Lack of verbal communication in agile development team: a case of Digital Co., Ltd

IT software industry is now one of the most rapidly growing industries among south east ASIAN counties since the majority of IT software companies in China has been charging even higher than what the other developed counties do 1. Especially since Donald Trump was elected as the 45th and current president of the United States of America, it has been getting harder politically for most of the American software companies to keep involving into Chinese market 2. Many has moved their software engineering resource pool from China to other south east countries such as Taiwan, Philippine and Vietnam 3. In addition to such tailwind for those countries, the strong political and economic supports in IT software industry by Vietnamese government toward foreign IT companies and investors and the strong labor force growth in service sector have lead Vietnam to be one of the top countries to export IT software services such as implementation and testing 4. This has led to more and more international and regional companies looking to Vietnam to build technological resources. This trend has been very popular in recent years, along with that, the capacity and responsibility of the indigenous engineering team are increasingly appreciated. From that, the competition in term of human resource in the market according to investment and development trends is getting higher. Therefore, the question is how to ensure the team has the capacity to compete and to meet not only customer needs but also the development trend of the industry. DSC, a 100% Vietnamese IT software development company, provides its own logistic software products and many services to foreign companies mainly in Vietnam or Japan. DSC wants to keep up with the development trend, improve the competitiveness with other companies of the same scale by upgrading the operational structure of each programming team under the Agile model, which became widely known in 2016 though the publication by the Agile Alliance 5, in order to reach the flexible and effective level of programming. The application of this model to 20 employees in the company made DSC face certain difficulties related to human resource management and information sharing among employees in its organizations. This project will clarify why DSC is having problems with the radical model being applied more and more in the information technology market, in order to study feasible solutions to strengthen the programming teams power according to Agile model effectively.

UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY International School of Business DINH THI THANH VAN LACK OF VERBAL COMMUNICATION IN AGILE DEVELOPMENT TEAM: A CASE OF DIGITAL CO., LTD MASTER OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION Ho Chi Minh City – Year 2020 UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY International School of Business DINH THI THANH VAN LACK OF VERBAL COMMUNICATION IN AGILE DEVELOPMENT TEAM: A CASE OF DIGITAL CO., LTD MASTER OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION SUPERVISOR: Dr NGUYEN THI MAI TRANG Ho Chi Minh City – Year 2020 TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES LIST OF TABLES Executive Summary Acknowledgements I INTRODUCTION II PROBLEM CONTEXT Organizational Structure Team A Structure 2.1 Description of the role in team A 2.2 Description of working method Agile 2.3 Apply Agile for team A 10 The case 10 III PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION 18 Possible Problems 18 1.1 Insufficient information sharing 18 1.2 Work overload 20 1.3 Weak customer relationship management 22 Problem Validation 23 IV CAUSE VALIDATION 26 Possible Causes 26 1.1 Lack of verbal communication 26 1.2 Barriers with knowledge sharing 28 1.3 Lack of team goal awareness 30 Cause Validation 32 V ALTERNATIVE SOLUTION 33 Alternative Solutions 33 1.1 The first alternative solution: Using software Jira to manage the project 33 1.2 The second alternative solution: Offering training course to improve verbal skills 35 Solution Validation 36 VI ORGANIZATION OF ACTIONS 37 VII CONCLUSION 39 VIII SUPPORTING INFORMATION 40 REFERENCES 57 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Organizational Structure Figure Team A’s structure Figure Roles in team A Figure Agile methodology Figure Contract discussion between DSC and Vietstar Figure Preliminary Cause – and – Effect Tree Figure Main Cause – Effect Tree LIST OF TABLES Table Contract value came from Vietstar Table Project size analysis in term of number of men and time length Table Project size analysis by DSC’s view based on man-days Table Time comparison between normal estimate and Vietstar’s requirement Table Record of customer’s complaints from 2015 to 2019 Table Contents of complaints Table DSC revenue from 2015 to 2019 Table Comparison between Vietstar’s requirement to change and normal workload Table Action plan Table 10 Jira tool estimate cost Table 11 Training estimate cost Executive Summary IT software industry is now one of the most rapidly growing industries among south east ASIAN counties since the majority of IT software companies in China has been charging even higher than what the other developed counties [1] Especially since Donald Trump was elected as the 45th and current president of the United States of America, it has been getting harder politically for most of the American software companies to keep involving into Chinese market [2] Many has moved their software engineering resource pool from China to other south east countries such as Taiwan, Philippine and Vietnam [3] In addition to such tailwind for those countries, the strong political and economic supports in IT software industry by Vietnamese government toward foreign IT companies and investors and the strong labor force growth in service sector have lead Vietnam to be one of the top countries to export IT software services such as implementation and testing [4] This has led to more and more international and regional companies looking to Vietnam to build technological resources This trend has been very popular in recent years, along with that, the capacity and responsibility of the indigenous engineering team are increasingly appreciated From that, the competition in term of human resource in the market according to investment and development trends is getting higher Therefore, the question is how to ensure the team has the capacity to compete and to meet not only customer needs but also the development trend of the industry DSC, a 100% Vietnamese IT software development company, provides its own logistic software products and many services to foreign companies mainly in Vietnam or Japan DSC wants to keep up with the development trend, improve the competitiveness with other companies of the same scale by upgrading the operational structure of each programming team under the Agile model, which became widely known in 2016 though the publication by the Agile Alliance [5], in order to reach the flexible and effective level of programming The application of this model to 20 employees in the company made DSC face certain difficulties related to human resource management and information sharing among employees in its organizations This project will clarify why DSC is having problems with the radical model being applied more and more in the information technology market, in order to study feasible solutions to strengthen the programming team's power according to Agile model effectively Acknowledgements Foremost, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisor Nguyen Thi Mai Trang for the continuous support of study and research, for her patience, motivation, enthusiasm, and immense knowledge Her guidance helped me in all the time of research and writing of this thesis I could not come this far without her for my study I am feeling oblige in taking the opportunity to sincerely thanks to my friend, Tuan Hoang (CEO of DSC) and special thanks to all the members at DSC for their generous attitude and friendly behavior while participating my surveys At last but not the least, I am thankful to all my teachers and friends who have been always helping and encouraging me though out the courses I have no valuable words to express my thanks, but my heart is still full of the favors received from every person I have met I INTRODUCTION DSC is a Vietnamese logistic IT software application provider and IT software outsourcing company established in 2013, employs 20 full-time workers as of 2019 When professor Tuan, founder and CEO of DSC, worked for a university as an IT software professor, he developed a logistic enterprise software with his undergraduates as his assistants Fortunately, one of his assistants’ family was a management executive in logistic company in Vietnam, and the executive became his first client to operate the software to manage their business including stock management and shipment management That was the time he established his company with a name DSC, which stands for Digital System CO., LTD Working closely with the first client to understand their business operational issues that could be solved with its software, DSC has improved their product one by one Prioritizing what to implement next based on the limited number of their clients’ needs and requirements seemed promising at the early stages However, their product has been not competitive enough to take major market share in Vietnam logistic industry yet In 2015, they started offering software development and consulting outsourcing services mainly in the local enterprises based on market analysis that more and more outsourcing projects would move from China to Vietnam So far to 2019, the total number of projects reached over 160 from countries Now in their organization, there are separated teams DSC’s slogan is “DSC’s success comes after client’s success.” They are meant to be clientoriented organization when it comes to software development and operations Based on their belief, they value their people because software is fully built up by people and used mostly by people With CEO’s strong experiences in education at undergraduate level, DSC trains undergraduates and freshers both mindsets as software engineers and practical coding and testing skills instead of recruiting experienced engineers and testers In that way, DSC tries to create family-like bonds among its employees as well as reducing labor costs at the same time With the team A’s size of four members, DSC has followed Agile methodology for the full life cycle development in the logistic application development project and has developed its logistic application without critical issues related to its quality and agility As the application becomes more complex and covering more logistic operations, the team A, among four teams of DSC, faced more tickets failing the acceptance test from its client’s product owner In November 2019, DSC lost one existing contract with their client due to the failure to meet client’s expectations CEO said, approximately one third of their total annual sales in 2019 was lost because of the cancellation of the contract 47 Dinh Thi Thanh Van: Could you share with me, in your opinion, what reason makes DSC lose the contract? Tran Huu Hoang: In this case, we misunderstood each other I was the scrum master who was in charge of communicating with customer and members I transferred the requirements from customers to members and vice versa During the user acceptance test phase, VietStar asked to change the spec on payment logic To be exact, the original spec for the payment status was that once the end user clicks the order button, the payment status is updated to be “received.” As you might notice, the original spec contains some risks that even if the actual payment would not be made, the status will still be the same as “received.” Business owner realized this potential issue while conducting the acceptance test The status on the view was very important It was to add one additional payment status on a view for VietStar’s accountant to calculate their cash flow at the end of every working day I assumed that the team members knew that the spec change was critical for the client, so I created new tickets briefly to inform their new tasks At stand-up meeting, I did orally mention in detail what we needed to implement the spec change within the same sprint Unfortunately, members did not change the code related to payment status They missed some details I did not write down but did require in the meeting It caused Vietstar to check up the bill on that day manually until the spec change was reflected to the software It caused VietStar to check up the bill on that day manually until the spec change was reflected to the software When the acceptance test on the same sprint came, the client found out that the spec change was not fixed yet After that, they sent the email to complain and require to fix that code within one day With this case, I can see there are several reasons leading to lose the contract Firstly, we believed everyone understand well what to so our daily meeting got shorter, less than ten minutes and also frequency reduced from daily to once per days Basically, we focused on what members did yesterday, what they would today and share if they have any difficulty We, members, and I didn’t make much questions to confirm how good the 48 task was done Members received tasks and focused on their programming; they did not ask much Secondly, this project was big, so I need three more members from team B to support team A with the deadline It caused lack of sharing between the team members Thirdly, we have designer, developer and tester in a team With different backgrounds, they have different levels of knowledge; and the ability to understand every task are also different The meetings with customer become more like discussion of how everyone wanted the function to work instead of confirming the customers ’requirement and fix the task The meetings lasted longer than customer expected so they reduced the frequency from daily meeting to weekly meeting to get involved into the deployment Moreover, VietStar limited the time very strictly When the errors occurred, the team did not have enough time for meeting fixing and finishing the task perfectly in the way they wanted With the other projects, without big misunderstanding like this, we have stable workload Dinh Thi Thanh Van: In your opinion, what is the most important cause leads to losing the contract? Why you think so? Tran Huu Hoang: It turned out we did not understand well about the goal Here began the problem so we should fix the communication priorities Dinh Thi Thanh Van: What the solution that DSC took to improve the situation? Tran Huu Hoang: We restarted the cycle of Agile methodology, getting requirements, redesigning, and programming At that time task assignment was too inappropriate for our developer but VietStar left us no choice with only one day to fix Finally, we could not finish on time Dinh Thi Thanh Van: What are your ideas about the capability of the above solutions? Could you share any alternative solution that you think would be appropriate to solve the problem? 49 Tran Huu Hoang: We rarely get this kind of workload with other customers We used to have some misunderstanding but with small projects, we need just short time within one day to fix So, in advance for the next big project and strict client not to have similar problem, we should make sure every task is clearly transferred and the whole team have the same understanding about tasks to deploy in the right way at the first stage Way to that is to get everyone share exactly what they and how they think in details Dinh Thi Thanh Van: Thank you very much for your time and sharing Tran Huu Hoang: You are welcome! The second group includes interview 2A and 2B from members of team A In these indepth interviews, writer wants to understand how the problem is and what causes that important problem In-depth Interview 2A Interviewer: Dinh Thi Thanh Van Interviewee: Huynh Cong Thang Title: Team A’s member at DSC Age: 25 Working experience: years Dinh Thi Thanh Van: Good afternoon, my name is Van Today I would like to have some questions about DSC Could you please introduce yourself? Huynh Cong Thang: Hello Ms Van, I am Thang Currently I am a senior in team A at DSC I have been working here for three years Dinh Thi Thanh Van: Could you share with me how you work in your team? 50 Huynh Cong Thang: There are four members in the team under Mr Hoang We are in charge of developing DSC’s product named DLEX It is a platform for logistic users including the end users who have demand for shipping, the drivers and the business owner We just failed one big project called V.Epress with Vietstar The project was about upgrading their system along with their specifications Dinh Thi Thanh Van: Do you think DSC has good quality for DLEX product? Huynh Cong Thang: Yes, I think so We have been using DLEX for many projects for more than years since the market increased, I mean shipping demand increased Customers are satisfied with what we have deployed Some of them recommend other potential clients about us Dinh Thi Thanh Van: Could you share with me, in your opinion, what reason makes DSC lose the contract? Huynh Cong Thang: Vietstar offered very short time to change the method, only 10 days for 39 funtions I think they did not know about how many function, they simply thought it was just changing the math But actually, their change leaded to 39 functions changed Before error occurred, we even hardy communicate often since every one is busy and just wanted to focus to get task done We were under very high pressure And when error occurred, it was even more tight schedule We could not completely fix the issue that the client pointed out before the due date We had to redesign most of the payment logics and to update related tables which required 36 man-day They just gave us one day to finish because the commercial release date of the product was approaching on the next week We did not have similar difficult with previous projects The other clients agreed to discuss about time line more nicely Dinh Thi Thanh Van: In your opinion, what is the most important cause leads to losing the contract? Why you think so? 51 Huynh Cong Thang: Well at first, we created the function not like what they wanted it to be Then it caused them the wrong calculation with their cash They complained and we tried to fix but we failed So, the main cause was because we could not meet the requirements We thought it was not necessary to note at the statement changed since in our point of view they were the same “We” mean I and the other developers Our scrum master said later that he disagreed with what I and other developers did But unfortunately, we did not share at the meeting what we thought and what we disagreed with Dinh Thi Thanh Van: What the solution that DSC took to improve the situation? Huynh Cong Thang: As I shared with you, we tried to fix it, but we could not make it with the very short time for a big project Dinh Thi Thanh Van: Why is it a big project to you guys? Huynh Cong Thang: Normally, in term of contract value, if the team of four members have four months to deploy the contract of 100 million, it is small But V.Express costs 500 million for months so it is a high price and high pressure to us Dinh Thi Thanh Van: What are your ideas about the capability of the above solutions? Could you share any alternative solution that you think would be appropriate to solve the problem? Huynh Cong Thang: I just think of the new method to make sure we don’t miss any information in the future We all have experience with programming, so it is so unfortunate to lose such a big contract because of lack of communication Dinh Thi Thanh Van: Thank you very much for your sharing Huynh Cong Thang: You are welcome 52 In-depth Interview 2B Interviewer: Dinh Thi Thanh Van Interviewee: Nguyen Quang Huy Title: Team A’s member at DSC Age: 24 Working experience: years Dinh Thi Thanh Van: Good afternoon, my name is Van Today I would like to have some questions about DSC Could you please introduce about yourself? Nguyen Quang Huy: Hello Ms Van I am Huy I am a developer in team A at DSC I get year-experience at DSC already Dinh Thi Thanh Van: Could you share with me the current work performance of your team? Nguyen Quang Huy: This year we have projects, are small and one is very big to me But we finally got no paid from the big project Its name is V.Express, owned by VietstarExpress Dinh Thi Thanh Van: Do you think DSC has good quality for DLEX product? Nguyen Quang Huy: Yes, we deployed many versions with DLEX base successfully Also, with V.Express, we developed from DLEX Dinh Thi Thanh Van: Could you share with me, in your opinion, what reason makes DSC lose the contract? Nguyen Quang Huy: We failed to meet customer’s requirement The scrum master did not tell us more details about what customer wanted to change It was the payment feature We need to change the statement from “received” to be “on hold” But the scrum master did not mention the spec change during the standup meeting, so the payment feature was 53 not updated or changed Actually, I was concerning about that statement but I could not get it thoroughly I was afraid if I started to talk about something not clear, it will disturb the others so I just kept quiet Besides, scum master looked very difficult in the meeting I felt difficult to share with him about my thought The schedule was also rough, he looked like he could get angry immediately if I made any stupid question So, I just quietly took the task and worked on it Customer found out and they complained They gave us one day to fix but it was too short for that kind of thing because to change it we need to start again with the process coding I took a lot of time, like more than days with at least developers We cannot use the new members since they did not know what was going on, so basically, we were on our own Dinh Thi Thanh Van: In your opinion, what is the most important cause leads to losing the contract? Why you think so? Nguyen Quang Huy: I want to exchange more about concerning and knowledge with the lead So, I really hope that he will be more friendly in the meeting At least I will not feel stress to capture the whole user’s story to adapt the method for deploying Moreover, I think the more we talk, the more we can find out the same understanding of what needed to be done Dinh Thi Thanh Van: What the solution that DSC took to improve the situation? Nguyen Quang Huy: Due to the situation, we created the urgent meeting with the whole team and customer to discuss for the next steps We asked for more time, but customer denied We tried to fix it but not successfully Dinh Thi Thanh Van: What are your ideas about the capability of the above solutions? Could you share any alternative solution that you think would be appropriate to solve the problem? 54 Nguyen Quang Huy: I want to have more friendly environment to communicate My coworkers are friendly but the lead And also when we needed the support from another team, we hardly communicate Each team sit in separated corner so when I have to cooperate with them, I feel distance to share the idea Dinh Thi Thanh Van: Thank you very much for your time and sharing Nguyen Quang Huy: You are welcome The last in-depth interview is to talk with DSC’s customer to confirm the problem In-depth Interview 3A Interviewer: Dinh Thi Thanh Van Interviewee: Dang Huu Thang Title: V.Express Project Manager from Vietstar Age: 35 Working experience: years Dinh Thi Thanh Van: Good afternoon I am Van Thank you very much for agreeing to talk about DSC today Could you please introduce about yourself? Dang Huu Thang: Nice to meet you Ms Van I am Thang, project manager of V.Express project from Vietstar company Vietstar provides multimedia online services such as checking bill of lading, delivery booking online, looking-up postcards and parcels online, allowing customers to accessing to the orders on Web and Mobile We used to cooperated with DSC to upgrade the web and mobile app named V.Express as a main tool for our business Dinh Thi Thanh Van: How you think about DLEX product made by DSC? 55 Dang Huu Thang: I think they have a competitive product in the market That was one of the reasons we have worked with them for around years They have proven experiences of logistic industry, and they are quite popular with their own product named DLEX Those make their advantage Unfortunately, in the last project with DSC, we had to cancel the second stage of contract Dinh Thi Thanh Van: It sounds like you see them a competitive partner Then I wonder why you stopped the contract with DSC? Could you share with me the reasons if possible? Dang Huu Thang: We change the process to calculate the income and they could not follow It caused us a huge damage since we got more than 300.000 orders per day We could not track the money properly and we gave them one day to fix but they could not So, we had to come back to old version to keep business running normally We had been waiting for two months and we did not want to increase the time for new version, so we cut the contract Until we find out the way to upgrade without any affection to current system, we would consider again for the new cooperation with DSC Dinh Thi Thanh Van: Thank you very much for your time and sharing Mr Thang Dang Huu Thang: You are welcome 56 QUALITATIVE RESEARCH FINDINGS Interviewer: Dinh Thi Thanh Van Interviewees: people from different groups: Group 1: (1A) CEO: Mr Hoang Le Anh Tuan (1B) Manager #1: Mr Tran Huu Hoang Group 2: (2A) Team A’s member: Mr Huynh Cong Thang (2B) Team A’s member: Mr Nguyen Cong Huy Group 3: (3A) VietStar Project Manager (DSC’s customer): Mr Dang Huu Thang Data collected from interview: # Question 1B Insufficient information sharing Workoverload Weak relationship with customer Shoter daily meeting: lack of sharing between members, reducing the frequency of meeting with customer; and tight schedule Huge task with short time 2B Lack of information Taking the task without confirming requirement Short time Not enough conversation in a team Lack of information Not clear communication Lack of sharing idea Difficult leader and not friendly environment Reason why DSC lost the contract The key factor that leads to contract loss The reasons customer stopped the contract The solution that company used Other solutions Findings 2A 1A 3A Requirements are not met: function and deadline Reshcedule and fix the issue -Using communication app for the team -Offer training course Created meeting and tried to fix the problem Created meeting and tried to fix the problem Created meeting and tried to fix the problem - Using another more appropriate way to communicate -New method to communicate More friendly environment to share ideas Created meeting and tried to fix the problem 57 References World no longer sees China as a cheap outsourcing destination: Survey [Internet] CNBC LLC; 2017 Jan 31 [cited 2020 Feb 4] Available from: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/31/china-no-longer-considered-a-low-cost-sourcingdestination-survey.html Knight W Trump’s latest Salvo Against China Targets AI Firms [Internet] New York: WIRED; 2019 Sep 10 [cited 2020 Feb 4] Available from: https://www.wired.com/story/trumps-salvo-against-china-targets-ai-firms/ Salary Survey 2019: Greater China & South East ASIA [Internet] ROBERT WALTERS; [cited 2020 Feb 4] Available from: https://www.robertwalters.com/content/dam/robert-walters/global/files/salarysurvey/salary-survey-2019-south-east-asia-greater-china.pdf Doing Business in Vietnam: A reference guide for entering the Viet Nam market [Internet] PwC (Vietnam) Ltd., Viet Nam Chamber of Commerce and Industry; 2019 [cited 2020 Feb 4] Available from: https://www.pwc.com/vn/en/publications/2019/pwc-vietnam-dbg-2019.pdf Agile Resources [Internet] Agile Alliance, Tennessee USA; May 2018[updated 2020, cited 2020 Feb 5] Available from: https://www.agilealliance.org/ Russo I, Confente I, Gligor DM, Autry CW To be or not to be (loyal): Is there a recipe for customer loyalty in the B2B context? 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