Train Wrecks, Ugly Babies: The Gory Details, Part 2

Speakers: 
Susan Rust

This is a continuation of last year's session with ample how-to action items. Over the past 10 years, this proven project methodology will save you time, money and heartache. Don't worry if you missed last year's session, you can catch it on the PDX Con site but you don't need it to benefit from this year's talk.:

Would you believe with a $100,000 project, as little as 50% can be spent on actual development? Where the heck is the rest of the money spent? You might be shocked how much can be wisely allocated in discovery, business analysis, risk assessment and architecture before one line of code is written.

Shocking still is that your projects will be more successful, your clients happier and your team humming like a well-oiled machine. Get recommendations, accolades and repeat business that is the holy trinity of business. Spending the effort and money in the right areas will give you the business results so many companies struggle with.

This follow-up session from last year's Train Wrecks, Ugly-Baby Meetings and other Client Calamities takes a deeper dive into the technical process of projects. This in-depth look at the discovery process can be used by small and large projects alike.

Clients are looking for strategic partners, not just a Drupal shop. In this interactive and discussion-based session, we'll cover these specific and detailed ways to walk projects through from the what, why, how, when and who. Learning how to ask the detailed questions, understand the clients needs, manage the internal politics and the entire scope of what makes a project successful will help everyone get better results.

1. Business Analysis: Learning how the client uses their data to build the right object model

  • Content
  • Site audit
  • Performance audit
  • Web objectives
  • Business rules
  • Training early and often

2. Discovery: Translating their business into Drupal ideas

  • Content types
  • Views
  • Taxonomies
  • User Stories
  • Storyboards
  • Dashboards
  • Object modeling
  • Pre-mortem

3. Architecture: Moving ideas into engineering plans

  • Content
  • Migration
  • Integration
  • Wireframing
  • Deployment
  • Performance
  • Scaling

4. Process: Managing teams and tasks

  • Workflow
  • Timeline
  • Ticketing
  • Communication
  • Billing
  • Change Orders

5. Development: Wrapping it Up

  • Build
  • Design
  • Theme
  • QA
  • User Acceptance
  • Bug fixes
  • Launch
Schedule info
Track: 
Drupal Business
Experience level: 
Intermediate
Drupal Version: 
N/A