Leaving you.v3

I'm Leaving You:The risks of dumping your old CMS for Drupal and how to manage them
By Nicole Lind
SVP, Treehouse Agency
nlind@treehouseagency.com

Why this session?
Surprise dangers lurk
Unrealistic expectations
Drain on resources
Change is difficult
Unrecognized risks

The goal
Set better expectations
Provide a risk assessment framework
Minimize surprises
Bring sanity to a potentially stressful experience

Understanding the Situation:theLANGUAGE & thePEOPLE
Doublespeakis language that deliberately disguises, distorts, or reverses the meaning of words. Doublespeak may take the form of euphemisms (e.g., “downsizing” for layoffs), making the truth less unpleasant without denying its nature, intentional ambiguity, or reversal of meaning.
Tribalism is a strong Cultural or ethnic identity that separates one member of a group from the other members of another group.
From Wikipedia (paraphrased)

“There’s a module for that”
Implication:
Your site is practically already built!
Truth:
You’re going to need plenty of development work to get the custom look and functionality you have in mind.
Understanding Drupal Doublespeak

“Final designs”
Implication:
“Of course the designs are final”. Just a few tweaks are expected and shouldn’t impact functionality.
Truth:
Even small design changes can introduce significantly new functionality.

“Flexibility”
Implication:
The new CMS will be completely customized, but should act like shrink wrapped software with documented manuals and no bugs .
Truth:
Your CMS is custom-made and will require a debugging period and custom documentation.

“Cost Savings”
Implication:
Drupal is free! Of course it’s going to be cheaper!
Truth:
Every project is unique. While Drupal is free, the development, support, and hosting of your project is not. Savings (and costs) will vary.

“There’s talent all over the world”
Implication:
There are Drupal developers everywhere…just outsource to a cheaper country and save loads!
Truth:
Depending on your project, management style, and organizational culture, international outsourcing may not be a practical approach—and could end up costing more.

“Critical launch issue”
Implication:
Whoops! Something “just came up.”
Truth:
Bizarre unknown use cases only became known at or after launch. Somebody didn’t think things through enough.

Understanding the Drupal Tribe Members
Common tribe members of a Drupal CMS migration
Evangelist member
Passive-aggressive member
Openly hostile member
Know-it-all member
Apathetic member
Protector member
Chief member

Evangelist
Description
Brought Drupal to the organization or pushed for a major over hall of the existing implementation
Caveats
Depending on how they “sold” Drupal (which is often an oversell with Drupal Speak terms) to the organization will determine how to handle the rest of the tribe members.
What to do with them
Manage expectations and bring everyone back to reality

Passive-Aggressive
Description
Tries to please people by agreeing to their plan of action publically, yet actually doing the opposite privately
Caveats
Although not a very vocal tribe member, the passive aggressive often uses subversive emails and conversations to pass blame and avoid doing their job
Point out the inconsistency between their words and actions

Openly Hostile
Description
Openly antagonistic to the project. They will be the first person to say I told you Drupal was a bad idea
Caveats
Often motivated by jealously and they often feel they should be leading the project effort
Assign an important job in the project to this person or completely eliminate them. There is no sitting on the fence or shades of grey

Know-it-All
Description
Often a very experienced technical person but they are new to Drupal.
Caveats
Fear of change drives this person and they will complain about the inadequacies of Drupal
Train these people as soon and as much as possible!

Apathetic
Description
The apathetic will sit on the sideline and make no meaningful contribution to the project
Caveats
Usually much of the editorial staff is apathetic and unfortunately they don’t say much about the CMS until the new product is already built
Preview as much of the early build through demos and test accounts

The Protector
Description
Keeper of the budget and sustains the migration effort through resourcing
Caveats
Sometimes unclear who this member is and how much power they have
Make this tribe member your friend. Take them for dinner and drinks. Schmoozing!

The Chief
Description
The mover off all things related to the migration effort. Understands the strategy, language and players associated with getting the job done
Caveats
Not always well liked and may need to be hard on other tribe members
Empower this tribe member with real authority

People are scared. Tough changes can make people redundant, threaten jobs and require the restructuring of the organization
Speed of change matters. Slow is usually easier, but many web projects require urgency and speed to market
People react differently. Some are more impacted by change and sometimes do not cope well; may act out, taking on tribe roles of the openly hostile or passive aggressive member
Change is inherently risky. It should be managed with care and professionalism
Understanding Change in the Drupal Tribal Community

Migrating is Inherently Risky and What To Do About It
Evolving People and Language Through Risk Assessment

Identifying the most common risks
Risks
Potential Impacts
No Drupal experience
Unknown dependencies
Scheduling
Double data entry
Unidentified block behavior
Old legacy system has no clear migration path
Lack of clear content mapping
Cost
Schedule
Performance

Survey users and stakeholders for additional potential risk
Don’t forget members of the technical team (including developers, system administrators and hosting partners). Hosting is often overlooked in budgets and requires critical skills that maybe missing.
Spend the necessary time to understand editor and content contributor processes and expectations for the administrative interface. Often a very overlooked area for risk.

Setting up a risk tracking method
Many formats available on the web; Google “risk analysis” or “risk assessment” for ideas.
Most often includes tracking risk for Likelihood of occurring and Impact on the project; impact could be financial, timeline, or quality of the outcome

Likelihood definitions

Impact definitions

Sample risk assessment

Creating risk mitigation plans for Drupal migration projects

Common sense plans that help reduce risk
Set clear and measurable goals
Conduct a project discovery
Provide as much training and documentation as budget and schedule allows

Setting clear and measurable goals
UNCLEAR
NOT SPECIFIC
UNREALISTIC
“We are moving to Drupal because we want our CMS to be more flexible.”
“We expect to save a lot of money moving to Drupal.”
“One of the main goals of this project is to double our traffic the first month after launch.”
Goals need to be specific and realistic to help set expectations for success of the project. Goals also focus our attention on higher priority activities versus lower priority activities.

Project discovery
Project discoveries help stakeholders and implementation team to understand the real needs of the migration project
Project discoveries are ideal for fleshing out the unknowns (risk) of a project. Once something is known, it often dramatically reduces the risk and exposure involved in migrating to Drupal
Project discovery can be as short or long as need be but should be done regardless

Training and documentation
Budgets and timelines generally don’t cover the real outlay for training and documentation…which is a risk
More efficient delivery:
Create inline documentation as much as possible. Saves time and money relative to creating documentation in two places.
Regularly demo functionality for stakeholders. These sessions can be recorded and used for future training and documentation needs.
Maintain a central repository for all project documents.

Putting everything together

Distributing and publishing the riskand mitigation plans
Initial risk assessments should be placed in the project discovery documentation (if one is conducted)
On-going risk assessments should be shared with project stakeholders through meetings, email, scrums, etc. Once new risk are communicated the document should be updated and saved to the central document repository (i.e. Google docs, Basecamp, etc.)

Final thoughts
Be patient
Understand the people and language of the community moving to Drupal
Be sensitive to how other tribal members deal with change
Identifying and managing risk is the most effective way to evolve your community and successfully migrate to Drupal

Thank youQuestions?
By Nicole Lind
SVP, Treehouse Agency
nlind@treehouseagency.com

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Leaving you.v3

by Treehouse Agency

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Leaving you.v3

by Treehouse Agency

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Leaving you.v3 Presentation Transcript

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