Forum One Drupal GovCon 2016 presentation

1. I am a digital project
manager
(and so can you!)

2. 2
Quick Show Of Hands!

3. 3
MATT BURGE
Project Director
MARTIN
FRANZINI
Account Director

4. Agenda
Who We Are & What We Do
Role of Today’s DPM
Creating Value Through Agile
Managing Risk (or, Why Projects Fail)
Tools & Resources
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2
3
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5
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5. 5
Today’s DPM
What would you say you do here?

6. ● Managing workflow
● Tracking costs and budgets
● Estimating tasks
(show me your gantt chart and I’ll show you mine)
● Resource management
● Risk management
● Scope management
● Creating project plans
● Drafting memos and status reports
● Scheduling
● Project Management Plan
6
Classic Project Management

7. DPM: What Do You Need to Know?
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● Client/Account
Management
● Resource Management
● Stakeholder Management
● Internal Admin
● User Experience
● Drupal CMS
● Video Production
● Photography
● Social Media
● FedRAMP
● Typography
● Plain Writing
● SEO
● Section 508
● Email Campaigns
● Security
● Performance
● Profitability
● Scalability
● Delivery Process
● Accessibility
● Analytics
● Compliance
● Content Strategy
● Back-end Dev
● Front-end Dev
● 3rd Party Integrations
● Quality Assurance
● Servers & Hosting
● AND MORE!
@thesambarnes

8. 8
Source:K.C.Greene

9. ● This is still debated, since
everything is changing, always
● You may be working on mobile &
web development, analytics & data,
content creation, social media
● You need to understand the
technology, the design process, the
gov environment, the user, the
stakeholder, the business goals
and the delivery process
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So What’s Your Role?
YOU ARE THE SWISS ARMY

10. 10
Be realistic.
Tactics for Success
Communicate early and often.Prefer action.
Stay positive.
Put yourself in their shoes, but
always advocate for the user.
Listen and learn.

11. Find a group to talk over
program. Have a meet up with
those in a similar role.
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Dealing with Stress
Talk about it Have an escalation plan
Pathways for escalation can
allow you to change the context
of the conversation.
Work on something else
Switch your focus. Make
progress on something else if
you find yourself stalled.
Put things in context
Nobody is on the operating
table.

12. 12
How Do We Do It?
Managing the Agile Process
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13. At Its Core, Agile Is:
Rapid & steady value delivery
(Mitigate risk of doing the wrong
thing)
Small batches (Reduce
complexity & impact of change)
More teamwork
New skills built over time
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14. The Scrum Process
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15. Increased communications between development
team and internal stakeholders.
Goals re-set at the beginning of each sprint and
progress can be tracked via the project “burndown”,
which (hopefully) leads to fewer surprises.
Time is tracked by all parties, so in time, we should
develop a good idea of the team’s velocity across sprint,
keeping expectations realistic.
^Attention CORs, this also has accounting benefits.15
Pros

16. The core team is empowered by having a say on what is
in the Sprint Backlog and is encouraged to push back on
deadlines (Joint accountability––remember, not
everything is on you).
A planned approach forces you to finish dependencies in
previous sprints.
The process can be used to push back against or
accommodate phantom stakeholders.
16
Pros

17. Product Owner and stakeholders need training and they
have to be engaged in the process.
Additional diligence must be done by the PO to make
sure that each Story/Task is impeccably defined
(acceptance criteria!) and that there is a joint definition
of “done”.
Hotfixes can be disruptive.
Not really suited to firm-fixed scope and/or price17
Cons

18. Team morale can be more tumultuous (on all sides).
Time tracking can lead to a “do it quick, not right”
attitude, creating technical debt.
Pressure can be put on creative decisions, which are
harder to time-box.
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Cons

19. 19
Managing Risk
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20. 20
- Us, always
“ A little risk management saves a lot of fan cleaning”

21. Are expectations clear to
everyone?
This includes you and your
team as much as the client,
user, and stakeholders. And
who’s doing what?
The Three Big Questions
Are you staying flexible?
The process works until it
doesn’t. If the project is in
trouble, don’t just keep
checking boxes.
How well are you communicating?
Don’t just phone it in. You
need to be checking in with
your team as much as with the
client, and talk things out
21
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22. 22
Tools & Support
You’re never alone
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23. Tools for Project Tracking
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24. Tools for Collaboration
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25. DPM Resources & Training
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27. 27
Questions?

28. 28
Thanks for coming!
Matt: mburge@forumone.com
Martin: mfranzini@forumone.com
Meetup.com/DC-DPM