Tracking Manuscripts

I'm a big believer in learning new skills by doing for real. So, when I asked my family members if they could think of a software application that they would use on a regular basis, it was my intention to develop these applications and see them go live.

One of these ideas came from my proofreading and copy editing mother. She wanted a new manuscript tracking system. Her old system was no longer supported by the vendor, so when she upgraded to Windows 7, she found that the software no longer worked. Since then, she has been using an MS Works database to track manuscripts. This does the job, but doesn't have the nice features that she was used to.

This project will involve a couple of firsts for me:

Firstly, I will be writing the application using C# and Windows Presentation Framework. Previously, all my desktop development work had been using Winforms and before then Delphi. So I'm expecting quite a learning curve involving the WPF platform, MVVM and possibly PRISM. I'm also going to be using the Entity Framework in code first mode.

Secondly, it will be the first time I have developed a real-life application from ground up using Behaviour-Driven-Development and Test-Driven-Development approaches from the very beginning. I've used these approaches before on smaller sub systems, so it will be interesting to develop a full code-base using these methods.

So here, I will try to document the journey from idea conception to going live and beyond.