A conversation about effective support for your website, with project management, the lifecycle of a project, and many stories. I've added in a section for smaller dev shops who want a model for maintenance for their projects.

1. After the confetti!
You’ve launched: Now what?
Amye Scavarda
Acquia
Pacific Northwest Drupal Summit, 2011

2. I’m Amye
and I’ll be your ranter today

3. We’ll do this:
• Confetti! Projects! Winning!
• Expectation mismatch
• Project lifecycles
• Code rot! (how sites get hacked)
• Why I care about this
• Brainstorming

4. There comes a time in every project where there
is great rejoicing.

5. You have made it through
• Scope changes • Then lots of
requirements
• Budget cuts
• Developer changed
• Stakeholder changes
• “That should be
• Pixel-Perfect Design simple, right”
Requirements
• “Wouldn’t it be nice
• No requirements if it did”

6. And you have made it
through
• Theming challenges • Hosting migration
• Staging challenges • Quality assurance
that wasn’t
• Version control
snafus • You have two DNS
providers?
• E-Commerce added
at the last minute • “My last developer
put in this great
• SSL Certificates thing! Fix it!”

7. Project Done!

8. A misplaced anchor
a small segway

9. Project Lifecycle
Discovery
Maintenance Information Architecture
Launch Design
Quality Assurance Theming
Content Staging Implementation
Now with “Supportable Moments”!

10. Discovery
• Answers the questions:
• What are we doing?
• Why are we doing this?
• What happens if we do nothing?
• Feeds requirements gathering
• That’s another talk - short answer: functional, easy and defendable
Supportable Moment: Requirements

11. Information Architecture
• Wireframes
• Data schemas
• Project planning
• Milestones, Timelines
Supportable Moment:
Documentation for what’s being built.

12. Design
• Look and feel meets function
• Refer to requirements, watch carefully
• This will take way longer, get effective signoff
Supportable Moment:
Understanding your client.

13. Theming
• The moment of truth!
• Design + Function = What’d we just sign up for?
Supportable Moment:
Review requirements.
Now go write more down.

14. Implementation
• Also known as development
• Core + contrib + custom code
• Configuration
• Migration
Supportable Moment:
Documentation.
Remember your narrative!

15. Content Staging
• The client’s first real test of the system.
• Unofficial Usability Study starts now.
Supportable Moment: Training.

16. QA
• This performs as we required.
• This doesn’t.
• Wait, shouldn’t this do this?
Supportable Moment:
Check your work, remember why you’re changing things.

17. Launch
• You load tested, right?
• SSL certificates good?
• DNS cutover
Supportable Moment:
If something is going to wrong, now is the time.

18. Maintenance
• This is not your phase two.
• This is where you contemplate your sins and
the sins you’ll be creating next time.
• Expectation management between active
development and maintenance.
Supportable Moment:
This is where you’ll wish you did all of those things I said earlier.

19. Support!

20. Code Rot
(why a developer would care about support)

21. Why I Care About Support
• Acquia Support
• Building your own support team
• Support as an overall need in Drupal

22. Acquia Support
• Client Advisor in charge of onboarding (that’s me.)
• Onboarding is when a project is about to
launch and we’ll be handling maintenance
• What’s special about this site
• What immediate needs are going to important
• What the long-term goals are for this site

23. Building Your Own Support
• Dedicated resources
• Dedicated schedule
• Retainer clients
• How to project manage maintenanc
• Getting away from ‘Agile support’
• Effective hand-off

24. Maintenance Movie Time!
1. Set up a time where you’ll do maintenance upgrades like you said you
would in your retainer contract.
2. Review the Security Advisory Lottery for the past month at the same time
as you choose your movie for the evening.
3. See which of your sites have affected modules.
4. Apply new modules to staging, email affected clients.
5. Work out a testing schedule with your clients so that this doesn’t throw off
their groove.
6. Push to production when things look good.
7. Breathe easy knowing that your sites are going to sleep peacefully from
that particular security hole.

25. Things To Do
• Build in support expectations into your
contracts
• Create a narrative of your project through
documentation
• Create a culture that values support

26. Brainstorming
• Building this into your own projects
• Helping me and people like me help you

27. I’m here all week!
@msamye
amye.scavarda@acquia.com