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How to estimate the costs and time needed to fix issues or provide a RFP on a Drupal website you did not develop.

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Drupal fixes & changes Report, RFP tips

See also theodorosploumis/drupal-best-practices.

How to estimate the costs and time needed to fix issues or make changes to a Drupal website that you did not develop! Before giving a proposal (RFP) you need to inspect the site! But inspecting a Drupal site is not as simple as you believe... Here is a basic checklist of the Report that you need to deliver before doing anything on the site.

See and example of a report on example-report.md.

Before the Report needs

  • Technical specification document (if exists).
  • Current Process flow diagram (in case the system communicates with other services)
  • Drupal admin credentials (user 1, or Admin role account). This is needed to check the existing structure, functionality, modules etc. Normally there whould be a dev subdomain to log in. If not credentials and demo provided ask for the git code and a dumb database to install the project locally.
  • A brief of the project scope.
  • What are the project goals (eg register new members)? How do they measure them? Do they currently meet the goals?
  • What happened with the previous Developer/Company (and there is no collaboration anymore)?
  • Why the site needs the changes (fixes, update, upgrate, migration etc)?
  • How much time needed to build the project?
  • Will there be a new Skin (or theme, template whatever they call it)?
  • What are the things that do not work well now and they would like to improve?
  • How many different Authors are currently adding content?
  • How many different User Roles exist (eg Anonymous, Member, Pro Member etc)? Which are each Role permissions on the project? Can we simplify any process for the users?
  • How many Drupal nodes (you can name it as "pages") are currently on the database?
  • Will we need a data migration? If so, are there any content entry fields we need to remove or any new we need to add?
  • Are there any (high) payments to 3rd party services that we can avoid? Eg a CDN.
  • Who is going to support the project technically (Drupal updates, security issues, technical support)? Remember to provide a yearly Support subscription with specific tasks on the contract.
  • Where is the project hosted now? What are the needs for Database, PHP etc? Are there any special software used? Offer to move to a new hosting provider if current does not fit us. For big customers offer Drupal cloud based solutions (Acquia, Pantheon etc).

Other (not so important but could be important)

  • Hosting credentials (to check server/system details, tools installed etc that are special for the project to work).
  • Other services credentials (eg CDN, SSL provider, Google Analytics etc) that are used.

Common Reports

Drupal specific Reports

  • Drupal content Structure (Content types, taxonomy etc)
  • What is the main functionality (Features and Functionality, F&F) provided (eg login, register, add comments, share content etc)
  • Drupal forms
  • How many different pages are there
  • Is there a mobile verison of the website or responsive css styles
  • Usage of special modules (eg Panels, Features, Context, Paragraphs, php etc)
  • Drupal user Roles
  • Create 1 demo user for each Drupal Role and get into the site to inspect functionality (take screenshots, investigate bad UX etc). Alternatively you can use masquerade to become another user)
  • Drupal best practices
  • Theming (uses ds, template files, preprocess functions, field layout, panels, patternlab etc)
  • Total modules enabled
  • Modules that should not be used
  • Modules that should be used
  • (Security) Updates
  • Views best practices
  • Menus and navigation
  • Text filters and editors
  • Block types and block structure
  • Multilingual behavior
  • PHP and server settings (eg using a high php memory limit, not protected settings file etc)

What to deliver

  • A pdf of the report (use Google Docs to create the official report)
  • Include images/screenshots when needed to explain the text
  • Propose changes with details for every aspect that need to change
  • Include prices and timesheet for every change mentioned
  • An invoice of 10hr - 100hr working (the working hours depend on the size of the site)

Example report here.

Useful Drupal modules

Drupal Console commands

https://drupalconsole.com/docs/en/commands

  • drupal field:info
  • drupal debug:*

Scripts to generate software report

My thoughts

  • Avoid giving an estimate/proposal before making a site Report.
  • Do not start the Report before getting the credentials or a demo.
  • Try to find out what does the website mean for the owner (eg if it is the main income source).
  • If able propose to fix one thing at a time using agile methodology and get paid by the hour.
  • Tell your customer that this Report is like a Doctor diagnosis and that it can be used for future tasks.
  • Do not forget to include costs such as for copying the site/db, creating a dev environment, uploading changes to live environment (eg usage of features module) etc.
  • After the Report, avoid touching projects that are not well structured and do not follow (Drupal) best practices!
  • Avoid expressing negative for other Companies/Developers (talk about the site and not about the people that were involved).
  • Such projects are good to "learn" new things and other people practices (educational projects).

Useful resources

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How to estimate the costs and time needed to fix issues or provide a RFP on a Drupal website you did not develop.

Topics

drupal estimation reports hacktoberfest rfp drupal-report request-for-proposal drupal-developers

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