Matta Saikali

About our Instructor – Matta Saikali

Matta has more than 25 years' experience in internationalization and localization testing. His testing experience covers more than 30 languages including European, Asian, Arabic, Hindi, etc.

Formerly Director of Software Quality Assurance at Gemplus, Matta built up and managed a team of 50+ SQA professionals responsible for testing globalized Windows applications and mobile devicesin European and Asian languages.

As Director of SQA at Purkinje, Matta managed the testing team for a multilingual multi-user client-server application for clinical data entry.

Matta was also SQA team leader at ALIS where he was involved in testing all ALIS products, notably their Arabic/Farsi product line.

Additionally, Matta holds a B. Sc. and M. Sc. in Electrical Engineering.

Overview: 

Your company just decided to market worldwide a product you are currently managing. What do you do? What are the challenges? How do you prepare for success? What are the numerous pitfalls to avoid?

This workshop teaches the fundamentals of managing a software project which will be deployed worldwide. The problems and challenges facing managers are explained in detail along with recommended solutions and industry best practices. Numerous examples and exercises are provided. This workshop will show you how to build globalization expertise, how to work with global requirements, how to work with the development, testing, documentation, services and other teams, how to build estimates, how to track tasks, how to manage outsourced resources, and much more.

You will learn how to adapt your current methods and work practices for managing the deployment of a global product.

Target Audience: 

This course is intended for project managers, product managers, team leads, documentation managers, development managers, customer support managers, professional services managers and test managers.

Benefits: 

This workshop provides software managers with an insight to the challenges facing them in their task to manage a project being built for the global market. The workshop describes how to successfully prepare and run a globalization project task.

This workshop will prepare you for all aspects of managing a globalization project. You will know the issues, you will know the pitfalls and you will know the solutions. The workshop will provide you with a clear understanding of industry best practices, how to apply them and what their benefits are. You will learn how to clearly and efficiently communicate globalization concepts and issues.

Duration: 

The agenda described below is for a one-day session.

Pre-requisites: 

None.

Agenda: 
  1. Why globalize?
    • What is the driving force?
    • Market growth or potential loss of market share?
    • Who are the stakeholders?
  2. Build i18n expertise
    • Character sets and encodings
    • Fonts & glyphs
    • Cultural data: date, time, images, sounds, …
    • Text processing: searching, sorting, grammatical issues, etc.
    • Input/output problems: import/export, upload/download, cut & paste
    • User interface and pseudo translation
    • Building a network of experts
  3. Globalization Requirements
    • Multiple languages vs. multiple countries vs. multiple locales
    • locale tiers and locale/market deployment plans
    • Elaborating the Unicode requirement: encodings, forms, etc.
    • Manage and prioritize requirements
    • Developers don’t always understand foreign users
    • Globalization usage scenarios
  4. Working with the other teams
    • Development
    • Configuration management
    • Testing
    • Documentation
    • Customer support
    • Professional services
    • Outsourced resources
  5. Process and tracking
    • Development lifecycle
    • Process evolution
    • Risk management
    • Realistic estimation
    • Sample estimate component
    • Roles and Responsibilities
Handouts: 

Each attendee will receive a 200+ page booklet, one slide per page, with ample room for notes, complete with table of contents and glossary. The booklet is designed to serve as a practical easy-to-use reference “book” for regular use during an internationalization project.

Overview: 

Arabic is one of the, if not the, most difficult languages to deal with in software.

This workshop teaches the key aspects of Arabic Language Information Processing. It covers the Arabic language and culture and the special relationship between them. The Arabic writing system, with its contextual rules and complex ligatures, is presented. We will look at Arabic characters, how they are entered, stored and displayed. All important Arabic coding systems will be covered. The features of bi-directional writing will be explained: directional characters, neutral characters, mirror characters etc. The Unicode algorithm will be discussed, and simple rules to follow in Word and HTML will be presented.

The workshop then covers the various tools available today to help process Arabic data and concludes by presenting insights and experience on doing business in the Arabic world (partnerships, sponsorships, transactions, etc.)

Target Audience: 

This course is intended for software developers, web developers, testers and team leaders, as well as for executives and product managers (who need to understand why they must plan more time for Arabic support than for Chinese, for example). Localization engineers and translators that deal with the Arabic language will also benefit from this workshop.

Benefits: 

After taking this workshop you will be ready to target the Arabic market with your product: you will know how to do business, what requirements to consider, what changes your software or Web site or embedded system requires, and how to implement those changes.

Duration: 

The agenda described below is for a one-day session.

Pre-requisites: 

None.

Agenda: 
  1. Arabic Culture

This module will explore the religious importance of writing in the Islamic world. We
will review the history of Arabic and the current demographics of the Arabic language
and where it is used in the world.

  1. Arabic Writing System

This module covers Arabic writing including the alphabet, context analysis, sliding,
diacritics and ligatures. We will review different Arabic scripts.

  1. Arabic Data Representation

This module describes how Arabic data is represented on computer systems. We will
look at logical versus visual order of Arabic text. The coding and rendering of Arabic
data is discussed. A review of Arabic fonts and basic Arabic data entry, storage and
display with examples from MS-Word, HTML and Oracle.

  1. Arabic Language Processing

Of paramount importance to security applications is the ability to scan, search and
identify Arabic text. This module reviews searching approaches, scanning tools, OCR
technology. We will also discuss advances in Speech recognition technology and Arabic
Machine Translation.

  1. Arabic Information Systems

This module explores how Arabic text is used in many information systems. How is
Arabic included in e-mail, HTML web pages, PDF files or in text? We will look at how
Arabic data is represented on the web including image (gif) and text methods. A live
demonstration of Arabic data entry and display is included.

  1. Doing Business in the Arabic World

This module provides some insights into how to do business in the Arabic world.
Several aspects of partnering and example business transactions are included. Insights
and real business experiences are provided.

  1. Tools and Technologies

This module will look into capabilities of tools and technologies available to support
Arabic Language handling, display and processing. Companies in the Arabization
business will be discussed and different Arabization and localization solutions will be
presented.

Handouts: 

Each attendee will receive a 200+ page booklet, with ample room for notes, complete with table of contents and glossary. The booklet is designed to serve as a practical easy-to-use reference “book” for regular use during an internationalization project.

Overview: 

Have you ever had to take a product and adapt it to the world market? Have you ever had to gather multilingual software requirements? How can you describe requirements which vary for different locales? Have you ever had a tight budget forcing you to choose which features to implement and which features to defer? Did you face this problem on a global scale?

Requirements are a critical part of any software project and become extremely complex when simultaneously facing the needs of different locales. This workshop shows you how to systematically approach requirement management for software projects independent of your development process.

The workshop walks you through all phases of a requirement life cycle including elicitation, elaboration, workflow, prioritization, development, testing, deployment and support. Several real life examples from successful globalization projects are covered. You will take home tools, templates and techniques that you can use right away!

Target Audience: 

This course is intended for executives, testing and development managers, internationalization directors, localization managers, program and project managers, marketing product and requirement managers, and translation agencies and translators.

Benefits: 

This workshop will help you understand how locale specific requirements are implemented, add globalization requirement management to established workflows, gain insight into organizational impact of software globalization, describe, prioritize, manage, deploy and support globalization requirements in each locale.

Duration: 

The agenda described below is for a one-day session.

Pre-requisites: 

None.

Agenda: 
  1. An Introduction to Global Requirements
    • Why are requirements so important?
    • Requirement economics: the cost of bad requirements
    • A generic model of internationalization
  2. Globalization Requirements Basics
    • Requirements concepts
    • Product Development Processes: waterfall, spiral, agile
    • Localization, simship and agile development
    • The globalization dimensions: locale, language, country
    • Requirements lifecycle
    • Standards & Tools
  3. Requirements Prioritization and Classification
    • Roles and responsibilities, country managers vs. central managers
    • Requirements scope: global vs. regional vs. local
    • Tips how to prioritize global requirements
  4. Requirements Elicitation
    • Techniques to elicit global requirements: Interviewing, questionnaires, observation, document study, and prototyping
    • Finding locale-specific requirements
    • Finding missing requirements
  5. Requirements Elaboration
    • Use cases
    • Scenarios
    • Databases and spreadsheets
    • Global requirements meta-spec
  6. Defining Globalization Requirements
    • Writing for Translation: colors, attributes, indexes, synonyms, …
    • Unicode and encodings
    • Languages, locales, locale negotiation, locale tiers
    • Messaging: concatenation, text expansion, context, audience
    • Formatting: numbers, currency, date, time, calendars,…
    • Text processing: sorting, searching, wrapping, …
    • UI design: alignment, layout, fonts, colors, images, address forms
    • Measurement systems, page sizes
    • Language-specific issues: reading fields, dual sorts, bidi issues, …
    • Local laws: privacy, banking, taxes; USA law on encryption key size, …
  7. Getting Started
    • Basic steps
    • Resources: tools, books, links
Handouts: 

Each attendee will receive:

  • A 200+ page booklet, with ample room for notes, complete with table of contents and glossary. The booklet is designed to serve as a practical easy-to-use reference “book” for regular use during an internationalization project.
  • A 10-page globalization requirements checklist, to serve as starting point for defining globalization requirements.
Overview: 

Do you want to create a multilingual testing capacity in your organization? Do you want to offer multilingual testing services to your customers? Do you want to globalize your existing monolingual test organization? Do you want to outsource language testing and get the most out of it?

This workshop teaches the fundamentals of internationalization and localization testing. Both management and technical aspects are covered in a practical, pragmatic manner.Numerous examples and actual sample test strategies, test plans, and test cases are provided.

This workshop will show you how to set up a global testing organization along with associated workflow, planning and management structures. You will learn how toleverage industry best practices, methods, tools and techniques.

Build a global testing effort on top of your existing test procedures, test documents and test data. You will learn how to decide what to test and what not to test. This knowledge will be ready-to-use the very next day!

Target Audience: 

This course is intended for testers, test leads, test managers, as well as developers, product managers, project managers and team leaders.

Benefits: 

This workshop provides quality assurance and other software professionals with a complete picture of internationalization and localization testing. The course describes how to move from a monolingual testing organization towards a fully functional global testing organization.

Duration: 

The agenda described below isfor a two-day session.

Pre-requisites: 

Prior attendance to the "All About Internationalization" workshop is recommended, either the onsite or the self-paced eLearning version.

Agenda: 
  1. Concepts: Testing and Globalization
    • Testing principles, types, phases, deliverables, roles, standards
    • Testing vs. the generic internationalization model
  2. Character Sets and Unicode (from a testing point of view)
    • A brief history of character sets: ASCII, Shift-JIS, GBK, and Unicode
    • Pros and cons of the basic Unicode encodings: UTF-8, UTF-16, UTF-32
    • Unicode equivalent sequences and the need for normalization
    • Databases: multilingual schema design and migration to Unicode
  3. Testing Economics
    • Budgeting andstaffing for the multilingual test organization
    • Estimating testing efforts
    • Configuration and change management for multilingual software
  4. Testing Workflow
    • Requirements management for global software
    • Configuration management for global software
    • Test suite management for global software
  5. Test Lab and Platform Coverage
    • Setting up a multilingual test lab
    • Testing tools
    • Scheduling in the multilingual test lab
    • Pattern Approach and All Pairs Approach
    • Resource allocation to maximize test coverage with minimal time
  6. Globalization Test Strategy
    • Building a globalization test strategy
    • Requirements analysis, Quality factors, Technical risks and Failure modes
    • What not to test
  7. Test Plans and Test Cases
    • Building a globalization test plan
    • Test plan guidelines
    • Functional testing and linguistic validation
    • Multilingual GUI testing
    • Cultural concerns
    • Install/uninstall on multilingual platforms
    • Test case design
    • Equivalence classes
    • Classifying test cases
  8. Bug Triage
    • Bug definition and bug isolation
    • Decision making in a global organization
    • Multilingual bug workflow and state diagrams
    • Process improvement
  9. Testing Steps and Wrap-up
    • Documentation validation
    • Pseudo translation
    • Source code reviews
    • Localization testing steps
    • Multilingual text and numeric data
    • Establish testing goals
    • Define a team model
    • Organize workflow
    • Staff the team
    • Setup a testing
Handouts: 

Each attendee will receive:

  • A 300+ page booklet with ample room for notes, complete with table of contents and glossary. The booklet is designed to serve as a practical easy-to-use reference “book” for regular use during an internationalization project.
  • Samples:internationalization test plan, test case form, test strategy and status report (included in the booklet).