Best practices for the development and deployment of robust Drupal applications

When developing large sites/applications with multiple developers, and particularly when making on-going changes to sites already in production, there are a number of difficult issues which arise. As developers, our natural inclination is to go out and look for (or better yet, make!) nice tools which solve some of the day-to-day issues we encounter. However, there is more to these issues than simply doing a better job of handling merge conflicts. I believe it is important to start from the standpoint of defining a process that acknowledges the problems that need to be solved, and then investigate tools that will aid us in individually addressing those issues. Drawing from my experience managing multiple large projects over the past several years, I will discuss some of the pitfalls we've experienced and the solutions that have come out of them. Some of the topics addressed will include:

• Working with multiple developers on multiple features simultaneously
• Working with external/client developers
• Making the transition from pre-launch development to working on a live site
• Properly reviewing and testing changes as they are made, before they're deployed

Expect to come away with new ideas to improve your planning, development and deployment processes, and take control of your Drupal application's entire lifecycle.