Project Management

High demands, high anxiety clients are a reality of agency life. Their stresses, deadlines, and sometimes lack of understanding of the technology can create tension and take a project (or the client relationship) off track. Together we’ll discuss common challenges and the strategies that satisfy the clients need while insulating your team; allowing them to be more effective.

Nearly every new project focuses heavily on the flashy design and fancy tools it'll make for its visitors. So much focus is driven into the site user's experience to make it intuitive and pleasant, but in many cases this ignores the users that will visit the site more than anybody else: the content editors.

A smart programmer is not the one who fixes all the problems, but rather, the one who understands what the problems worth fixing are. When discussing quality software, everyone talks about unit tests and test-driven development, only a small piece of building good software. In this session, we'll explore validation and verification beyond software tests.

User personas are good tools, but they have limits. They take a narrow look at what a specific "person" is going to do on a website. Personas don't give us a bigger picture of what drives our users and why they do the actions in the first place.

As a Project Manager, Strategist, Developer, Designer, or Stakeholder, we are all part of the puzzle—and it's crucial to keep sight of the big picture—even when we’re required to pivot from the original plan. Pivots come in a variety of shapes and sizes. They can be a minor change that’s quickly integrated into scope, or a major departure that alters the entire course of the project.

(ALL skill levels; ALL team sizes.)

That heart-attack-moment. Your client is freaking-out, right now; right in your face with a full-blown meltdown! At the end of it all they always ask that same question, "So what are you going to do about this!?..."

A new project comes in, you’re excited to hit the ground running, the kickoff meeting is here, and then—you discover you’re facing two (or more!) stakeholders with diametrically opposed priorities.

This session will cover key Drupal security concepts, from administering a website to developing modules, to how security matters in your hosting environment. Based on the OWASP Top 10 and other best-practices in security, we will look at the major risks and threats everyone should be aware of in order to stay secure and prevent disaster from striking your carefully crafted project(s).

Website development companies have long struggled with the challenge of getting website content from clients in a timely manner. This causes a variety of problems for web development and programming companies including mismatched expectations, extended project timelines, excessive client communication, delayed project payment timelines, and in some cases unhappy clients.

For teams familiar with traditional project phases, a common question when considering using an agile methodology is: Where does the creative team and its phases fit into an agile process?

When "you never get a second chance to make a first impression," how do you design iteratively and "fail fast"?