Resource Management: People and Roles
Who will be doing what during site production and who will be doing what after the site is launched? Involving the right skills at the right time can help you manage your budget and limit waste.
For example, if you can do all the work yourself, except for a custom theme, you can keep your budget reasonably low by bringing in the themer after you have a handle on your requirements and design. But if you aren’t building the site yourself, you need to decide if one person or five people will meet your needs (your requirements will help with this decision process).
Sample Roles and Responsibilities
It's one thing to say you need help; it's another knowing what kind of help is appropriate for the task at hand. Below are some roles you might need for your Website production and operations.
Role | Production | Operations |
Audience (site user) | Inspiration for personas. Can test usability, accessibility, applicability of the site and its content. | Use and interact with the site. Provide feedback, request help, make inquiries. |
Content authors/developers | Identify types of content to be authored. Identify content relationships and keywords. Evaluate legacy content, develop new content, and publish to your site. | Develop and post content using the appropriate workflow and business practices. |
Document Maintainer | Record and track project progress and decisions. | Record and track operations issues and decisions. |
Drupal site architect (maker of the site blueprints) | Collect and refine audience, process, task, content, and structure requirements. Design site workflows. Create the blueprint that meets requirements for: data/content relationships, data fields, taxonomies, site organization, content flow, workflow, view, menu structures, data security. Test the blueprint. | Provide architectural planning for site enhancements, expansion, and upgrades. |
Drupal module developer (coder) | Design and develop custom modules to meet custom requirements and unique theming solutions. | Upgrade (design, develop, test) custom modules in preparation for Drupal and/or site upgrade. |
Drupal site builder (assembles the parts) | Perform a Drupal function/module inventory. Map Drupal functions to architecture and requirements. Install and assemble the Drupal application, existing modules, custom modules, themes, and content. Prepare new site to be populated with content and migrated from the development to live server. | Use the development version of the current site to test and build each new version of the site. |
Graphics designer/dev | Draft and develop branding, layout, and content graphics to meet requirements and chosen themes layout. | Design and develop content related graphics as needed. Update graphics as needed. |
Media developer | Plan and develop flash and video components that will run in the theme and content. | Design and develop content related flash and video components. Update media as needed. |
Project facilitator | Facilitate meetings to collect requirements, consider design options, and manage testing procedures. | Facilitate meetings to evaluate site performance, identify new features, plan upgrades. |
Project or Operations manager | Project Manager: Plan project efforts and ensure all tasks are completed successfully. Interface with the end user group (internal or external) to facilitate appropriate transitions. | Operations Manager: Plan and ensure the execution of routine operational tasks. Evaluate site performance and make recommendations for improvement. Interface with the end users and content authors to ensure consistent service. |
Site administrator | Identify and analyze hosting environments. Assess legacy site functions and configuration. Create a plan to transition from legacy site to new site. Work with site architect to map legacy content to new architecture. Work with site builder to transition legacy data to new site. Turn off legacy site and take over from the builder. | Monitor performance, perform updates, and maintain backups. Manage accounts, messages, permissions. Coordinate future upgrade procedures (from old to new). |
Site editor | Identify editing requirements - functionality, workflow, interface. Test editing functions. | Continuously evaluate new content and approve for publishing. |
Site content facilitator/monitor | Identify and design content publishing procedures (workflow). Identify community building and support requirements (if applicable). Test workflow. | Monitor content publishing. Monitor community interactions. Foster contributions. Provide assistance to the user community. |
Site policy enforcer | Identify business processes, procedures, and policies that ensure quality. Identify how the site needs to support quality efforts. Test policy oriented features | Use processes and procedures to evaluate and monitor site quality and correct quality issues. |
Support services | Identify tools required to provide help, collect service request information, and track services rendered. | Provide help and track services rendered. Provide help services to users and authors. |
System/Server administrator | Configure server to meet Drupal requirements. | Maintain server. Upgrade systems upon request of site administrator. |
Themer | Identify layout options. Design layout to meet requirements. Establish graphic/media requirements. Develop theme templates and CSS. | Upgrade (design, develop, test) custom modules in preparation for Drupal and/or site upgrade. |
Trainer | Identify training requirements for users and staff. Design training experiences to meet the requirements. | Provide training services. Update training to reflect system upgrades or updates. |
Trend/Statistics analyzer | Identify site performance questions. Identify measures, metrics, intervals and indicators to answer performance questions. Identify tools required to collect the metrics to be monitored. | Gather data on a regular basis. Assemble, display, and evaluate data patterns to answer performance questions. Make recommendations based on findings. |
Filling Your Roles
Once you know how large your site will be, from a content perspective and features perspective, you will be able decide if the roles can be filled by existing staff or if contract services would be more efficient on an as needed basis.
The site production roles and the site operations roles can be filled by the same people or by two separate groups, it is up to you. When looking for people to fill roles, it is helpful to convey to the potential employees or contractors which roles they will fill and where the site is in its life-cycle. If you don’t know, then you might be committing to employee(s) that could be under-whelmed or overwhelmed once they are on board. Recognizing the different roles can help you make decisions regarding schedule, budget, workload, and risk.
Conclusion
There is a tendency for some to throw more resources at a project to speed things up. If your project requirements collection process is slow, you don't necessarily need Drupal coders. If your design process is too slow, the reason might be that you don't have the right people in the room listening, making suggestions, and making decisions. I could go on but I assume you see the pattern.
Too many chefs trying to cook in the same pot can cause more problems than they solve. Sometimes it is not about how many but the skills of those you have.