Shai Raiten's Blog : OFFTOPIC

I’m a CodeProject MVP 2012

shair — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 14:36:00 GMT

My Lecture at Munich ALM Days 2011

shair — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 23:42:00 GMT

Microsoft Test Manager–Multiline Support

shair — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 16:01:00 GMT

איך מוסיפים מקלדת עיברית מובנת למכשירי WP7

shair — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 15:28:00 GMT

יש לי מכשיר HTC HD 7 כבר חצי שנה, מהרגע שפתחתי אותו לפיתוח התקנתי תוסף למקלדת עיברית מובנת.

ראיתי מספר אנשים עובדים עם תוכנה שהורידו אשר מאפשרת להם לכתוב בעיברית בתוכנה ולהעתיק את הטקסט לאפליקצייה הנחוצה, זה תהליך ממש לא נוח כל פעם לפתוח את התוכנה לכתוב את מה שאתם רוצים ולהעתיק את הטקסט, לסגור את התוכנה לפתוח את האפליקצייה המיועדת ולהדביק את הטקסט.

אתמול קיבלתי הודעה מחבר לעבודה אשר ראה על המכשיר שלי מקלדת עיברית מובנת שמאפשרת לי לכתוב עיברית בכל אפליקציה.

המאמר המקורי הגיע מ – XDADevelopers, אני ממליץ להיכנס ולהתעדכן על גרסאות חדשות.

איך מתקינים מקלדת עיברית מובנת למכשירי WP7

על מנת לבצע פעולה זאת אתה חייב מכשיר פתוח לפיתוח

1. הפעל Application Deployment
(C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows Phone\v7.1\Tools\XAP Deployment\XapDeploy.exe)

2. לפי סוג המכשיר הורד וטען את החבילה המתאימה

NativeKeyboard-v3.3.zip - עבור מכשירי Samsung בלבד

NativeKeyboard-v2.16.xap

3. המתן עד לסיום ההתקנה

4. הפעל את תוכנת Native Keyboard

5. לאחר הפעלת התוכנה בחר בשפה הרצויה (עיברית)

6. לאחר סיום ההתקנה יופיע מסך עם תוצאות ההתקנה:
לא לפחד מההודעת שגיאה, חשוב לוודא שאכן מופיע שה – Patching …ok

7. לאחר הדלקה מחודשת של המכשיר תראו תוסף עיברית במקלדת

8. עכשיו אתם יכולים לכתוב עיברית בכל מסך בלי העתק הדבק.

תהנו!

Drunk?!?! Kruskal's or Prim’s

shair — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 02:41:20 GMT

Drunk?!?! Kruskal's or Prim’s

After a lovely dinner with my girlfriend I found myself unable to drive home after drinking more than 1.5 litter of wine.

Before I was able to drive home I started to drink water and I’ve started to think how to get home without the police catching me…?#?#?#?#?#?#

The first thing that popups was – Prim's algorithm is a greedy algorithm that finds a minimum spanning tree for a connected weighted undirected graph. This means it finds a subset of the edges that forms a tree that includes every vertex, where the total weight of all the edges in the tree is minimized – English Please – What is the shortest way to get home?????

So using my WP7 maps I started to calculate each road possible to get home from the restaurant, than I remembered that Kruskal’s is much better when the weighted of each branch is unknown…….

Kruskal's algorithm is an algorithm in graph theory that finds a minimum spanning tree for a connected weighted graph. This means it finds a subset of the edges that forms a tree that includes every vertex, where the total weight of all the edges in the tree is minimized.

But than I received the decisive conclusion – My girlfriend said –> Sit down and be quiet, I’ll drive.

Some times it’s better to listen to someone else especially when you drunk…….

Bluetooth Radar– 100,000 Downloads

shair — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 16:35:34 GMT

Bluetooth Radar – 100,000 Downloads

Almost a year ago I compete in Microsoft “Enter Island” competition, and wrote a WPF Tool called – Bluetooth Radar.

Bluetooth Radar is WPF 4.0 application built in Visual Studio 2010 (RTM) and based on 32feet.net shared source library.

I also got a review from “The Life Hacker” - http://lifehacker.com/5525364/bluetooth-radar-displays-bluetooth+enabled-devices-for-easy-location-and-file-transfer

And today I noticed that my application reached to 103,905 Downloads (303.82 downloads / day)

CodePlex Page

Power Tools for Microsoft VS 2010 users – Innovative software that saves time and money

shair — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 13:28:22 GMT

Power Tools for Microsoft VS 2010 users – Innovative software that saves time and money

Sela Technology Center is proud to announce the release of our unique software development productivity power tools for the Microsoft ALM environment:

SCRAT, WTM and WIMBI.
All products are well proven and based on our deep understanding of client requirements for Development and Testing activities using Microsoft VS 2010.

About SCRAT - MIGRATION: SCRAT tool enables the most time efficient and cost effective migration process from HP Quality Center to Microsoft TFS on the market today. Read More…

Download Trial Version

About WTM - TESTING: Web Test Manager (WTM) is the only tool that enables to test with TFS 2010 directly from the browser. Now, for the first time you can manage your tests without the need for any local installation. WTM is a web application integrated in VS 2010 Team Web Access™. Read More…

Download Trial Version

About WIMBI - CUSTOMIZATION: WIMBI is the only tool that enables you to manage versions using logical entities instead of physical files on VS 2010. Read More…

Information you need:

Testimonials for SCRAT

"If you are looking at adopting TFS and need to look at moving some or all of your QC assets into TFS, SCRAT is definitely worth a look." - Brian Harry / Technical Fellow, Team Foundation Server, Microsoft Corporation Read More…
"Working with the SCRAT tool really helped us a lot. It made my job as project manager of the migration project from HP QC to TFS 2010 a lot easier. Scrat migration has little risk, can be timed, budgeted and scoped well." - Benjamin De Leeuw / Project Manager, SdWorkx Read More…
"We are very satisfied with the tool and will be happy to use it in the future." - Ronen Ashkenazi / Services Director, Microsoft Israel

A-s-shole Driven Development

shair — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 16:15:22 GMT

A-s-shole Driven Development

Yes I know this sound interesting and yes it is!

Yaniv Kessler has sent my that email and I felt that I need to share this knowledge with you!

Scott Berkun wrote a very nice article of what he think is the reason for all those acronyms and frameworks keep piling up in the software industry.

*** Driven development (ADD) – Any team where the biggest jerk makes all the big decisions is *** driven development. All wisdom, logic or process goes out the window when Mr. *** is in the room, doing whatever idiotic, selfish thing he thinks is best. There may rules and processes, but Mr. A breaks them and people follow anyway.

Read the Full Article

ALM Summit Here We Come

shair — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 13:25:28 GMT

ALM Summit Here We Come

Application Lifecycle Management for the Microsoft platform will take place as November 16-18, 2010 - Microsoft Redmond.

If you are an ALM practitioner, lead, or manager who is passionate about mastering your craft, this is an event you don’t want to miss, and Sela Collage as ALM leader in Israel will be there as a gold sponsor.

Sela is going to announce of two tools for TFS and Visual Studio 2010:

Scrat – Quality Center 2 TFS 2010 Migration Tool – Home Page
Wimbi – More details after the summit

Here is the agenda:

Day 1: Agile Acceleration Day

Scrum: The Third Decade - Ken Schwaber
ALM Adoption and Futures - Dave West
Heterogeneous ALM Environments - Jamie Cool
IT for the Future - Moving into the Cloud - Tony Scott
Achieving true 'ALM' through analytics - Stuart McGill
Using Failure to Pave the Path for Success - John Szurek
Scenario-Focused Engineering - Austina De Bonte
Agile transformation during acquisition - Chris Kinsman
Agile transformation of a Microsoft product team - Cameron Skinner

Day 2: Collaborative Development

From Individual to Team to Organization - Brian Harry
Making Continuous Delivery a Reality from Product Backlog to Virtual Lab - Amit Chopra
Successful software project management styles - Stephanie Cuthbertson
Increasing Revenue Opportunities with Automated Development Tools - Karel Deman
Extending the ALM Platform - Mario Cardinal
Connecting ALM to Developer Workflow: the Task-Focused Interface - David Green (Tasktop)
Synchronizing and migrating ALM environments - Grant Holliday
The Future of Collaborative Development - Mary Czerwinski

Day 3: Engaging the Whole Team

The Agile Consensus - Sam Guckenheimer
Introducing Agility into the Enterprise at Nordstrom - JB Brown
Testing Tools in an Agile World - Vinod Malhotra
Transcending Dogma: How are they different, really? - Eric Willeke
Shared Values - The Why of ALM - Jim Newkirk
Exploratory Testing - Jon Bach
Professional Scrum Developer Practices - Richard Hundehausen
Quality is the Soul of Agile - Peter Provost

ALM Summit Home Page

Brian Harry will also be at the Summit as a presenter. (Brian on the Summit)

I hope to see you there!

Black Jack Using Scrum – Winner Winner Chicken Dinner

shair — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 19:01:00 GMT

Black Jack Using Scrum – Winner Winner Chicken Dinner

Last year I attended MIX10 conference in Las Vegas, because MIX is very near (Yes I’m GOING!!!!) I decided to plan my strategy of wining (I lost the last time…) in “Black Jack” based on Scrum Methodology.

Many thanks Yaniv Kessler for helping me finish this article.

So Before I Reveal My Custom Scrum Methodology let's talk about? -> What is Scrum?

Scrum is an iterative, incremental framework for project management and agile software development.

Although Scrum was intended for management of software development projects, it can be used to run software maintenance teams, or as a general project/program management approach.

Really what is Scrum?

[Full Article] SCRUM is a loose set of guidelines that govern the development process of a product, from its design stages to its completion.
It aims to cure some common failures of the typical development process, such as:

· Chaos due to changing requirements - the real or perceived requirements of a project usually change drastically from when the product is designed and until it is released. Under most product development methodologies, all design is done at the beginning of the project, and then no changes are allowed for or made when the requirements change.

· Unrealistic estimates of time, cost, and quality of the product - the project management and the developers tend to underestimate how much time and resources a project will take, and how much functionality can be produced within those constraints. In reality, this cannot be predicted accurately at the beginning of the development cycle.

· Developers are forced to lie about how the project is progressing - When management underestimates the time and cost needed to reach a certain level of quality, the developers must either lie about how much progress has been made on the product, or face the indignation of the management.

Among the most important ideas of scrum are developing in short iterations and having daily meetings with your team, these ideas help tackle and fix problems quickly, help measure the project’s velocity and finally allows for a more accurate estimation of the project’s completion date.

If you want to know more about Scrum in couple of minutes I’ll recommend you to see Scrum in under 10Min by Hamid Shojaee

Let’s Get Started – Scrum Vegas Style

Everyone who comes to Vegas and wants to gamble has a “Product” ready:

Product = “Earn A Lot Of Money & Have A Great Time” -> It is the “What” that will be built or achieved.

So with this idea in mind, I started planning my Product Backlog (integrating some important lessons from the last visit) by filling my wish list:

Sprints – Define how long you’re going to Play

The general recommendation is that iterations should be as short as possible, in Scrum max 30 days for sprint, each Sprint should contains the Goal of a specific sprint – My was – Not Losing!

Because my Vegas trip is limited only for 4 days I decide to schedule 8 Sprints (it’s also recommend to create at least 4 sprints).

* You need to define the total time (Money) you can afford to achieve your Product. – My was 1000$ or 4 Days

Sprint duration will be no more than 7 hours (Normal is between 3-30 days) and will include between 125$ - 250$ (In Development this is Work Remaining) – It is Very Important not to exceed the amount above – if so, this is the Time to speak with your Scrum Master (See below about Roles) and discuss how to continue with our Sprints and check if the Product release will be delayed or worst will not achieved? (Depends on how much money you lost :-()

After each Sprint you need to perform a 1 hour break (The normal is 15 minutes) that will include a stand up meeting (Monitor your progress – Burn Down Chart – See Below) with your Scrum Master (As I wrote above discuss all your problems and plan ahead), Pipi time, Search for another Table (Change Table change Luck) and Rest, because each day contains 2 Sprints. (Not Normal)

Roles & Tips

This "Product” cannot rely solely on your shoulders, So Let’s meet the Team

The main roles in Scrum are:

The “ScrumMaster”, who maintains the processes (typically in lieu of a project manager)
The “Product Owner”, who represents the stakeholders and the business
The “Team”, a cross-functional group of about 7 (Default) people who do the actual analysis, design, implementation, testing, etc.

In our “Product” I’ll have the “Product Owner” role (After all I know what I want and it’s my Money :-D) and the “Team” role (I’m not letting anyone playing with my money….).

But the “ScrumMaster” has to be someone you trust (anyone beside you) in helping you. Now, you’re probably asking yourself why would you need someone’s help?

If you are losing too much money, you become a “compulsive gambler” and you don’t want to stop or can’t – your Scrum Master is needed to pull you back to your room until the next sprint.
On the gambling floor, the Drinks are FREE, if you can’t control yourself - counting cards becomes impossible – the Scrum Master will help you count the cards.
You’re gambling and manage to control yourself from drinking alcohol, but than a Show comes up and couple of Beautiful Ladies are dancing just around your table and cause you to lose focus – Again, the ScrumMaster has to be there and ask those ladies to go and wait in your room, No No No – the ScrumMaster should help you continue your game by removing those obstacles!!!

Tips:

The ScrumMaster has to be someone you Trust and even in very bad situations, such as when you are drunk. His words must have a deep effect on you. (Thanks Adam)
Buy your return Flight Ticket before and make sure this is “No Refund Ticket” – so you can’t use your way back home as stakes in a gamble.
Don’t come to play with 10$(If you don't know how much you can spend, use a subject expert matter to examine your budget and define a reasonable amount to Play – Same as Estimated Work) this is still a game of luck (Same as Life), have a basic amount to help you cross the BadMojo. :-D

Start and Track

After each sprint it’s very important to monitor your progress (This is what you do in the Stand Up Meeting) using “Burn Down Chart” - The “Burn Down Chart” is the number 1 reason for Scrum popularly, Burn Down shows remaining work (or Remaining Money) in the sprint backlog, this will help you see if your product is progressive smoothly.

Using the “Burn Down Chart” and it’s very easy to calculate the “Burn Down Velocity” - Velocity only helps you make achievable commitments in future iterations.

Finally “Burn Down Chart” helps you to provide a good estimation about the project’s completion date.

For example: if you allocate between 125$-250 (Developer = Remaining Work) for each sprint and from Sprint 1 to Sprint 2 I lost 500$ (1400$ - 900$) I could use the “Burn Down Chart” to see that in the current velocity (the velocity in which you lose money) you are going to lose all of it when we get to the 4th Sprint. (This is good for Development Team because this means that on the 4th Sprint the remaining work will be 0 and you’re done, but certainly not good for me.)

You might say to yourself that it is only an approximation and not the real thing- You are absolutely right - Burn Down shows"ESTIMATION"
but the graph below shows the same result in life as it shows in the graph above.

Summary

I hope this article helped you to understand Scrum from a different perspective and made you think about moving to developing\playing with Scrum.

Next time I get to Vegas, I’ll try my Black Jack Scrum Methodology and you can be sure I’ll let you know how it fared!

Enjoy – Winner Winner Chicken Dinner

My 400th Post - Addiction

shair — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 20:29:50 GMT

My 400th Post - Addiction

I’ve started blogging on 05/12/2007, couple of months after I brought together with Guy Burstein.

Since than I’ve blogged 2.5 posts a Day, got 1719 Comments – About 4 comment per post, one post I want to talked about is the

Windows Phone 7 – The First Fart Application – After one Day – Over 5000 views! (Who said farts can’t do so much noise :-D)

And I’m proud to say that I’m addicted to Blogging!!!

For me blogging has become way of life, I enjoy it, proud it and I Love it!

So thank You for being a part of this amazing community and Thanks again for Guy Burstein who introduced me the Blogging world!

Thanks Again!

Greg Duncan –> A Feed You Should Read = Me

shair — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 19:06:03 GMT

Greg Duncan –> A Feed You Should Read = Me

Friend just send me a link to a Greg Duncan post that he wrote on Me…

Read the Full Article

I’ve been following Shai’s blog for a few years (my first reblog of him looks like Feb 16 2009, Wit It! – One click Work Item access from TFS Alert Emails.) and his posts have become ones I look forward too.

The guy is a dev geek’s geek.
From playing with Bluetooth to Team System topics, MS Dev related announcements, with tons of cool coding posts as well. The posts are normally full, in-depth and filled with the sharing of his knowledge and experience (and code! :)

Oh yeah, and he’s doing it “just because”.
He’s a Microsoft MVP (i.e. not a MS employee) and so all his posts, content, code, etc are from the heart.

Like I said, a Dev Geek’s Geek…

The First Reason I’m Blogging is no other that Guy Burstein who showed me the blogs(World) and gave me the right inspiration to start writing with enthusiasm and Fun – Again Thanks Guy!!!

The Second reason is the a great feeling when you know you’re not the only reader of your blog and the thing you write actually helps people!!! – Friends this worth Blogging!!!

Thanks a Lot Greg!!!!!! and everyone for your comments and feedbacks!

Read the Full Article

Twitter is over Capacity

shair — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 18:27:13 GMT

Twitter is over Capacity

Just tried to write some stuff regarding something I’m doing just so other people can think they know what I’m doing and than I got this lovely picture from Twitter:
Maybe it’s a sign… who thought that twitting can get so heavy…

How To Build PowerPoint Presentation Remote Control

shair — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 22:58:26 GMT

How To Build PowerPoint Presentation Remote Control

As you know Developer Academy 4 is just around the corner, I have two lectures the first one is

Introduction To CodedUI and Microsoft Test Manager – Developer Academy 4 and the second for R&D managers.

Each presenter needs to move slides back and forward without going to the computer each time, to perform this magic actions you need a PowerPoint Presentation Remote Control.

So I spent couple of hours to build one and now I’ll show how:

Part 1: Get the necessary parts

1 – Wireless Keyboard
1 – Video Camera Battery Pack
6 – Wires
1 – Battery carriage
2 – Buttons
1 - Soldering iron + tin

Part 2: Take what’s matters

How to get started? take a screwdriver and start removing all screw from the back side of the Keyboard.

After you removed all the plastics and aluminum you will see electronic boards.
The only board you need is the one marked with Green.

Safely remove the Keyboard controller from the Keyboard surface and disconnect all cables.

Part 3: Find the right dots

Take the Keyboard matrix and find the right dot for Enter key and Backspace key.

How? hold the matrix and keyboard together and press Enter and feel where is the right dot.

You will notice there is a shared dot for Enter and Backspace, the easy is to paint a line from each dot.

After you find the right dots take the Keyboard controller and rub the carbon until you see copper wire.

Using tin, Solder the wires to the dots you found.

Connect the wires to the designated buttons and create a share bridge for the shared dot.

Part 4 – Where is the Power?

Connect Battery carriage to the Keyboard controller power supply.

Enter the Battery carriage and Keyboard Controller to the Video Camera Battery Pack and close it.

Part 5 – Check It

Plugged in the USB receiver (comes with Wireless Keyboards) and click the buttons.

Enjoy

Microsoft MVP’s,MRD’s, MRS’s and UG Managers Summit - Israel

shair — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 04:34:36 GMT

Microsoft MVP’s,MRD’s, MRS’s and UG Managers Summit - Israel

Microsoft Israel arranged a “Movie Meeting” (we saw Avatar – My second time – still great movie) for all Microsoft Experts in Israel.
The event were take place in Rav-Chen Ayalon Ramat-Gan, good food, drinks, gadgets and most important good People.

It’s very nice to take a break from work and meet all those great people in one place without work involved :-D

Here is some pictures from the event: