Selworthy has now entered its third milestone, which after all the UI and javascript work of Milestone #2 is a change of pace. We’re now moving on to a third milestone all about workflow and permissions.

As ever, this kind of work is fiddly. First, we need to sit down and sketch out workflows with the team, confirming that they fit real needs and are yet flexible enough to cover most future scenarios. Then, there’s the job of implementing and testing them, which involves as much “QA” as it does automated testing: sitting down and confirm that each user sees what they should.

It’s moving forward well, though, and as we flesh this work out, we’re discovering the unknown unknowns that permissions and workflow always throw up: all of a sudden, UI elements need disabling depending on permissions; all of a sudden, activity on the application needs communicating. It’s not stupid to talk about unknown unknowns; they’re inevitable because the process of building software is one of discovery. Often, they impact our original estimate, but they also help make the software what it should be – fleshing it out, make it useful, making it all flow a little better.

A good week, then, and next week will also focus heavily on Selworthy. Onwards.