Week 511

We spent the week working from our office and remotely. We’ve been focussed on the Crown Marketplace app development.

We’ve got new neighbours in our building which means there’s an energetic buzz about the place; although this buzz can sometimes be quite loud - it turns out that chipboard walls aren’t the most effective at blocking sound :-)

I continue to be impressed by appear.in for remote meetings with multiple participants.

Crown Marketplace

We’ve been doing quite a bit of spiking on the work required to add the Facilities Management framework to the Crown Marketplace app: we’re exploring how to best use the data to build a useful service for buyers.

James and I spent a while implementing GOV.UK Design System’s Error Messages and Error Summary components into the app. I’m really impressed by how easy it is to use the Design System. Although I’m still not entirely sure about the BEM convention that is uses - I understand the importance of a shared convention but it does seem to result in lots of duplication. I also found myself wanting some way of testing that we’d applied the markup correctly: I’d love to have some additional confidence that we’d applied the accessibility related elements/attributes correctly.

Rowe IT helped CCS update the AWS infrastructure and deploy a completely new environment for user testing. Rowe have used Terraform to codify the infrastructure which makes these sort of updates much easier than they might otherwise be.

James continued to make progress on using Ruby 2.5.3 in AWS CodeBuild. James’s PR to add Ruby 2.5.3 support has been merged and should hopefully be generally available soon (if it’s not already).

I’ve been getting my head around AWS Cognito. Ben spiked on integrating it with the Crown Marketplace app and I’ve been getting it ready to deploy.

Virtual assistant

Liz has been doing a great job of helping out with our various admin tasks since starting in week 508. Thanks, Liz :-)

Show & Tell dwindling attendance

Ben and I were the only people at Show & Tell 49 this month. And attendance has been generally dwindling recently. I asked on the mailing list why people might not be keen on coming and have received replies from a few people. If you have any thoughts, or any suggestions for improvements then we’d love to hear them.

CoTech

We’re just under a month away from the annual CoTech gathering. It’s going to be hosted at Space4 this year. It might not be as grand as Wortley Hall, the venue used in 2016 and 2017, but it’s a lot closer for those of us in London. There’s already quite a bit of discussion about what people are planning to do at the gathering and I’m looking forward to catching up with people I’ve not seen for a while.

Until next time.

– Chris