Drupal Kata

Drupal Learning Tracks

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A key deliverable of the Drupal Open Learning Initiative is to provide a framework for a Drupal learning curriculum. Here's the outline so far:

Project Planning and Management

Tagged:

Topics to cover

  • Requirement Gathering
  • How to write a drupal based functional specification document.
  • How to asses times for tasks and to break up the work
  • Approaches to running Virtual Teams
  • Ongoing monitoring of the work done/project management best practices.
  • Waterfall vs Agile
  • What else?

Projects/tasks

Resources

Program Leads

Coding and Development

Tagged:

Overview: Learn the latest techniques in site development. / simpletests, coding practices, scalability, deployment and so on.
Audience: hobbyist, consultant, web developer

Goals

  • Create a foundation for development and deployment of Drupal sites
  • Rapidly create a site with a Drupal specific workflow
  • Build sites without coding
  • Use Drupal as a platform

Recommended session and lesson topics

Infrastructure (Nuts and bolts of code, servers, databases, etc.):

  • Build environment and version control environment. (taken as a configuration management and not develop task (i.e. after-process hooks rather than how to use SVN)
  • Provisioning (not part of development work flow, but rather its pre-requisite)
  • Development environment (as environment for all the developers of a project and how that ties in to configuration management)
  • Non-functional planning (constraints, etc.)
  • Scaling Drupal, performance and scalability (server/database optimization and distribution)
  • Virtual servers and virtual services ec2, s3 Drupal and *AMP, a systems level view

Development Workflow (Getting from code to production):

  • Development environment (including USE of version control and build env.)
  • Quality Assurance (following/implementing process, procedures, standards)
  • Testing (unit testing, black and white box testing itself).
  • Security

Site Implementation (How requirements can be implemented without coding):

  • Internationalization
  • Contributed modules: Best of overview
  • Editorial work flow
  • Drupal distributions

Extending Drupal (Using Drupal as a platform):

  • 3rd party apps
  • External data

Projects, Tasks and Initiatives

  • Development: patching existing code or writing new code
  • Testing: testing software or writing tests for an existing code base

Resources

Program Leads

  • Aaron Winborn
  • Kristof Van Tomme
  • TBD

Information Architecture

Information architecture involves identifying the organizational relationships between the various content and functionality of the site, categorizing content, defining labels (names) and navigation systems, and enough interface design to demonstrate how data will be presented.

Topics covered

  • User Roles and Permissions
  • Workflows
  • Taxonomy Structure
  • Primary menu items
  • Blocks
  • CCK Node Types and fields
  • User profile fields
  • Views
  • Panels
  • Third party integration

Design and Usability

Tagged:

Overview: focus on the site builders, themers and those interested in delivering a killer user experience both for Drupal itself and for their own sites.

Goals

  • Attract more designers to Drupal
  • Improve Drupal’s visual design

Lesson and session ideas

Graphic design: “Drupal for Designers”

These sessions covers topics that relate more towards creating the visual design of a Drupal site.

  • Designing for Drupal (Structure of a Drupal site, visualizing your design in Drupal…)
  • Introduction to Drupal for designers (including the most important contrib modules)
  • Drupal-friendly CSS tricks (form elements, menus, etc)
  • Making a Drupal site not look like one – new ways of theming common UI elements

Usability/Interaction design: “User friendly Drupal”

  • Usability bling in Drupal 6
  • User Experience Testing
  • Interaction design with JavaScript in Drupal 6
  • Building intuitive forms (layout, multistep, custom widgets, …)
  • Brainstorming: An interface for media handling
  • Learning jQuery

Resources

Program Leads

  • tbd

Business, Marketing, and Community

Tagged:

Overview:

  • Showcases, case studies, industry discussions, discussions about the business of consulting, and the business of open source.
  • Local community building and focus on efforts such as the Drupal Dojo, Drupal Kata, Google Summer of Code and GHOP.

Goals and Objectives

  • Promote a sustainable business ecosystem in the Drupal community
  • Educate businesses about the benefits and costs of using Drupal as a platform for their business
  • Market successful use of Drupal through case studies and showcases

Lesson and session ideas

The Drupal ecosystem

  • Building sustainable Drupal business that support the community
  • Small giants: building high quality Drupal businesses
  • All About Open Source: Not Free as in Beer (What Does That Mean?)
  • My Drupal: A Panel Discusses Drupal in the Open Marketplace
  • The Costs of Free Software: A Panel Discussion
  • Drupal marketshare: What can developers do to increase the reach?

Businesses learning to use Drupal

  • My Drupal: A Panel Discusses Drupal in the Open Marketplace
  • Small Pond, Giant Fish: How to effectively recruit in the Drupal community
  • Business Best Practices: Drupal Companies Share Tips and Tricks
  • Running Virtual Teams: A Panel Discussion
  • Monetizing an open source deployment: How is value created? Where is the value? When? Why an open source deployment is a ‘real option’ for the firm.
  • Enterprise deployments: How they differ from small sites? Issues? Working with the client team?
  • Structure/Documentation requirements
  • Fast, Cheap, Great: You Pick Two (Differentiating)

Hosting meetups, camps, and virtual classes

  • You can host your own user group. It's easy!
  • How to contribute to camps.
  • Interfacing with complimentary industry groups and open source communities.
  • Working with local non-profits and educational orgs
  • Starting local Drupal Dojo sessions and workshops
  • Leverage the Drupal Kata program
    • develop and fund projects important to your community
    • learn from participating on real projects
    • match designers, themers, developers, project managers, media, promotion, and marketing types

How to help build the community online

  • Existing infrastructure: IRC, E-mail, Forums, Groups, Documentation
  • How to get remote presenters
  • Drupal Dojo - There is a lot of work being done on to revive this great service, and we'll be reporting on how to get involved.
  • The Drupal Kata is a new project learning program that provides hands on training in a wide range of areas ranging from site planning, drafting proposals, project management, information architecture, development, design, infrastructure, to business and community.
  • How to manage a volunteer project that benefits Drupal

Projects, Tasks and Initiatives

Resources

Related tracks and sessions

Drupal Groups

Other

Program Leads

Infrastructure

Infrastructure (Nuts and bolts of code, servers, databases, etc.)

  • Build environment and version control environment.
  • Scaling Drupal, performance and scalability (server/database optimization and distribution)
  • Virtual servers and virtual services ec2, s3

Development Workflow (Getting from code to production)

  • Development environment (including USE of version control and build env.)
  • Quality Assurance (following/implementing process, procedures, standards)
  • Testing (unit testing, black and white box testing itself).