Integrating Your Technical and Communications Teams

Experience level: 
Intermediate
Session Track: 

Business and Strategy

The purpose of this track is two-fold - one angle helps you to understand the advantages of Drupal from an organizational leadership angle and the other is to highlight the great Drupal sites and projects you're working on and to show what's possible. These sessions are business focused, and will be non-technical.

Speaker(s): 

Very often, digital teams work in two or three strongly-defined silos. There is a content team and a development team, and sometimes there is a design team that works between those two groups. Little conversation happens between those groups, and they often work towards the finish line of a project with an unproductive and unhealthy animosity towards each other, all while playing tug-of-war with the designers that must support both teams. The finished product produced by these groups never reaches its potential because the teams that produce don’t know how to ideate, plan and execute as a cohesive team. 

We’ve found a way to change that. The integrated team approach - blending designers, developers, and authors together - is no easy task. It requires a mindset shift from thinking about solutions as development-based or content-based to solutions that best serve the user. Only an integrated team can ask the question, “what is best for our users or audience?” and then craft ideas that blend the unique expertise of all of the players involved. 

Moving away from a traditional silo’d approach to a more product-based and user-centric one removes barriers between teams. The results they produce are stronger and more strategic because they operate not as competing - or at least isolated - teams to one team working in the best interest of the project.

Building a team like this is the first step and the first thing we’ll cover. We’ll go over what types of individuals and skill-sets are the best and most useful on a team of this type. After that, we’ll discuss ongoing management strategies and tools and tactics that can be used to ensure the ongoing success of the team. Lastly, we’ll also discuss how to leverage analytics to guide ongoing decision making.

This session will feature a project manager, a strategic communications lead and a technical lead from Adfero who have led an integrated team working on a major Federal website powered by Drupal 7.