Mapping business requirements to Drupal modules: a gap-fit process

Every client engagement starts with a desired list of requirements, features, and concepts. Usually a new social media site wants everything from forums, to blogs, to wiki functionality, with a karma rating system and user video uploads. Your job as a Drupal systems designer and information architect is to come up with a logical set of user functionality that is able to be deployed within the time frame of a “Phase 1” launch.

The expertise that you bring to the table is your past experience working with existing Drupal modules. How do you decide when to add a new Drupal module to your “approved” list? How do you share experiences about your approved list? What are your processes for assessing the risk of adding a new module? How do you decide which features need to be developed as custom code, and how do you potentially expose the fact that you will be building a new module to the community?

Virtually all of these concepts are currently based on gut instinct and direct social ties to code maintainers. How can we get more of this out of heads and onto paper so that we can replicate and validate decisions from project to project.

Join me to talk through a process of building repeatable processes in selecting modules and implementing a gap-fit analysis of which modules your new Drupal project is going to need.