Best Practices

…(silence)

While it is a well known best practice in software development, most of us still don't write automated tests for our code. The reasons for this are many, with “lack of time” one of the most common reasons cited. That said, let me share with you the top 10 reasons why I believe everyone should write tests for their code.

Your company’s business development team just announced a new Drupal project has been given the green light, and you will be the project manager. What do you need to do to help your development and strategy teams succeed in giving the client the best possible experience and product? You need to ask the right questions.

3 questions to ask regardless of the CMS in play

The project manager of any technical project, leveraging Drupal or some other CMS, should first and foremost ask:

1. Where is the Statement of Work (SOW) and how do I access it?

Video content has quickly made its mark on every online platform that we interact with. In 2015, online video accounted for 50% of all mobile traffic. One of our focuses on the Marketing team for 2016 has been increasing our video efforts and supporting the 52% of marketing professionals who credit video as the type of content with the best ROI.

Writing CSS is easy. Writing CSS that can scale and can be easily maintained is not.

At DrupalCamp Atlanta 2015, I presented a session on how to achieve next-level CSS. My presentation focused on techniques and best practices for writing scalable, maintainable CSS. 

Check out this video of my session "Leveling up CSS with SMACSS and BEM" that explores:

But what happens once they get there? If we’re doing our jobs as marketers, we are aiming to provide a personalized web experience for each of our prospects and customers with integrated campaigns and creative content. The great news is Drupal 8 is designed with this in mind. There are several new features and pieces of functionality that will help marketers focus on creating innovative strategies instead of having to worry about what’s possible.

Traditionally speaking, Project Managers have a set of dual responsibilities that can be at conflict with each other. They are responsible for ensuring the overall success of the project while keeping it within its budget and timeline. At the same time, they act as the customer’s representative to the development team and are responsible for ensuring customer satisfaction. In an ideal waterfall project where the budget and timeline are predicted perfectly and there are no changes in scope or desired features, this dual role for Project Managers makes perfect sense.

In 2014, the total number of websites in the world reached over 1 billion. That’s a LOT of competition, elevating the importance of providing an effortless web experience to the now, often sophisticated, visitor. The visitor experience - aka the ‘user experience’ - can be successfully developed using a wide variety of tools and methods. Have you ever heard the saying “If you build it, they will come?" When talking about a great user experience, if you build it, they will return.

All that I need is my laptop and the internet to work on Drupal sites, communicate with colleagues and clients, and learn and grow as a Drupal Developer, but every once in a while, I find the need for an additional office.

People in all sorts of roles are called upon to conduct conference calls at one time or another. Whether you work in an office setting and need a supplemental phone call in place of a face to face meeting or you work in a distributed or remote work environment where conference calls are the norm, conducting them effectively is essential for team collaboration and decision making.