I am busy trying to wrap up development on PLMS (Prediction League Management System), and all I had to do today was the last configuration screens and the email module, not more than 3 or 4 hours work at most, until I discovered a flaw in my design.

The fix for the flaw was so large that it changed the whole structure of the application, adding in two more base Controls for the screens to work properly. This added about 3 hours development time and I have just finished testing the application from start to finish to see that everything works, thankfully the change went off with no major complications.

I realise that if I had done a decent design session before I had started coding instead of make design decisions as I go, this flaw would have been seen a long time ago and I would have avoided the extra 4 hours of work, and in hindsight, I should have known better considering I develop massive applications for a living.

So my lesson for you in this very short post is this:

No matter how soon the deadline is, you must always do a design session on the application. Make sure you include All areas, UI, Business end (saving, loading etc etc, all the typical backend stuff), How the flow will happen behind the UI (Base classes, common code, constants, enums etc etc), even your database, if you are using one, will benefit from a design session too.

So now, I am going to try and get the work I set out to do today done, hopefully I will not have to make any more design changes.