Vietnam guys did an truly awesome job in bringing together top-notches around the globe the event. That included experts on Lean Software Development, Mary and Tom Poppendieck as well as Jim Benson and Tonianne Demaria Barry, founders of Personal Kanban.

Joining the event was both a last-minute decision and a bet to me. Three days before the event, Saigon Service Design Jam was held. It was also the first of its kind in Vietnam, and also lasted for three days. I couldn't afford the two events together. Selecting the Lean and Kaizen one was truly a leap of faith as I had stopped attending the events of Agile Vietnam a while back. Although I had to commuted 30km in Saigon's heat for the event, it was well chosen.

What was there?

The Lean Mindset Workshop occupied the whole March 4th.

Mary and Tom were an admirable 70-something couple who were spending their retired time travelling around the world giving Lean Mindset workshops and writing books. Honestly, I was overwhelmed by the amount of information. The usually-two-day workshop was compressed into one so that was a lot of talking and for a short period in the afternoon I was lost.

The workshop started by examining the death of companies that were driven under the name of productivity, developed securing manual and policy which ironically prevented innovations and finally failed to focus on its customer's values. The stability periods between economy crisis are getting shorter, the market is more fluctuating than ever and yet disruptions remain extremely hard to forecast. There is a rising need for organizations to structure themselves to be flexible against changes from time to time. The ideas of Lean Mindset are evolved around this concept.

We moved on to identify the seven flow disrupters in software development. Together in a group of 7-8, we discussed about the source, effects, and solution of each. The next step was to give our organization a health check based on the basic disciplines of a healthy organization. The list had a lot to do with quality control and as expected Cogini failed hard on testing disciplines (though we got most of the rest right).

Due to the time limit, we could only afford wrapping up Iteration, Kanban, and Continuous Delivery quickly. Kanban was still a pretty new concept in Vietnam software industry so it was important to stress that Kanban doesn't ask an organization to change anything that its currently does. Positioning itself as a supporting framework to visualize processes and policies, Kanban can be integrated smoothly with organization's current process. The three processes covered in the workshop are tools serving the purpose of making organizations more Lean and agile.

To end the day, we had an interesting talk about improving productivity

The legendary 10,000 hours

Balancing challenge and skill

The science of motivation

Kaizen Camp took over the last two days of the event. 

I found the way the workshop and the camp lined up and supported each other fascinating. If there had been only the workshop, most attendants would have came out like me, overwhelmed and confused by the massive amount of information. If there had been only the Kaizen Camp, there wouldn't have been enough topics to feed two days full of action. During the camp, we discussed work, life, and community. And under the spirit of kaizen, we also discussed improving all of them. The camp shared the same format with Barcamp and even though there were facilitators, the topics were community-centric and highly diverse. Fascinating!

The topics gave me the opportunities to challenge and practice what I was introduced to during the workshop. One of the reasons I stopped attending events of Agile Vietnam was that even though the sharing there was interesting, I found that each organization was unique in certain ways. How could I apply something that had been successful else where was always blur. Facilitating a group of motivated people isn't about teaching them or telling them what to do but more about asking triggering questions to get the participants to open up and speak out what is on their mind. And Mary, Tom, Jim and especially Toni made awesome facilitators. Many questions were answered specifically to Cogini context and the fog was just lifted. I ended up facilitating a session or two myself.

Nice people

I have attended a number of Barcamp, locally and internationally. Yet the attendants to this event managed to be the most diverse. I didn't met as many managers as I would like to, but there was a gentleman from TMA that really knew what he was talking. I met a girl from the North that seemed to have full of doubts in life yet decided to join a startup. I made friends with two engineers with tremendous experience from KMS, and a head of department of a game company. There was also a startup guy who seemed to be making similar mistakes as I did when getting to know Agile methodologies. And who could have known that I would run into a high-school friend there. Behind each attendant was a more sophisticated story. A startup with bureaucracy problems of a Forbes 500. A company that sent only programmers and no manager to the event. A sponsor that didn't mind that its name couldn't show up on media prints. Despite all of those differences, I was moved by their genuine desire to learn, share and make friends. Once again, my belief that engineers are nicest people on earth was strengthen. Thank you.

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* Special thank to Huy Tran for allowing me to use his photos to illustrate for the post

Do unconventional interview questions work?

Whether today's ever-more-polymorphous interviews succeed in identifying better employees is an unanswered question. The use of peculiar questions and arbitrary tests may seem to go against one of the few rock-solid percepts of today's human resources profession. This holds that any method of selecting job candidates should be as closely related to the work as possible. Most HR people place the most faith in work sampling, where the candidate is asked to perform or simulate work similar to which he'd be doing if hired. Statistical studies of work sampling (a famous one was done by AT&T from 1956 to 1965) showed impressive predictive ability.

The usual justification for "creative thinking" riddles and personality assessments is that they test broad, general abilities, not tied to a specific set of skills. Whether they do that is hard to say. What's certain is that "pet" questions take on a talismanic quality for some interviewers. Just as athletes don't change their shirt during a wining streak, interviewers keep asking the same questions because of a few remembered instances where it supposedly "worked". That fact that many of the most admired, innovative companies use such interview questions seems to speak for itself ("You can't argue with success").

It is far from clear that either season holds water. The human resources profession is full of customary practices of no demonstrable value. The psychologies Daniel Kahneman tells the tale of a test once used by the Israeli military to identify candidates for officer training. A group of either recruits, stripped of insignia, was instructed to carry a telephone pole over a wall without letting it touch the wall or the ground. The point was to observe who tool charge (the "natural leaders") and who fell meekly into place behind them (the "followers"). "But the trouble was that, in fact, we could not tell", Kahneman said. "Every month or so we had a 'statistics day', during which we would get feedback from the officer-training school, indicating the accuracy of our ratings of candidates' potential. The story was always the same: our ability to predict performance at the school was negligible. But the next day, there would be another batch of candidates to be taken to the obstacle field, where we would face them with the wall and see their true natures revealed."

Similar tactics are alive and well throughout corporate America. In today's overheated job market, a common test is to seat a group of candidates for the same job around a conference table for a "group discussion". They know that only one will get the job. The discussion becomes a little reality show, with the recruiter quietly noting who takes charge. It's doubtful that it works any better than the Israeli army test did.

Proving that a hiring technique works - or that it doesn't work - is a complex exercise in statistics. Were once to demand that a hiring criterion be 100 percent reliable, employers would have to hand out jobs at random. There aren't any 100 percent reliable criteria - not work history, not grades, not anything. Hiring is always a game of chance. Many job seekers complain that some talented people do poorly on today's unconventional interview questions - ergo no one should use them in deciding whom to hire. This isn't a compelling argument for the reason given above. But psychological studies indicate that people are apt to view almost any criterion as "unfair" when it's used to decide who's hired or promoted. The sense of unfairness is greater when the criterion is unfamiliar. A traditional job interview is a conversation. The job offer or rejection comes days or weeks later, affording a certain emotional distance. Creative-thinking questions often bring the rejection right into the interview, right in your face. If you fail, you generally know you've failed. That feels worse than a rejection days later. Admittedly, this attitude may not make sense, but when have emotions ever had to make sense?

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William Poundstone. (2012). Punked and Outweirded. In: Are you smart enough to work at Google?. New York: Little, Brown and Company. p48-50.

Beat 2013 like a boss

Annually, at this time of a year, we gather together looking back at the challenging year that just passed by and looking forward to a successful year ahead.

Changes are a crucial part of life. Hate it or love it, no one can deny that variation in life constantly face us head on, define us and make us who we are. And 2012 was such a milestone, full of changes. The world economy was still trying to keep its feet on the ground. Our belief was shaken. We have never been through that much up and down in our history.

Summarizing the full of event 2012 is a non-trivial task. I am afraid that the meaning of events that we have been through exceed the expression power of words and only the very people who had been there, done that can understand. In my best attempt, I would like to retrospect what happened to us and the difficulties that we faced and gear up for the coming year.


That web team was restructured into 3 functional teams was probably the most significant course of events. That was to reflect the fact that as the company grew up, we were on the edge of having to trade the dynamic nature for stability. The only way to keep us flexible yet manageable was to split up based on our field of expertise. Smaller teams allowed us to move faster, specialize in a few things that mattered and keep shipping.

If 2011 was a year of inception, of putting thing together, 2012 was the time we took bold moves to catch up with the world. We had chance to observe a spectacular raise of JavaScript (Backbone in particular) and Erlang in our work. We were also taking steps to master our tool kit. There had been more pull requests for Warp last year that ever. Finally good use of CSS framework and preprocessor enabled us to share the burden on designers' shoulders.

The fruit of that effort was reflected on the projects we took. In 2011, BnB was the only star project where multiple platforms were integrated for a world-class solution. In 2012, we were tackling complicated projects requiring multiple subsystems or possessing sophisticated business logic with confidence. Since Brendon left, we have been living without an official CTO, and the world didn't end yet.


Web continued to be the major revenue stream of the company. The number of technologies that we used, processes that we put into practice and projects that we shipped were steadily raising. However, in order to achieve the growth, we have made a number of decisions that eventually ironically prevented us from growing. Many of these decisions were probably right at the time, and on their own merit would not have caused us trouble. But in this case, the sum is much greater and more damaging than single pieces.

For example the decision to split up the team solved the problem of balancing flexibility and stability. At that time we overlooked the need of cross-team communication and cross-project overseeing. This reduced our ability to allocate resources to mission-critical projects. In general, lack of internal corporation slowed us down.

In order to retain our shipping pace, quality was sometimes traded for speed. The amount of technical debts stacked up, evolved into GigaDB and the likes, and gave us much headache.

And in order to keep the revenue stream that supported our working environment, we failed to allocate sufficient resource in PM. And even when people had the ball, the initiatives to take up PM works, every data about project and customer was jammed up in one single bottle neck.


However. Despite all those troubles and an unstable macro economy of 2012, we managed to grow so much horizontally and vertically. It doesn't matter which team you are in, developer, designer or administrator, applause yourself, you deserve that.


The end of lunar new year is drawing near and Tet can be felt in every breath. Yet in the last few days, a news has spread among us, shock us and demonstrate that event giants can collapse. To prepare for 2013 whose challenges are expected to be even more ferocious, we need to learn from last year, make up resolution for coming months and most importantly, better ourselves.

As a human being, try to fulfill your potential. Say "fuck you" to the status quo. Learn another language, explore another text editor, write a blog. Don't limit yourselves on what you can learn and want to do.

As a staff, we want to continue build up this great place with you. Lets put extra emphasize on code quality, make fewer GigaDB or Solar. Let us know you are growing and allow us to learn from your growth via TechTalk and HackDay. And finally better our ability to run business, from communication to estimation and even PM.

I wish you all a successful year ahead.

How do you write a job ad.

Wrapping up 2012 in preparation for Tet holiday brings back many cheerful memories. I had a chance to rewind things have gone by and numerous lessons the job has taught me, many in the hard way. I ran across this little job poster that we made back when there were 6 people in the team.

Cogini Vietnam first job ad 2011

The poster looks nice, but it fails all the current standard of us, mostly fails to envision the job and motivate potential applicants. But it was fun, crawling in the dark for a path. As we all grow up and get wiser, our approach becomes more methodical and less ad-hoc. Time goes by and there are a couple of things about job ad that I would like to share. To support my points, I crawled sample job ads from famous local and overseas tech firms.

Job ads

A well-written job ad helps a candidate screen him or herself in or out for the job. A job ad template typically consists of

• Main attractor
• Deliverables and activities
• Essential quality, preferences, and skills
• Contact information

Major attractor 

Major attractors define what will attract potential candidates. This is the most important pitch that sell candidates on the company. It is a common belief that this is the place to show off. I agree. Reading job ads, candidates are constantly asking themselves "What's in there for me?". Answer that one question right out of the gate will grab people's attention and keep them engaged. Skunkworks addresses itself as a Silicon Valley startup in the heart of Saigon and takes pride in the work environment it has to offer.

Our team is everything, so at Skunkworks.vn we pay close attention to the work environment:

• 100% product/innovation-focused startup company with experienced founders

• Flat organization - don't come to work for us if you want minions working for you!

• Open communication - we listen to our team

• Friendly, flexible, and fun culture 

But I also agree that bullets are a very ineffective way to deliver information intended to be recalled and acted upon. Images and stories are way better communication means to deliver the sales pitch.

Each company is a unique combination of its people, fields of expertise and culture. Any passionated employee can go rampant about the story of his company's genuineness. However it is well established that we can only hold small amounts of information in short-term, or "active", memory. Among all the possible number of key message points one can make, three (3) emerges as a magic number. Studies showed that the number of items we can easily is between three and four. In reality, number three is more common than four. Every great movie, novel or play has a three-act structure. Comedians know that three is funnier than two. The rule of three is one of the most powerful concepts in communication theories. 

Google and Twitter follow the rule of three closely. Each provides candidate three key messages about careers, with the third point prompts for action.

Google's Job Page

And Twitter's

But as programmers are spoiled these days, firms are going all their way to attract top-notches, there are more to say about the offer than just main attractors. Other benefits and perks are developing upon money (present and future), career growth, work/life balance and working environment (Have you ever turned into a green-eye monster just by looking at Google's office? I have). This is one of a few areas where bullet points are proven to be useful in attracting people attention. Bullet points are specialized in paralyzing readers with information. But the list is filled with benefits and perks, it leaves the candidate with an overall impression of "many good things".

I find Dropbox's job ad delightful

Deliverables and activities 

Deliverables and activities effectively describe the kind of work the hire is expected to perform. I usually construct this part with the same strategy used on main attractors, start with a short paragraph and follow up with bullet points to cover more details. A short paragraph describing the nature of the work is not something common among local tech firms' job ads. But as jobs are getting more diverged from each other, the need for a story to enable candidates to envision themselves in the work is receiving more care. Bullet points are hard to avoid in this section, but make sure that you have someone scan the list to make sure it reflects the actual job.

KMS' job description is pretty lengthy, but after all doesn't reveal much about the work

Dropbox once again scores with nice combination of story telling and bullet points

The more high level the position is, the more sophisticated the preface paragraph should be and the fewer bullet points. This is simply to reflect the fact that a senior position requires a completely different set of skills and responsibility from a entry-level job. At some point, the criteria of evaluation is no longer doing what one is told well and on-time, but the ability to take on unassigned work and responsibility, and deliver what one's firm values. Even though I am not fond of Rocket Internet as a business model and a company, I am convinced that its job ad for CTO in Vietnam is a well-crafted piece of work.

As our CTO you are a well-rounded strategic thinker responsible for establishing, executing and communicating the technical vision across all aspects of software development. You will be leading a top-flight technology team while overseeing research, development and quality management. Furthermore, you will be responsible for the establishment of an appropriate architecture and technology for our innovative projects. By embracing a culture of continual improvement, passion for technology and cross functional collaboration and communication, you will play an integral role in the company's strategic direction and growth. At Rocket, you will help us develop fast growing Internet companies and benefit from the broad expertise of our high-energy IT team. In return, you can expect an attractive salary and various opportunities to grow on, both, a personal and professional level.

Essential qualities, preferences and skills

They define the company's interest in the candidate professionally and personally. Many hiring managers get too deep into describing their ideal employees here that I often find this section of job ads unclear and unrealistic. This part is best done by giving details about how the candidate with perform activities and deliverables. E.g instead of writing "Must have negotiation skills", try "You will negotiate with suppliers and with the project team about milestones and tradeoffs". The second approach brings a breath of reality to the ad.

Skunkworks' ideal employee sounds pretty much a workplace super hero

• Open-minded and comfortable in an intense, high-growth startup

• Innovative and love to find new ways to resolve problems

• Able to adapt according to changing project schedules

• Self-motivated and can work independently

• Totally committed to quality

• Professional and responsible

• Able to communicate well in English (written and spoken)

In general, I try to avoid putting many soft skills here but the critical ones. This poses a similar problem as hypothetical questions in interview. Hypothetically, I am perfect.

Also unless I kept running into candidates with really bad cultural fits, I am not a big fan of explicitly points out desirable personal qualities. Again, many people have the tendency to idealize their personality. On the other hand, different personal qualities do not always need bad cultural fit (and diversity should always be embraced). Best personal qualities requirements I have read do not have their own section but are embedded into verbal descriptions in job ad, which in turn drive the way readers perceive the firm in the way it desires.

Similar to Dropbox's, Foursquare's job ad makes use of plenty verbal description to reflect the company cultural fits.

There isn't much to say about Contact Information so I am wrapping up my writing here. Hope you find it useful.

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Note: By the time the post was finished, Skunkworks.vn was going through a restructuring process and its website therefore was inaccessible.

Code Refactoring P.1

Branding pitfalls

So far we have looked at the psychology of job offer selection and how to gain advantage from that knowledge. I hope my thoughts back you up and give your more confident when approaching potential employees. But there are some pitfalls to watch out for too.

Wage war

The number is one of few objective things in the offer Tèo can rely on to imagine a bright future ahead, the rest is basically a leap of faith. So unless a company has a good reputation in the job market, matching the going rate is for the position is the first step to get the company to any shortlist.

A place in candiate's shortlist is good. However that is not enough to have a strong influence on his decision. In today's job market, companies want to stand out and make them the desirable destination for everyone (think about the power Google has in the software engineer world). However relying on the wage alone to become an outstanding talent magnet is highly risky at best and suicidal at worst. The move triggers an arm race among employers. A deep pocket grants you certain advantages in the race. But in the software industry, where talent is the most important resource of each company, other competitors will respond in kind if you pose a serious enough threat and just hope you burn out before they do. This is especially true when your competitors cannot afford to lose and have no option but to fight to death.

Expose key employees to competitors and recruiters.

Every successful tech companies spends its resources massively to build up a team of experts in its field of expertise. Not only this matters to company's products, it also has a psychological effect on potential employees. The investment provides a reassurance that the company knows what they are doing, with high quality. A chance to work with people on top of the technology stack is a compelling learning opportunities. It directly affects Tèo growth and reflects in his CV, both eventually lead him to a better career.

Don't forget to watch your back. When you are busy attracting the next generation of technical leads, your competitors might have already craven for your A team and started poaching. No-poaching agreement is quite common among key partners and alliance members. But in general, it is not possible to protect/shield/hide employees from recruiters. It will just be counterproductive to have policy restricting employees from doing their personal branding. Provide the right environment and they will stay. Happy employees are financially satisfied, professionally developed, and individually secured and respected.

Oversell

Every employment goes through a stage where the candidate is sitting on the fence considering options and you need to sell the vacant. But bear in mind, never oversell. It is not like you shouldn't sell on the bright future the company is heading to, the potential of the market or how exciting the working environment is. When the company is being successful and adrenaline in blood is high, it is hard not to do so. And in fact, you should. You want everyone you interviewed to spread the gospel whether they join or not. But many companies in the effort of recruiting people are promising things they can't deliver, like benefit packages or revenue/growth exceeding what the company and its market are actually capable of.

Once people know the truth, they are frustrated, they feel cheated. they express this to others. Now you have gained one more problem. And it is never a good thing when a high-profile hire quits unexpectedly. It causes otherwise happy people to second guess.

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So that's it. The last post in the company's perceived values psychology trio. Hope you enjoyed it.

Increase perceived values of a company

Last time, we talked about several factors that can affect the way Tèo - a well-trained software engineer - perceives a company's image and offer. In this post, we are looking into ways to increase perceived values.

Increase the wage objective value.

Perceived and objective values aren't identical, but they're still correlated. The offer-letter numbers are similar to the tip of an iceberg in many ways. Typically only one-ninth of the volume of an iceberg is above water yet it is the only visible factor to estimate the shape of the under water portion. The number is one of few objective things in the offer Tèo can rely on to imagine a bright future ahead, the rest is basically a leap of faith. So unless a company has a good reputation in the job market, matching the going rate is for the position is the first step to get the company to any shortlist.

Give the company a personality. 

There are a fair amount of profound articles, books and university programs on company culture and visual identity, I would make a fool of myself trying to cite these numerous theories that people have formed and practiced for centuries. However, I believe people in each profession have their own niches that are not so common to find, so do software engineers. When talking about a company, a normal engineer talks about offer, product and what kind of toys he is given. That's ok, that is a basic need of a human, just that it is superficial and can't tell anything about career growth in the coming years. A trait of a great engineer and contributor is showed via his genuine interest in deeper technical and organizational aspects such as process, field of expertise, type of projects, etc. Pitching on one of these field and promoting it in technical event the company takes place give it a bit of control on how people perceive the company.

37signals is not the best project management software shop in the world, but it has personality. The 37signals team stands for something: uncompromising simplicity. Other domestic examples are numerous: Greengar is specialized in mobile applications, East Agile etches its beloved management methodology into the name, Skunkworks is applying Silicon-Valley-approved product development in the heart of Saigon, etc... Ultimately, it comes down to differentiating the company, it almost doesn't matter on what, more or less anything will do.

Link the company with its top-notch team. 

Every successful tech companies spends its resources massively to build up a team of experts in its field of expertise. Not only this matters to company's products, it also has a psychological effect on potential employees. The investment provides a reassurance that the company knows what they are doing, with high quality. A chance to work with people on top of the technology stack is a compelling learning opportunities. It directly affects Tèo growth and reflects in his CV, both eventually lead him to a better career.

And really, if it is a job a tech rock star nods his head to, why bothers?

When companies are growing quickly and they are having a lot of impact, careers take care of themselves. And when companies aren’t growing quickly or their missions don’t matter as much, that’s when stagnation and politics come in. If you’re offered a seat on a rocket ship, don’t ask what seat. Just get on.

Read more: http://read.bi/11ZOSEh

Lot of expats in the team structure helps too! For international corps, this shows a strong connection between the company and head-quarters. For others, it is a demonstration of the budget (yes, that the company is not running out of business and Tèo and his friends are first targets for layoff) and an international vision the company is approaching. This is a growing pattern of globalization and Vietnam, certainly, is not outside of the circle. (1000% bias, but Tèo grew up in the middle of nowhere. To him foreigners is a sign post of civilization and advancement)

As mentioned in the last post, Vietnamese education is sadly years behind developed countries and the country is crying for capable people in STEM. Even a big corp can't just hire a team that it wants. And when that happens, talents need to be raised, for the most vivid sample, Intel cooperated with RMIT to grow its team.

There are many ways a company can raise its tech team, but none of them is cheap.

"Quality is free, when you pay dearly for it" - Peopleware. 

Local companies are catching up with the trend in Silicon Valley by striving for an environment where every effort to master the technologies stack and get more productive is appreciated explicitly. In Cogini, we have been organizing weekly TechTalks where everyone is given chances to share about basically whatever they find interesting. Put it another way, it is like our weekly BarCamp. Leveraging that spirit, in the coming time we are having compulsory research hours and hack days, times when engineers can be completely creative, free from the constraints of their normal jobs. These research and sharing are endless source of blog posts, tweets and status updates - the first step to promote the team to the outer world. We are also sending engineers to conferences so that they can keep their skills up to date (we went to BarcampPP a few months ago). Allow engineers to buy books that contribute to their knowledge on the company’s dime. Permit engineers to express their ideas about the projects they’re working on.

Create a tribe. 

A tribe that links itself to the personality the company is building. This is an advanced form of #2 and #3. Like company's culture, the tribe needs time to grow and everyone participates to controlling - not just individuals. But once it is formed, the tribe is the driving force behind every success of the company. I was taught a classic example of this, the IBM's Black Team when I was in the Software Testing class of Mr. Quang Tran. If you haven't known about the "nefarious" team, take some time to read it. Please, I'll wait.

IBM was delighted about the team, as every defects they found was one that customers didn't. And their colleagues outside the team were jealous at the apparent fun they were having. And others too.

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So far we have looked at some humble opinions of the silly me about talents acquisition in Vietnam. Hopefully, you have got some ideas of how job market works here. But there are some pitfalls to watch out for. Stay tuned. Check it out