It has to be said that the January Denver Drupal meetup was a far more interesting live television broadcast than the President's State of the Union address. We didn't have nearly as many viewers or inspire a drinking game, but we also did not have any bitter partisan politics characterized by half of the audience applauding random statements while the other half made disapproving facial expressions. The Denver Drupal meetup wins for bringing people together, spreading knowledge and encouraging drinking in moderation!
While Brad Jones' presentation "Things I wish I'd known" was initially intended for a freelancer audience, most of his points resonated universally with both hobbyist and organizationally employed Drupal users. Here are a few of the topics that were covered:
- Project Management Defining tasks and the scope of website functionality is critically important to knowing what needs to be done and preventing dreaded never ending projects. There is a broad range of tools available to help with project management. Redmine, Basecamp, Pivotal Tracker and Mantis are all tools developed specifically to address project management. Project management is so important that there are also a number of services like GitHub that have included project management tools in addition to their primary services. Also, don't forget that Drupal.org provides sandboxes with issue queues. Xmind was another service mentioned that, while not directly a project management tool, can be helpful to track the thought processes and evolution behind site development. In addition to management tools, there are a number of popular project management strategies such as Agile and XP that can be helpful in creating your management processes. Also be sure to track your time on specific tasks as you manage a project. Brad stated, "You can't improve on things if you can't measure them." So knowing how long it took for a task on your current and past projects will allow you to more accurately estimate for future projects.
- It's not just Drupal Drupal websites include so many technologies from CSS and jQuery/Javascript on the front end to Apache, MySQL and server configuration on the back end. Knowing your limitations and expanding your abilities are important. For example, being a great themer does not necessarily mean that you are a great designer, so you may need to communicate that to your clients and give them the chance to contract a designer. Conversely, there are tasks that you may be able to accomplish without needing to be an expert. Backups, maintenance and server monitoring are all tasks that are valuable services to your clients and can provide on going income after a website has launched.
- Finding Work Brad mentioned that sending out applications is often a blackhole and referrals have a much higher success rate for finding work. Attending Drupal meetups is an obvious way to network and get referrals, but don't overlook other channels for networking. Many Drupal users are in frequent conversation via IRC and participating in Drupal.org issue queues is an excellent way of engaging the community. Even if you're only reporting issues and asking for help, that's still interacting with the community and beneficial.
- Be able to say "no" If you're tracking time as part of your project management process, then your estimates will become more accurate and you'll be able to know when client requests are unreasonable either due to time or budget constraints. Being able to say "no" means that you will avoid having to cut corners or put yourself into compromising situations.
There was quite a lot of discussion following Brad's presentation as attendees shared information about their current practices, tips and experiences. Following the meetup, we continued conversations over food and drinks at Interstate Kitchen & Bar.