In this BOF we will be discussing methods of documenting a Drupal project in a collaborative way using Google Drive. We also hope to share and demonstrate processes, tools and Drupal specific templates which have helped improve production.

The idea is simple...

Provide a neatly organised, structured, 'cloud based' project folder to your client and development teams which is used throughout the life cycle of a project.

Why?

To improve a projects clarity and understanding in a structured reusable way.

If you invest more time in the planning and documentation phases of a project this should ease the number of mis-communications and other problems which arise in the build, qa/uat and deployment phases. Some examples of the benefits are below:

• Capture key information architecture, workflows, site defaults, email templates, assets and any other Drupal specifics in an appropriate format
• Get sign off easier and earlier to prevent delays and waiting for dependencies
• Reduce change requests. Save more costly rework later down the line (making a change is easier in a spreadsheet than updating a feature!)
• Improve collaboration and communication
• More organised assets and documentation
• Take advantage of built in workflow like comments
• Deeper customisation via Google App Scripts
• Reusable templates, update your base folder as your processes evolve

Who is this for

Anyone who works on Drupal projects with aspirations on making the whole process smoother, however it might be best for Team Managers, Project Managers, Technical leads or Freelancers.

Additionally lets talk about problems that pop up on a Drupal Project and peoples approach to resolving them. We could talk about other strategies which have not worked (for me anyway) like using Redmine Documents, Markdown in /docs folder in a git repo etc. Other suggestions welcome!