Front End Collaboration Strategies

Have you ever yelled at your screen, wondering why that other designer / site builder / front end developer / back end developer (strike out whichever is not applicable) couldn't simply deliver stuff the way you like it? Does it have to be so difficult to create a theme, whack it on a site, and ship it? Well... yes and no.

Frond end development is a place where different people, skills, techniques, organizations and concerns come together. The people involved have their own tasks, tools, preferences and responsibilities. In order to achieve the common goal, all of those elements must be combined into a strategy that suits the project.

During 8 years of Drupal development, with multiple agencies, for all sorts of clients, I have seen many different strategies. Every strategy has different answers to questions like "Who is in the lead, and who adapts?", "Which task comes first?", "Is final really final?" and "Should person X understand Drupal?".

If you're looking for a single perfect strategy that fits every project - I'm afraid it doesn't exist. However we can learn from past experience. Looking at different scenarios we can understand what does or doesn't work, and why. In this session I will not only look at the problem from a bird's-eye view, but also provide some concrete tips to make the most out of every situation and avoid pitfalls. Finally, I will have a quick look at Drupal 8 and see if we can expect things to change in the future.