Planning and Managing Drupal Projects

Chapter 4. Working with Clients

This final chapter deals with walking clients through the Drupal process. It collects what I’ve learned over years of running a studio and dealing with clients, and also touches on how to collect what you learn over the course of your projects, so that the next one is always just a little bit easier.

Proposing and Estimating Projects

Over the years, I’ve learned to break the discovery process into two distinct phases. The first, outlined here, happens prior to estimating the project, and gives me the background I need to create a proposal and estimate for the project. The second, more comprehensive phase happens during and after the project kickoff. This phase, described in Chapter 2, is where we start framing the design challenge that we’re facing, fleshing out the user experience, and making sure that the client is on board with our approach.

Pre-proposal discovery: what you need to know

The initial discovery phase should give you enough information about the client, the project’s goals and the level of complexity that you can put together an accurate proposal. During this phase, you’re looking to learn:

• Who is the client?

• How well do they know the business, and themselves?

• Who are they trying to reach?

• What’s the real goal here? What are they hoping their site will accomplish for them?

• What kind of functionality are they going to need? Is it something you can handle on your own, or will you need to bring in external resources?

• What’s the process for decision ...