Planning and Managing Drupal Projects

Lifecycle of a Drupal Project

A good project plan for Drupal starts with the client. How much do they know about Drupal? Did they specifically request it, or was it something you suggested to them as you heard their list of requirements? This is surprisingly important information. For clients who are new to Drupal or just learning about it, there’s a bit more handholding you need to do in order to get them on board with the process. Designing for content management systems is very different from designing for Flash or with straight HTML; it’s very common for Drupal designers to realize too late that the brilliant layout they designed won’t go into Drupal without a serious fight.

I typically break Drupal projects up into six distinct phases:

1. Discovery. During discovery, we learn as much as we can about the client, the project, and the project’s objectives. This is also where we start to create a map of the functionality that we need to implement, any resources we’ll need, etc.

2. User Experience & Architecture. This is where we take a deep dive into the lives, personalities, and other factors that define the humans that will need to deal with this project on a daily basis—both the end users that visit the site, and the clients who will end up managing the content once the project is finished. During this phase, you’ll be doing work like wireframes, user flows, and often starting to prototype things directly into Drupal.

3. Prototyping. During prototyping, usually done just prior to starting ...