Creating Nimble Drupal Systems: Transforming a Drupal Team in 6 Months

When a closely knit and well experienced government team build their first Drupal site and then launch it on their own hosting, they run into unforeseen yet surmountable obstacles. Come with me as we go on a journey and learn how this team improved their Drupal Systems — from the site’s user experience and tagging strategy to the automation at AWS — in only six months.

This talk is suitable for people with or without Drupal experience. Even though the example is specific to a state government project, the things we learned and how we grew is applicable to Higher Ed teams as well. The talk will address:

• the very real challenges that result from a fast migration to a new platform on a tight timeline
• how we helped the Minnesota Department of Health overcome these challenges
• how we’ve started paying down technical debt by optimizing Drupal for best practices
• how strict security requirements can be your friend and that automation and speed are still possible
• the secret to achieving all of this, with every team, every time

We hope that this talk inspires teams that may be in a similar situation to reach out and ask for help — Drupal Systems can be nimble and transformations fast.