Communication and expectations management: The glue-code to a successful Drupal project and product.

I was new to Drupal one  year ago, but I was expert in delivering beautiful projects that meet the budget, technical requirements and timeline expectations of a client. It was clear to me early, that Drupal, like all platforms, has robust benefits and inherent challenges. Some of the challenges are technical but many are related to project process, scope management and risk mitigation. Capitalizing on my experience, we began to shape project delivery around the ability to meet client expectations.

In this session, you will learn about the following:

• Why delivering what you stated is SO much more critical than delivering more. More is subjective and bad for business.  

• Why relationships and communication are essential to product success.

• How to leverage expectation-setting and lean requirements documentation over expensive engineering solutions.  

• How to evaluate the weakness and risks on a Drupal project, and shape your project delivery to compensate.

• How to measure success on projects, when your stakeholders include clients, internal team and the site audience.

• Tactical tools and project management approaches to manage the uncertainty of Drupal development, so clients are empowered in the product development lifecycle.

• Case studies demonstrating what our agency, ThinkShout, has implemented, learned and is continuing to explore to better engineer Drupal websites using the levers and benefits of project management and project strategy.