A diary from Budapest

2008-11-21T20:02:28+02:00

I was attending Forum Nokia Developer Day events in Budapest, Hungary. It was a wonderful experience for me being a part of elite group there. I reached at Budapest on 17th Nov on Monday and it was relaxing day.

It was really great experience to meet such truly eligible people from within Forum Nokia and outside Nokia. Anne Huotari, who manages Forum Nokia Champion Program is very gentle and helpful lady I have ever met. On the 17th, it was just a formal get together with co-champions and Forum Nokia Experts. We had a great discussion for different strategies for Forum Nokia Wiki amongst Forum Nokia Wiki Administration group including me(Kiran10182), Ron Liechty(Nokia Ron), Jarkko Aura(Jaaura) and Pankaj Nathani(croozeus). We discussed for couple of hours on various aspects to make Wiki more useful on overall scenario and made Monday evening worth spending.

On the 18th November, we had a Forum Nokia Champion Day where Champions from around the world participated and some of them even presented nice ideas. Event was anchored and participated by many Forum Nokia Experts as Seppo, Harri, Pekka, Riku, Lucian, Jukka and many more. On the completion of the day, we went to sightseeing of Budapest with all chmapions and Forum Nokia experts together. It was wonderful evening, indeed.

On the 19th November, we had a Forum Nokia Developer Day event where we benefited from success stories from speakers from successful companies. At evening, we had networking opportunities to meet giants of various companies and Forum Nokia people. We got insight of different activities being successfully run inside Nokia premises and their clear vision.

Last day on 20th November, there were parallel Forum Nokia Code camps, S60 5th Edition Touch UI and Web Runtime widgets, in Budapest University of Technology and Economics campus. As I am more biased towards Symbian C++ developement, undoubtedly I participated in S60 5th Edition Touch UI code camp. It was presented by Sami J. Viitanen, Senior Technical Consultant from Forum Nokia. We learnt different Touch UI components and even we participated in Touch UI competition in the scheduled session. Being honest, I was happy on losing the contest. My friend, Sunil(SKumar_rao) was one of the three winners and he won an elegant Nokia N85 device.

Story doesn't end here. In these three days, I really had great opportunities to meet my favouties. It was my honor that author of "Multimedia on Symbian OS", Mark Wilcox, personally signed on my copy of his book and I am still feeling that I am in dream. It was indeed a great feeling to meet my local friends Wizard_hu who helps people on Forum Nokia Discussion Boards with his great expertise in Symbian C++ area; and Gabor Torok who is unique in millions of Gabor in Hungary and he is one of the top bloggers on Forum Nokia Blogs. Sitting next and chatting to the author of "Series 60 Programming: A Tutorial Guide", Paul Culton, on a dinner table was a fabulous moment. I felt obliged by receiving secrets of sucess by Harri Salminen and Bernd Wiegmann. I shared good and friendly talks with Lauri Aalto(laa-laa), Ren Tong, Jouni Miettunen(JOM), Brazillian friends, David Caabeiro, Robin Jewsbury and many more.

It was pleasure to meet in person Ron Liechty a.k.a Nokia Ron, who manages Forum Nokia Community which has more than 200,000 members around the world.

And at last but not the least, while returning back to Helsinki, I was in the same Taxi with Lucian Tomuta(ltomuta) who is a Cheif Engineer at Forum Nokia and Jarkko Aura(Jaaura) who is a Documentation Manager at Forum Nokia(also he is an exception among Finns because he talks a lot but at the same time gurantees that you will like to hear him on and on...and on) ;-). Moreover we shared the same flight and It was great time I spent with both of them talking and waiting for the flight in the lobby, which got delayed for one hour. :-)

It was an unforgottable tour I have ever been to.

Lost in the dark: Quality and consistency with Symbian Signed

2008-05-27T11:36:53+03:00

This is my first blog even after being in the community for a long time. There has been a buzz in the air right from the entry of Symbian signed(mandatory one). I have always supported its existence and its benefits because in nature it is nice idea to get good quality applications while preventing malwares application from the market.

Everything is all set. Sales team is trying hard to get good lead from the market. Once the lead is finalized, managers are working hard to allocate resources, time lines, developers, etc... Then developers come into picture. Developers know that if anything goes wrong then they are the people who will be interrogated for the failure reasons. So apparently they are the key persons who transforms the virtual idea in the existence and eventually they work hard to achieve this. Finally Quality Assurance comes into scene to investigate bugs in the application developed by developers. QA tries to cope up with the frequently changing test criteria from Symbian Signed. But no worries, they accept the truth and without complaining anything they just do their job. Perhaps they want to achieve dynamic virtue in their life as like dynamic test criteria. There is a say that QA and developers cannot be good friends, one wants to reveal bugs even if it is minor one whereas one doesn't want to see any bug. Application goes back and forth between them. And finally green signal comes from QA and application is ready for submission to "Certified" Test House governed by Symbian signed. Everyone is happy "so far".

General consideration for choosing "Certified" test house is the availability and immediate follow up. From aspects of quality and competency all the test house should be same. After considering all these aspects, a test house is selected to get application symbian signed. Everything is so good so far. Application is scheduled for testing by "Certified" test house. All of a sudden you get a reply from "Certified" test house that your application is failed. You are shocked but then you find Test report and you find test cases which are marked as "failed". You take a deep look into those failed cases and words come from your mouth without any efforts, "Hey, what the hack!!! They cannot fail application for theses causes". Eventually your counter action would be to ask about these failures to "Certified" test house. And after few hours/day you get a reply from them "Yes, this should not cause the failure", "Thanks for confirming, we will remove this", "We are able to reproduce it but if you are not able to reproduce then we will remove this", "You have to submit waivers for this" etc... So where is consistency? Where is Quality?

After fixing bugs, you are all set with so called "waivers" to submit your application again. You are more confident this time. Your customer is forcing you to deliver application to them as soon as possible and you are confined with the "deadline". You lost your weight and nights become nightmares. Finally you send your application again to "Certified" test house. But eventually you get reply that "Waivers are not accepted". Ok, but why? Please provide complete results. There is no hard feelings but please let us know the reasons for not accepting waivers. No reply..... wait....No reply.

Whom to ask? Why there is so much coupling in whole process? Are these "Certified" test house really "Certified"? Are they competent enough? Is there any quality inspection carried out by any neutral third party?

I am not against with Symbian Signing process but there should be transparent process. If you are expecting quality from application then there must be quality process in the Symbian Signed Test houses.

Finally i would say that Symbian signed criteria should not be that much stringent that prevents developers to program on Symbian OS. They should be motivated in nature rather than discouraging. Support from Test house should be friendly and even they should guide in getting your application signed.

Again, whom to ask? You are lost in the dark.

Kiran.

Kiran Patel's Forum Nokia Blog

A diary from Budapest

Lost in the dark: Quality and consistency with Symbian Signed