Slides from the session "Becoming A Technical Project Manager," from Midwest Drupal Camp in Chicago 2014, given by Johnnie Fox and Scott Massey.

1. BECOMING ATECHNICAL PROJECT
MANAGER

2. ABOUT SCOTT
• Current: Director of Customer Success @Pantheon
• Past: Support Manager, Promet Solutions, Drupal dev shop
• Service Manager, MSP in Chicago
• IT Project Manager, Consultant; Oilily, Chiasso
• Management Consulting
• Certified Scrum Master

3. ABOUT JOHNNIE
• Current: Senior Project Manger @Prometsource
• Recovering Developer
• Construction Management
• Certified Scrum Master

4. RAREST ORCHIDS
Kinds of PMs in Drupal:
• PreviousTech Exp
• Owner
• PMbot
• “Assistant”

5. WHAT ITTAKES
1. PM skills
2. Technical knowledge
3. Soft skills

6. PROJECT MANAGEMENT

7. MAJOR METHODOLOGIES

8. AGILITY
• In general, agility is defined as "the ability of a
[system] to rapidly respond to change by
adapting its initial stable configuration”
• agility or nimbleness is the ability to change
the body's position efficiently, and requires
the integration of isolated movement skills
using a combination of balance, coordination,
speed, reflexes, strength, and endurance

9. AGILE MANIFESTO
• We are uncovering better ways of developing software by
doing it and helping others do it.Through this work we have
come to value:
• Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
• Working software over comprehensive documentation
• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
• Responding to change over following a plan
• That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value
the items on the left more.

10. LIES ABOUT AGILE
• It is a silver bullet that fixes all problems
• Agile is the right approach for all projects
• One Agile framework is good for all the projects you do.
• Agile will stop you from making bad decisions
• Agile will immediately show results
• All clients love Agile
• Your love life will improve if you adopt agile.

11. AGILE FLAVORS
!
Agile Modeling
Crystal Clear
Dynamic Systems
Development method
(DSDM)
Exia Process
Extreme Programming
(XP)
Feature Driven
Development
Open Unified Process
(Open UP)
Scrum
VelocityTracking
Kanban

12. WATERFALL
it just flows!
• Discovery
• Planning
• Development
• Implementation

14. DUNDER-MIFFLIN ♥’S WATERFALL
Document Objective
SOW What client wants
Charter Attributes of Project
PRD
What you will buildTRD
Func Spec
WBS Fantasy timeline
Change Requests Reality

15. TECHNICAL SKILLS

16. JUST LEARN:
Linux
Apache/NGINX
Vim
How to code
Drupal: Entities/Taxonomy/Users
Drupal: Site Building
Drupal:Theme Layer
Drupal: Panels? Domain Access?
Display Suite?
Drupal: the config & content
database knot
Drush
IDE
MySQL
Application layer IP: http, ftp, ssh, ssl/
tls, dns,
telnet, ldap
Wireframing
html
CSS
javascript
PHP
SASS
xml
rss
REST/api
CRUD
CI
simpletest
caching
reverse proxy caching
performance testing
New Relic
Symfony
ux/ui
SEO
Version control
Photoshop
provisioning
QA/selenium/behat
SOAP
PCI compliance
Virtualization
Vagrant
Composer
!
!

17. JOHNNIE’S KEYSTO LEARNING
!
• Drupal Ladder
• Buildamodule
• Modules Unraveled
• Drupalize Me
• Google is your friend
• Have smart friends
• Someone on D.O
has probably had
same problem

18. ALWAYS BE LEARNING
• Projects aren’t the best place for it
• Build your own plan
• Things you should focus on:

19. JOHNNIE’S RECOMMENDATIONS
!
• Google is your friend
• someone on D.0 has probably done it before....

20. SCOTT’S RECOMMENDATIONS
• 1,000,000 questions
• 90 days of …
• Books:
• D7 Module development
• Front EndTheming
!
• Build a Megasite
• Do your own retrospective
• Immersion: Podcasts, Blogs,
Meetups, Classes
• Camps/cons

21. SAMPLE 90 DAY SPRINT
• Objectives:
• Code everyday
• Build a site with CDN, SSL, SOLR, Redis
• Content from Feeds
• Deliverable: Site, Notes, Commits, Retrospective

22. TRACKING PROGRESS
守: Obey 破: Detach 離: Depart
Drupal X
Linux
Apache/NGINX
MySQL X X
PHP X

23. SOFT SKILLS

24. • How to handle 11th hour stakeholder
• Working with the enemy of success
• How to handle black swan events
• How to handle the 11th hour stakeholder brought in by the project enemy during a
black swan event

25. 7 HABITS
1. Constant Self Improvement
2. Confrontation: Get Good At It
1. Practice: “No,”“Not yet,”
“That is out of scope”
3. Be Fun & Interesting
4. Ask, Listen, and Repeat
5. Relentlessly attack blockers
6. “Success” is subjective:
1. Detach with Love
2. Champion the project
7. The last 20% is what makes
you a great PM

26. PROMISES
• Projects will succeed
• Authority andTrust will grow
• You will be surprised at what comes out of your mouth
• You will work more efficiently (so you may be busier, but less reactive!)
• You will be able to create the stuff you have in your head (if you want)