Providing Professional Drupal Services

This is a tongue in cheek session about web projects potentially going wrong because of
- Promises that can never be fulfilled.
- Demands that are outrageous.
- Specifications, which are so vaporous that they almost don't exist.
- Things that will never happen... except when they do.
- Nodding at meetings although all alarms are sounding.

We will amongst other things and in no particular order answer the following questions
- Why physical meetings are an 80% waste of time.
- Why moving servers is never, ever painless.
- Why not to count hours.

Developers love Drupal for a hundred reasons, not least because it makes you look like a rockstar coder whose answer to any functional request is always 'Yes I can'.

However answer me this honestly, how did the training and handover to the client go ? Did you find yourself apologising or explaining away certain areas or buttons that don't actually do anything - or worse "ah this is actually a developer's feature".

Like me, you may have looked at the admin themes out there as an aftermarket bolt on to improve this - or perhaps you're happy for your clients to use the little black bar?

You know when you're doing it wrong. When you're staying up all night trying to figure out what your next steps are, what you should have known three weeks ago about this particular project, and when you just don't know who does what. But you're pretty sure that everyone else doesn't have these particular problems, because they're doing so well!

This is probably wrong.

Just because you're good at Drupal doesn't mean you shouldn't be good at business, too. Whether you're a freelancer or running your own firm, come and hear advice learned from growing Palantir. While not as exciting as learning how to get your first core patch in, learning business best practices to keep your firm's doors open is arguably just as important.

This session will be an introduction to the basics including exciting topics such as:
- insurance
- banking relationships
- cash flow management
- pricing
- bookkeeping
- key advisors
- contracts

Strict juridical agreements can direct the development into predetermined narrow fixed path instead of encouraging agile approach, hence compromising achievement of the best possible results. At our company we have managed to negotiate project contracts that have resulted projects complished in time, below budget and with high client satisfaction. The basis for a great contract is to appreciate the nature of the modern way of constructing a complex website. You must dig into the business goals and abstract the main components of the desired big picture.

"The Cloud" is more than just hyper-hand-waving. There is a monumental shift under way in the global software industry. In the last fifty years software innovation has moved from the mainframe, to the desktop, and now to the internet, aka "The Cloud". This move will upend entire segments of the industry and will have a huge impact on the Drupal project. In the near future, the majority of Drupal sites will be hosted on cloud services and an increasing number of cloud based services will be available to enhance the Drupal platform.

The founder’s ability to keep all the balls in the air is key to growth for many businesses but it’s not a good strategy for long-term success. This session discusses the 5 key components that every successful business must have: Processes, Recruiting, Sales, Finances, and Synergy. This non-technical session is designed primarily for entrepreneurs, owners & managers. Ben gives his insights into building and running a successful Drupal business.

Ben covers:
+Branding and positioning your business in the Drupal community
+Making Sales and marketing easy(er)

Running a Drupal consulting firm requires much more than Drupal development or design skills. You need excellent customer service, sales, project management, operations, accounting, recruiting, human resources — the list is huge! So how do successful Drupal firms make it all work?

We'll look past Drupal for an hour and focus on what it takes to run a successful consulting firm. We've assembled a top-notch panel of Drupal firm owners and managers to discuss what works for them and why. Addison Berry of Lullabot will moderate the discussion, and the floor will be open for questions.

During this session we'll take a look at what a distributed company is and why they're a good idea, especially for low capital start-ups. Then we'll dive right in and what I think are the essentials in running a distributed Drupal shop:

• Essential skills you need
• SOHO setup
• How to find the right people
• How to maintain relationships at a distance
• How we get paid
• How to maintain quality
• Keeping projects on track
• Client reactions, trust and full disclosure
• Contracts and our SLA
• Why we choose a niche market

After working some 15 years with web projects I have been both service provider and customer for a large number of different projects. I've seen and tried number of different methods how to run web projects. After both success and failure I have come to realize that agile scrum can fail just as easily as traditional waterfall models do when dealing with Drupal projects.