Manish Agrawal

Can techies be good/ successful Product Managers?

2008-08-10T06:05:55-12:00:00

Till now, I use to create Posts marked, Post I liked. But for this one I would like to say, Question I liked:

Anant Mishra has asked a very interesting question on LinkedIN. And so are the answers. (I mean interesting).

Being a Technical Product Manager myself, I couldn't stop myself from blogging about it.

Click here to see the Answers.

SCRUM -- as Explained by Ken Schwaber

2008-07-27T06:47:05-12:00:00

This is a really nice video... worth watching... if you want to learn Scrum, in just 1 hr.

Thankyou Sharad, for sharing this video 2 years back and now again, in an answer to one of the questions on LinkedIN..

Future Web Trends...

2008-07-24T06:04:54-12:00:00

| View | Upload your own

Shift Happens -- (A very good presentation) -- remember Matrix...

2008-06-27T09:18:22-12:00:00

| View | Upload your own

One Machine multiple Operating Systems - Virtualization / Fusion / Multi boot

2008-06-01T06:22:00-12:00:00

Going thru the various articles on Virtualization / Multi boot machines to support multiple OS. I have started feeling the need to go for a machine + software configuration which can give me best of all the worlds.

Following are some of the great articles, which I found & might be using some day to configure my dream machine.

So an ideal laptop for this would be a MacBook Pro 2.6Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo with 200GB+ HDD (7200 RPM), 4GB+ RAM.

huh!!! it goes upto $2999 + $240 for Windows Vista Home Premium.

In Rupees (my currency) it comes to Rs. 140000.00 (approx.). i.e. big money

Next I am thinking, How to arrange the money for this dream machine!!

For this, I am even open for accepting donations if u r willing to donate u r most welcome and believe me it would be a gr8 help to the computing community , just add a comment to this post and I will provide you the details about how u can send in ur donations.

May 31st: Posts I liked

2008-05-31T16:58:43-12:00:00

Mobile VAS related:

Ivan Komarov as an editor of Eyeline Communication, has written many excellent blog-posts on Mobile technology. Link to few of them which I liked are as under:
- What is WAP- 2 ?
- USSD related posts

Trends of Mobile Internet - (on Opera Mini)

2008-05-27T21:57:12-12:00:00

Lately Opera Software has released a report on Opera Mini usage and Trends of Mobile Internet.

You can access the report here.

As per the Report:

Social Networking is the most popular service on Mobile devices among other Mobile Internet Sites.
One Web will triumph over WAP content

I am just pasting the report in my post as well, I hope Opera will not mind this and anyways it will be free promotion of Opera Mini Mobile Browser.

Top Trends

Social networking stands supreme
Almost 40% of traffic worldwide is to social networks. In some countries, such as the United States, South Africa and Indonesia, the social Web accounts for more than 60% of the traffic.

One Web will triumph over WAP content
Full Web surfing comprises more than 77% of all traffic. Content on WAP and .mobi sites accounted for 23% of mobile Web traffic. This share continues to decline as more consumers both use Opera Mini to access rich Web content and become more comfortable browsing the Web on their phones.

Part 1: Growth

Opera Mini cumulative users per month

Cumulative Users

Opera Mini has become the world's most popular mobile browser. Since its worldwide launch in 2006, more than 44 million people have downloaded and used Opera Mini. More than 11.9 million people used Opera Mini in March 2008. In the last quarter, the number of people who downloaded and used Opera Mini grew 26% over the prior quarter in 2007.

Pages transcoded by Opera Mini per month

Pages Transcoded

Opera Mini users viewed more than 2.4 billion pages in March. In the first three months of 2008, the number of pages viewed through Opera Mini grew almost 57% over the last quarter of 2007. In March, each person using Opera Mini viewed 202 pages on average.

Total data consumed per month (in MB)

Data Consumed

As the content available to mobile phones improves, data consumption increases. Last month, those 11.9 million Opera Mini users generated more than 33 million MB of data for operators worldwide. This represents an almost 88% growth over the previous quarter.

Part 2: Content Preferences

By examining aggregate numbers, we are able to paint a picture of the types of sites and services that win on the mobile Web. Tracking the type of content across the top 100 sites visited by all Opera Mini users, we find:

Social networking is popular worldwide and is the leading source of Web traffic for mobile devices.
Successful sites on the Web find users on mobile phones, further underscoring the emergence of One Web.
Consumers desire a rich Web experience regardless of the device they use to access the Web. WAP continues to diminish as more-capable Web browsers are able to display full Web content on mobile phones.
Nearly a quarter of all traffic is headed to content portals or search engines.

Snapshot of the top 10 countries for Opera Mini (ranked by usage):

Snapshot: Russia

Russian Opera Mini users consume more entertainment content than users in all countries except for Ukraine. Traffic to entertainment, leisure and sports sites comprise almost 40% of Web traffic to mobile phones.

Snapshot: Indonesia

With 63% of traffic going to social networks, Indonesia is tied with the United States as the number one country for social networking on the mobile Web.

Snapshot: China

Web portal content and search engine access is extremely popular in China, accounting for nearly 55% of the traffic.
E-commerce and e-mail are not yet as popular in China as in other parts of the world. Together, these two categories combine to create less than 2% of overall Opera Mini traffic in China.

Snapshot: United States

More than 63% of U.S. Web traffic on mobile phones is to social networks, tying it with Indonesia for the number one spot.

Snapshot: India

India favors social networking, with nearly half (48.9%) of all traffic going to social networks.

Snapshot: South Africa

A very high 61% of traffic in South Africa is to social networks.
South Africa has the second-highest penetration of e-mail access on mobile devices (more than 4% of the traffic).

Snapshot: Ukraine

Opera Mini users in the Ukraine enjoy their entertainment and sports. More than 61% of traffic is in this category.
Mobile-optimized content remains popular in the Ukraine--more than 43% of Opera Mini traffic in the Ukraine is directed towards WAP sites.

Snapshot: United Kingdom

The United Kingdom is the world leader in mobile e-mail, although that number remains small. More than 11% of traffic in Q1 was to Web-based e-mail services.

Snapshot: Germany

Compared to users in other countries, German users shop the most on Opera Mini. E-commerce accounts for more than 7% of German Opera Mini traffic.
German users of Opera Mini enjoy entertainment and sports content on their mobile phones. More than 28% of traffic heads to entertainment and other leisure sites.

Snapshot: Poland

In Poland, people using Opera Mini prefer to access the full Web from their mobile phones--only 4% of the traffic is to WAP or .mobi sites.

--Manish Agrawal

May 21st: Posts I liked

2008-05-20T15:30:16-12:00:00

Mobile Application related:

May 15th: Posts I liked

2008-05-14T21:36:06-12:00:00

ASP.NET related

Mobile Application related

alcheMo - Technology (J2ME to BREW and iPhone porting solution)
Mojax (Mobile Ajax application framework) - it provides access to device capabilities like Camera API, Location Services, Contacts and more.
Android Weather Forecast - Google Weather API - Description
Android Poor mans GPS - Cell (Tower) ID / Location Area Code - Lookup
Writting your own GPS application - Part 2
Mobile GMAPS
C# Remote Control using the Audio Port

May 1st: Posts I liked

2008-05-01T02:45:38-12:00:00

ASP.NET Page Life Cycle : Pradeep KV has written an excellent article describing the life cycle of ASP.Net Page.
Multiple File Upload With Progress Bar Using Flash and ASP.NET
Providing Web Applications with Context Sensitive Help Using RoboHelp WebHelp : by Robert Pittenger
CAPTCHA Image : Brain Jar has written an excellent article to demonstrates how to create such an image and employ it within an ASP.NET web form.
Tetris for Pocket PC : by Marcelo Ricardo de Oliveira
Pocket 1945 - A C# .NET CF Shooter : by Jonas Follesø
Writing Your Own GPS Applications: Part 2 : by Jon Person

April 23rd: Posts I liked

2008-04-23T00:19:26-12:00:00

Performance - Scaling Strategies for ASP.NET Applications: This is a nice article on how you can improve the performance and how to scale your application. There are three strategies available that you can employ in order to improve scaling: specialization, optimization, and distribution. How you apply them will vary, but the actual strategies are straightforward and consistent.

Unit Testing: Apply Test-Driven development to your Database projects

Google Website Optimizer Opens Up

Windows Live 4 developers

Free Performance Tool - Analyze IIS Logs Like A Pro With Funnel Web Analyzer

Chart / Graph Tools
Open Flash Chart - Can be used in many languages for creation of Flash based Chart. It is free too.

Java Script based Charts from Emprise

Feature Driven Development (FDD)

2008-04-13T02:40:29-12:00:00

Few days back, I had a great discussion over Agile & FDD with my CTO Mr. Naim Kazi.

He told me about thebenefits of FDD & about how it takes Agile to next step.

Impressesed by FDD, I googled for it and found a great site (FeatureDrivenDevelopment.com) and a great PPT on FDD.

So thought of sharing it with my blog readers also. Click here to get the PPT. for other articles / downloads Click here

If you find any such good link on FDD, please do share the same by adding your comments.

March 19th: Posts I liked

2008-03-18T15:16:39-12:00:00

Inspired by Scott Gu, I also felt the need of blogging the Links/BlogPosts I liked:

** March 19th is the date in "my" context and not that of posts I refer.

Build & Release Automation (it is on top priorities in my list of personal project development)

CI Server: Redefine Your Build Process with Continous Integration: Jay Flowers has written an excellent article on CI and about his tool CI Factory. I think Jay Flower has some similar thinking process I do, CI Factory has almost the same features and has been built upon using CruiseControl.Net as base reference, which even I was doing. The way he has written the title of the article with use of many Upper Case words, also seems to be a matching pattern.

SharePoint (MOSS)

Selling MOSS (The moral of the story): Paul has written an excellent post, he has covered many aspects of proposing a technology and its implementation...

Silverlight

Microsoft Silverlight Streaming Service
IIS 7.0 Bit Rate Throttling Module Released: by Scott Guthrie

.Net

Mono project releases first IDE, Mono 2.0 into beta: by Dana Blankenhorn & Paula Rooney
MonoDevelop Documentation

--Manish

JSON: The Fat-Free Alternative to XML

2008-03-02T04:33:55-12:00:00

For quiet some time, I wanted to understand JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) and its advantages.

Always after hearing about it, I thought, it is some advance form of JavaScript, but after studying it today, I was surprised to know the advantages of JSON.

In the present world, where companies are providing SAAS (Software Applications As Services) over the Web, and applications are mashing-up with other applications... in such scenarios everyone wants to make applications, to be able to exchange data with other applications seamlessly and as fast as it can.

Seamless integration of data was made possible by XML, but it seriously lacked the speed. Over and above it, XML required specific Serialization and De-Serialization of content. This is were JSON has the real advantage over XML and it doesn't compromise on the other advantages of XML.

More information on JSON can be found at the following links:

JSON vs XML: http://www.json.org/xml.html

Practically learn JSON: http://braincast.nl/samples/jsoneditor/#

Web 2.0 is hot!!! Think Again... Bubble 2.0 is waiting its turn!!

2008-03-01T08:59:54-12:00:00

Crazy Video... very coool and nicely done...

Capacity Planning for .NET Applications

2008-02-27T15:43:54-12:00:00

On MSDN an excellent article on How To: Perform Capacity Planning for .Net Applications is available.

Although it applies to ASP.Net version 1.0 and 1.1, but in principle it can be used for version 2.0 and above also.

Swadesh -- My Country

2008-02-09T07:41:00-12:00:00

What a Great Song!!! And What a Great Movie!!!

Every Indian should watch...

Database TCO Calculator

2008-02-05T00:40:41-12:00:00

On MySQL website I found a very good tool to do MySQL TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) Savings Calculator.

My intention here is not to advertise MySQL or how much savings one can do using it (as different databases gets used according to the specific requirements), but I just want to share the information about the tool (Calculator) for calculation of TCO for Databases like MS SQL Server, IBM DB2, Sybase, Oracle and MySQL.

Not just that it also provides information in tabular format, which is also helpful to make comparisons.

Great work MySQL team...

Reporting Options

2008-02-03T23:09:28-12:00:00

Athena Pawlowski of Canberra .Net User Group has made an excellent PPT on Reporting Options from .Net Applications.

He has compared Crystal Reports, SQL Reporting Services, Active Report and HTML reports on various parameters.

Good work!!

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS) Licensing and Configuration Scenarios

2008-01-27T00:18:47-12:00:00

John Stover has written an excellent post on MOSS 2007 Licensing and Configuration Scenarios.

Some other important links related to this are as under:

Windows Server 2003 R2 Pricing

MSSQL Server 2005 Editions & Pricing

Cornelius also has posted an excellent post on Complete MOSS Licensing info

Microsoft Press Free E-Books Offer!

2008-01-06T09:11:56-12:00:00

Great Stuff by Microsoft!!! You can download the books from here: http://csna01.libredigital.com/

Developer Map for SharePoint Products and Technologies

2007-12-18T06:02:04-12:00:00

Use Yahoo Pipes to aggregate and display multiple rss feeds

2007-11-25T00:00:01-12:00:00

Yahoo Pipes is a great tool, it allows you to aggregate feeds from different sources and present the same in a single view. This saves surfing thru various sites to see latest information, you can just create pipes to suck latest information from various sources organize / sort it on date time and display.

Using Yahoo Pipes you can do the following:

Define different sources
Define Search terms
Fetch the feed
Make Union of feeds from different sources
Sort by date
Filter / remove non unique items / feeds
Set the count of feeds to be displayed

I have created Telecom Pipe to aggregate feeds from few of the Telecom site. Link for which is:

http://pipes.yahoo.com/eManish/telecom

Configuration Environment Architecture

2007-09-26T08:28:17-12:00:00

Overview

Based on experience, as well an industry acceptance that development teams are construction driven and are always less focused to Software Process. This has been identified and henceforth the inspiration behind the proposed architecture, as a remedy, by keeping build management beyond developer’s domain.

Modern configuration environment is getting complex due to rising nature of applications to be distributed whereby they are dependent on their functionality on other applications. Such scenarios create enough complications of version control and matching, resulting in dire need of dedicated build management system integrated with the said configuration environment. Henceforth, in the proposed recommendations for Configuration Environment Architecture, Build Manager is an integral entity serving various requirements of configuration control, process and management.

Every file is compiled, linked, and combined into an executable program every day, and the program is then put through a "smoke test", a relatively simple check to see whether the product "smokes" when it runs. Project Server/Manager gets early notification of “smoke”. This simple process produces several significant benefits.

It minimizes integration risk. One of the greatest risks that a team project faces is that, when the different team members combine or "integrate" the code they have been working on separately, the resulting composite code does not work well. Depending on how late in the project the incompatibility is discovered, debugging might take longer than it would have if integration had occurred earlier, program interfaces might have to be changed, or major parts of the system might have to be redesigned and re-implemented. The daily build and smoke test process keeps integration errors small and manageable, and it prevents runaway integration problems.
It reduces the risk of low quality. Related to the risk of unsuccessful or problematic integration is the risk of low quality. By minimally smoke-testing all the code daily, quality problems are prevented from taking control of the project. You bring the system to a known, good state, and then you keep it there. You simply don't allow it to deteriorate to the point where time-consuming quality problems can occur.
It supports easier defect diagnosis. When the product is built and tested every day, it's easy to pinpoint why the product is broken on any given day. If the product worked on Day 17 and is broken on Day 18, something that happened between the two builds broke the product.
It improves morale. Seeing a product work provides an incredible boost to morale. With daily builds, a bit more of the product works every day, and that keeps morale high.

Development Teams

This is a group of roles directly involved in construction and development; constituting of designers, architects, developers etc.

Source Server

Source Server is the source-code repository for version-control. This is the server that is the feeding ground for day-to-day development across projects. Suggestively, this isn’t just a single version-control, but could be a group based on implementation and process management requirements.

Project Server

Project Server is the hosting environment for latest / recent builds submitted by Build Server. This environment is in feedback-loop with Build Manager, whereby each scheduled build is notified of its success status and possibly even hosted on the Project Server to re-affirm the changes being expected in respective build. This ensures early notification of broken integration, and hence early rectification.

Build Server (Build Manager)

This is a Build Management repository, ideal for continuous-integration, smoke testing etc., engaged in continuous and scheduled build management. Notably, this runs on a scheduler which extracts source from Source Server and builds in its environment, mostly resulting in binaries. Resulting builds are versioned and stored on its version-control environment. This not only reduces integration risks of Source Server, but also facilitates early notification to project team of broken integration-builds. Ideally, this is closely controlled and managed by Build Manager.

Build Manager could be a Toolset, Process or a group of role, based on technical feasibility of the environment and platform. The capabilities expected are:

Create, Version and Deploy builds
Notify various managers of build availability and their status.

Initial look at Build Manager might seem like a management over-head, but it goes a long way in segregation of Development, Testing, and Project Management. The intent is to automate most notification and build management tasks. Build deployment on various life-cycle servers could possibly be manually controlled.

There are various advantages of separating Build Server and Source Server in the life-cycle and running scheduled builds:

1. Static Code-Analysis: While generating scheduled builds, source-code could be statically analyzed and reports be made available to Project Team of the issues there-in, reducing code-review and feedback timelines and dramatically enhancing code-quality.

2. Code Documentation: Source-Code documentation can be generated for each corresponding build and versioned along-with. This shall ensure that we have actual mapping of source-code vis-à-vis source documentation. Availability of CHM/HTML docs for each version shall be a boon for developer/project-team reference. Project Manager can henceforth manage/ensure duly documentation.

3. No dependency on Development Team for builds: There shall be no need for Binary builds to be provided by development teams.

4. Focused teams, enhanced productivity: Clear segregation of tasks, and letting development team focus on construction rather than process life-cycle shall enhance productivity.

Test Server & Test Virtual Machines

It is the hosting environment for selective builds hosted by Build Manager, based on build notification received by Project Manager or based on the defined process. This environment is not just a single box to host applications, but also constituted of Test Virtual Machines to support varied configurations required for testing.

Stage Server

Successful builds are notified by Test Manager to Build Manager, which are henceforth deployed on staging based on corresponding process definitions & program manager requirements. Prime subscriber’s of this environment is Program Manager or Customer.

Production Server

Customer or Program Manager approved builds are deployed or provided in Production by Build Manager.

Conclusion

Proper setup of Configuration Environment as per this recommended architecture and with implementation of Build Management System, will not only reduce complexities of application distribution and release management, but will also help in controlling versions of release and will automatically setup an environment which will directly put processes in place thus making releases absolutely reliable and fail-proof.

References: Code Complete, 2^nd ed., Steve McConnell and Article by Sharad Kumar

Scott Hanselman's 2007 Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows

2007-08-29T07:51:11-12:00:00

Scott has updated his fantastic list of Tools, with many new tools and utilities added to it.

This list has infect become a great tool in itself to find the tool for your requirements.

Thanks Scott!!! Great work..