Stay small and successful with Drupal

Thanks to Drupal flexibility and scalability we have a number of big Enterprise-level Drupal agencies on the market. Working in these companies with explicit guidelines and workflows usually means deep employees' specialization in one of the web-development fields such as Frontend, Backend, DevOps, QA and others. At this session we would like to talk about an opposite situation when your team is very small and one developer is responsible for a huge range of tasks from server configuration to search engine optimisation.

Despite common bias, many customers love working with small agencies because of their special spirit, flexibility, non-bureaucratic processes and individual approach. Moreover, in some cases growth can be toxic and destructive for your business. We will discuss how to stay small and successful in Drupal world.

The presentation will cover these questions:

• Self-management as a key to successful project management.
• “Eisenhower box” and other techniques to find time for important things.
• Balance between doing “real” programmer's work and business development.
• What kind of people is better to hire or partner with.
• How to adapt Win-to-Win contribution approach to your current capabilities.

Additionally we want to share our own development methodology "LessBetter" that empowers us to work productively and efficiently without losing flexibility and work-life balance.

This talk is targeted mostly to freelancers and small development teams. If you’re just thinking about running something like your own cute and cuddly Drupal shop, you’ll learn from this session what problems and opportunities you will face in the near future.