Dmitry Drozdik
COO & Technology Strategist | Five Jars
Novi Sad, Serbia
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COO & Technology Strategist at https://fivejars.com, entrepreneur, an active member of the Drupal community. Technical Lead and Software Architect with more than 12 years of experience in web development, Drupal CMS, Team Management, DevOps, automation, and business. I like Drupal and different tech things, especially things that make us closer to the Internet of Things. Also, I like speaking at conferences when I have a great topic :)
Area of Expertise
Estimation is a pain and brings stress. Help your developers ASAP!
Every developer, technical lead, project manager, and salesperson at least once faced a task to prepare an estimate for a project or request from the client. In many agencies fixed scope projects are common. But why? Because it is the nature of humanity, we want to know how much it would cost and, if possible, find where we can get the same quality but cheaper.
As a result, developers and those who participate in the estimation process struggle with guessing how much time developers would spend doing the task. In some cases, we know exactly what we need, in some not. And depending on that information, estimates vary. We definitely can say that features are cheap and details are expensive. But how to make estimates accurate when you do not know all the details, how to make them low and still profitable for the agency to win the bid? How should the estimation process look like to avoid over budget on the project and to avoid the team’s stress from thinking they estimated incorrectly, and because of that, the company loses money?
If you ask these questions to many agencies, no one will give you a “golden pill” on how to estimate the project when the client wants an accurate estimate and does not want to work on the T & M approach.
In Five Jars, during the last five years, we try to learn from our projects to answer ourselves
- How to estimate a project so you don’t go over budget
- How to improve processes to speed up the estimation process
- How to reuse estimates we did for a new client
- How to deal with change requests
- What tools can help us
- And many other questions…
So, you got the idea, we are going to talk about the estimation process and things that you can implement in your team or agency to make your team's life better. (Familiarity with Drupal is not required to follow the session).
Is it worth to transform from a technical role to a business role?
After 10 years of being a developer, team lead, architect, and manager, you probably start thinking about how the next 10 years may look like for you. Feeling that you reached the ceiling may follow you. Desire to try something new, to get to the next level, can sit in your head.
I was in this situation four years ago, and as a result, I am a COO of the Drupal agency. And In this session, I will talk about the path, thoughts, challenges, desire to return to development, and development at night when my family sleeps.
This topic should help you understand your real ceiling and when you should try changing the role and really trying something new.
Is Speaking At DrupalCon Really Worth Your Time?
Public speaking is something that many people fear simply because they are afraid of failure and most importantly, getting embarrassed in a room packed with people waiting to cross-examine you like an FBI investigator. This is the time when you start to wonder whether speaking at a conference really is worth it.
I was thinking about this question many times and now I have the answer. The answer that may surprise you or upset. Anyway, this session will be useful for those who think about participating in Drupal conferences as a speaker and for those who are ready to become a speaker but has no idea how to start.
In this topic, we will talk about
- Different types of conference speakers
- Benefits of participating at DrupalCon
- How to find the right topic for your next DrupalCon sessions.
I hope after this session next DrupalCon will get more session submissions from new speakers.
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