Project Management: The Musical!

UPDATE: we made a trailer for this session! 

Sung to the tune of “My Favorite Things” from the Sound of Music:

“Stakeholders pausing and missing their deadlines,
Engineers working to tag all the headlines,
Scheduling has me all tied up with strings,
These are a few project management things!”
______

Standing ovations at MidCamp!
Periscoped at Twin Cities DrupalCamp!
Took Memphis by storm at HighEdWeb!

Now the hottest new musical comes to DrupalCon . . . no, not Hamilton. It’s "Project Management: The Musical!"

All great musicals tell stories of some sort of journey. It’s usually a tale of overcoming some type of adversity, with plot twists, occasional heartbreak, and humor. And isn’t that what a Drupal project is? Musicals simply include songs to help move the plot along.

Using a case study format, we’re going to give an overview — with a soundtrack! — of how to best manage a Drupal website design and development project from contracting to post-launch. We’ll share tools and spreadsheets, outline steps to get organized for both kickoff meetings and sprint planning, discuss the Agile process, give techniques on how to manage team members and clients, and learn about how project managers can overcome the odds to navigate to a fantastic product at the end.

Don’t be fooled by the music: It’s going to be informative, as well as very, very musical.

You will learn items such as:

• how to get your project organized for success right from the start
• getting to know your contract
• how to organize kickoff meetings with the client to ensure success for the project
• what analytics and KPIs to review
• what to do when stakeholders disapprove
• how to handle scope creep
• how to do proper sprint planning
• how to survive a project with humor through use of the occasional show tune

This session is not technical, and is great for both beginning and advanced project managers alike. A general knowledge of popular Broadway musicals is helpful, though not required.