The ability to clearly communicate requests, concerns, and roadblocks between stakeholders and the development team can be a challenge in any software project, but these problems can be compounded by a lack of fundamental knowledge of Drupal functionality and terminology.

In this training, we will investigate ways to mitigate those difficulties by establishing a common understanding of Drupal fundamentals which can streamline communication between website users and administrators (“Do they really need that block there?”), project managers (“Do these fields really need to be in that content type?”), and Drupal developers (“Why do I need to build another view?”). We will also explore different techniques and tools that can be used to facilitate project communications within the development team as well as with project stakeholders.

This topic will review basic Drupal skills and features that every project manager should know and why, including:

• Content Types, Fields, and Widgets
• Views
• Blocks and Boxes
• Layouts, Templates, and Panels
• Features (D7) and Configuration (D8) Management
• Users, Roles and Permissions
• Module (Custom and Contrib) Configuration

We'll also try to share perspectives between Drupal site developers and the website users and administrators who use the resulting functionality, including:

• How source code management (SCM) and deployments work from a Drupal developer's perspective
• How to navigate translating website requirements into Drupal terminology for easy division into user stories and developer tasks
• How to communicate about Drupal to a non-technical audience when performing requirements discovery

This training will be hands-on. Participants will be given access to a Drupal sandbox environment to practice common site-building activities. Participants will need to bring their own laptops to work with. A web browser will be required. If government machines are IT-restricted in a manner that prevents public website access, participants should make arrangements to get administrative access or bring another device.