Profit in Project Management

Profitability is never a guaranteed outcome.

Drupal is a powerful CMS that developers use to give clients the web products they need, with all of the features and functionality they want. Drupal can provide all this at a lower cost than HTML or other platforms, but using Drupal is no guarantee of profitable project.

Using Drupal along with an Agile Development Process is an excellent way to eliminate much of the wasted efforts found in a traditional Waterfall Development Process. By comparison, using an Agile Methodology can reduce cost by as much as half, or provide up to twice as much product for the same budget! However, Drupal and Agile alone are not enough to ensure a profitable outcome.

Experienced project management along with a senior-level development team can successfully use Drupal and Agile to start from a position of great strength on any project. Adding proper management techniques to work-flow and production will help move any project toward potential profits, but even the best team cannot overcome fatal flaws in scope, schedule, or budget.

What are the fundamentals needed to keep costs under control during a project? How do you bid projects against a client's budget properly? How do you address scope, schedule, and budget to start off in the best position possible to achieve a win-win outcome for your client and yourself?

In this session we’ll discuss how to address these questions and answer them successfully, with specific attention to how these answers may change along with the size of the dev team or the project; some key management fundamentals that have business value far beyond project management alone. We’ll address some specifics of the Agile process, the development process, how to construct the development team; understand the relevant economies of scale for projects and development that can help dev-shops large and small identify the best range of projects to target in order to bring home profits and grow their business.

Examples will be taken from attendees to discuss as specific case studies.

Attendees will participate in a discussion of:

• Agile development methods applied to web-dev
• How the communication process can break down and wreck projects
• Properly sizing budget, scope, and schedule of any project from the beginning
• How a full service digital agency applies these techniques successfully

James has given presentations on project management at SAND Camp, PNW Drupal Summit, L.A. Drupal Camp, GLAD Camp, EduWEB, and SAC Camp; he frequently speaks about production techniques at Downtown Los Angeles Drupal meetups. James produced a video blog for Team FREDNET (TFX), one of the groups that was in competition for the Google Lunar X-Prize. James has given presentations to NASA on the TFX's mission profile. As a Technical Project Manager at SENSIS Agency, James then coordinated all of the pieces that had to be brought together in order to deliver highly functional websites. SENSIS developed more than 20 Drupal sites over 24 months.