Mr. Linh: It is true that the whole team had to go through many difficulties. The first one was time pressure. There were stages where the whole team only had a few days to complete, so everyone actually had to work during evenings and weekends to keep up the progress.

Then, we had to ensure good coordination between personnel involved in the design team. With each change in our designs, consultation and consensus were always required in order to synchronise our information.

Finally, the partner participation in the design stage was also a big challenge. Because in just a short time, we need quick and effective information exchange so that our partners can understand ChildFund’s working mechanism. For ChildFund, we also also need to understand how to implement project activities with our partner’s participation. In general, to achieve this success, the whole team had to put in a lot of effort to overcome such big challenges.

Are there any memorable experiences or lessons you want to share with us? 

Ms. Tam: The hustle and bustle working atmosphere of the participating members, especially on final days, is what impressed me the most. It is like a construction site about to enter the final phase. Messages on team groups, skype calls, and emails were exchanged back and forth even in the evenings. Such atmosphere reflects the spirit of determination and enthusiastic participation of all departments, not just the Education or Business Development team. At the same time, we also realised that we need to further improve coordination between departments from Management, Fundraising, to the Program/Technical team.

The second lesson, although not new, still needs to be emphasised because it is important in the organisation’s new strategy. That is finding partners to jointly design projects in new areas that we are not experienced in. Identifying such partners is very necessary and important because it not only complements what we lack in terms of ideas/expertise but also actualises our localisation & partnership strategy, acting as a “highlight” to attract sponsors. In this ICT project, the team was also aware of this and tried to find experts and partners to participate in project design from the very beginning. In fact, our partners did participate enthusiastically and contribute a lot of information and ideas to the project design. However, they have not been able to become partners as we hoped or expected. We need to prepare carefully and well enough for this in future projects!

Mr. Linh: For me, perhaps the most valuable experience is learning how to distribute workload within the team effectively and being able to coordinate with each other at important times. This is because building a project design must definitely be completed by teamwork, requiring the participation and contributions of many people. Mobilising combined capacity is not simple. After this practical experience, I think I will have valuable materials to be able to build a more effective process and coordination mechanism within the team and aim for other successes in the future.