The year 2021 has not been far away, looking back, the senior members of EnterpriseNao realize that the company has developed enormously. As the person in charge of applying solutions for several projects, I was most impressed with the period in early 2021, when a project entered into an important phase… The whole team worked tirelessly with high determination, even on holidays: New Year, Lunar New Year, Hung King’s death anniversary… I must say that the flame of enthusiasm burning inside was what helped us overcome the tough challenges of such a project. Not only did it burst into flame at critical moments but also at the very beginning when the project had not been officially executed in 2020.
The project started when the Covid pandemic hit Vietnam at that time. Due to the complex operations, multi-million dollar investment value, and nationwide deployment, the number of documents prepared for projects up to tens of thousands of pages. It was a huge volume that required those who prepared them to utilize their ability, creativity, specialization, and automation to keep up with the schedule, and complete them in both content and form of the bidding documents. It was difficult to gather people into a group to do such a big job, but organizing them to work as a team in such a short period, and also affected by social distancing was an even greater challenge. There were sleepless nights, there were nights when so many documents were printed that caused the printer burst out, but in the end, with an unprecedented speed, they all made a good start. It is a long way to go and the challenges are still waiting ahead of us.
Not just among initial members but the pressure of the project was also shared with the next generation of members when the amount of work increased gradually as the project went into the execution phase and the sprint phase. To ensure the product was put to use as quickly as possible, many members had to temporarily put aside their families and personal issues to contribute to the project. This effort was made for many months for the ultimate goal, which was for the system to officially operate a week after Tan Suu New Year.
Despite the difficulties, we had a lot of memorable moments. The memories were not just endless nights of staying awake, but also some awkward situations that I and some people faced in the Winter-Spring season at the end of 2020 and in 2021 when the project started. As everyone must remember, this was the time when Vietnam faced the 3rd wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, everybody had to follow the precautions to detect the virus and prevent the risk of getting people infected. In those precautions, measuring body temperature before entering and leaving the workplace was most applicable. People were allowed to go inside only if their body temperature fell within the recommended threshold limit. One day, just like everybody else, I had to check my body temperature before going inside to work. Unfortunately, I couldn’t walk in because my temperature was below the limit, and everybody understand why, It was because I had stayed outside in the cold for quite a long time. So, for the safety of the project, I accepted to stand outside for about 15 minutes to warm up my body to be allowed to walk in.
After all the problems caused by the project itself and the epidemic, everyone finally made it through the first phase of developing the product following the objectives to put the product into the operation phase. With so much of our effort, the product was put into application and initially brings certain results. Many organizations benefit from deploying our product. As a result, our project attracted great media attention. Witnessing these achievements, everyone working on the project can not help but feel so proud of their contribution of efforts and wisdom to the success of the project.
However, having the system running was not the end, we needed to add more effort to updating, modifying it to meet the requirements in actual operation, and building new features to fit it in the new situations arising from implementation. All of this brought more pressure on the construction schedule, and the level of accuracy because everyone understands that any error can affect real software users and actual business activities. And then finally, all members of the project have passed, the system has entered a stable stage of operation and the software has been handed over to the operation team.
There is a lot to tell that can’t be covered within this article. Considering all the projects that EnterpriseNao has participated in, the number of stories to tell will be much more. Each story is associated with different situations, and different people and it has ups and downs that bring different emotions. All these elements are combined into an epic that is composed by members of the project, and the center of it is the spirit, determination, flexibility, and creativity in solving the problems to achieve the project’s goals.
Each EnterpriseNao member will always keep the fire of enthusiasm burning and send it on to the next generation!
R&D Director: Pham Hai Binh