Dave Hansen-Lange
Director of Technical Strategy, Four Kitchens
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Dave guides teams to build websites. But it’s not just about replicating design. He aims to provide the unique tools content creators need to make changes to their sites while anticipating their future needs. As a seasoned facilitator, he shepherds client strategy while breaking down silos between Four Kitchens’ engineering, design, and project management teams. When it comes to the end user experience, his mission is build uncomplicated systems that allow site editors to do their best work.
Area of Expertise
Mastering Team Mojo to Turn Dysfunction into Peak Performance
How successful was your last big project? Chances are, it was a little bit off (hopefully just a little). If we take a look at dozens of projects, some patterns start to emerge. There are some common traps that we all fall into. In this session, we’ll explore five common obstacles that web teams encounter, from the "Hamster Wheel" of focusing on output over outcomes, to the "Bridge to Nowhere" caused by over-engineering.
We won’t just identify these issues, we’ll take a closer look at their root causes, which are often areas where additional discovery and planning could lead to better outcomes. We’ll discuss some practical solutions, and share insights on how to empower your teams for long-term success.
But this will not just be a one-way presentation. We’ll have a real-time poll so that we can compare trends across our Drupal teams, and have a group discussion about the results.
Each challenge we’re facing is an opportunity to fine-tune our process and strengthen the product life cycle. Join us to discover how to build up your teams where they need it most and turn dysfunction into peak performance.
One Codebase to Rule Them All
There are many ways to run more than one Drupal site from a single codebase, but how do you decide which to choose? There is no “best” solution for everyone; The answer will be different for a platform of three sites vs three thousand. In this session we’ll dive into the diverse world of multisite strategies, from the familiar to the lesser-known — and help you understand when each approach shines (and when it doesn’t).
We'll explore:
* Multiple techniques for running Drupal multiple sites off a single codebase: from multisite, to upstreams; from Groups to Domain.
* The strengths and weaknesses of each method.
* How to choose the right approach based on your organization’s needs, whether that’s scaling, security, customization, or ease of maintenance.
* Real-world scenarios that show how different techniques work in practice.
By the end, you’ll have a full toolkit of solutions to manage your web properties more effectively — without treating every project like a one-size-fits-all problem.
What is technical strategy and why do you need it?
There are two significant changes in the past decade that should prompt us to think differently about tech leadership in web projects:
* Websites can now live forever (enabled by D8, proven by D9)
* We now do a lot more upfront strategy when building a website (organizational strategy, content strategy, UX strategy, etc.)
Most web projects have a “Tech Lead”. Historically, that role has had two main responsibilities: Turn ideas (from designers, UX, etc.) into a technical plan, and then lead the development team in creating it. This has worked well in the Drupal community for “the big builds”, but once a project transitions down to a lower level of ongoing changes, it becomes insufficient. At its worst, website “support” is a purely reactive enterprise: client puts in a request, developers make it happen. But in that arrangement all of the up-front strategy can easily be lost. If the website lives on for years in this state, there will be a growing frustration that the website is not able to keep up as the organization evolves. The website will end up being torn down, and the cycle started afresh.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Let’s think about how we can use technical leadership to counteract this phenomenon.
We'll explain how we approach technical strategy at Four Kitchens and how this has improved the effectiveness of our clients' websites, and the experience of their users.
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