How NFPA Is Bringing Paper Processes Online With Drupal 8

©2017 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary

Firewise 2.0 Bringing a paper process online with Drupal 8

Nov 9, 2017


Speakers

Aron Anderson

Associate Project Manager, Wildfire Division

NFPA

Nick Switzer

Development DirectorElevated Third


What is Firewise?


Empowering neighbors to work together to reduce the wildfire risk in their communities since 2002.

What is Firewise?

©2017 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary5

What is Firewise?

The Firewise USA program teaches people how to adapt to living with wildfire to help save lives and property.


What is Firewise?

Using a five-step process, communities develop an action plan guiding their residential risk reduction activities that helps residents build a safer place to live.

● The five-steps (communities must renew annually):

○ Obtain a wildfire risk assessment.

○ Form a board or committee, and create an action plan.

○ Conduct a “Firewise Day” event.

○ Invest a minimum of $2 per capita in local Firewise actions.

○ Submit an application to your state Firewise Liaison.


What is Firewise?

The Firewise USA Program Approval Process

● Work is done at the local level

● New applications are submitted to the state for review and approval

● State approved applications are forward to NFPA for final approval

and onboarding


Moving the Process Online with Drupal 8


Firewise Online

The original Firewise Program application was a PDF document, all data filled in and entered into a database by hand


Firewise Online

The new Firewise Program app has been moved online, built in Drupal 8

We were open to any technology and proposals. Our priorities were cost effectiveness, product flexibility, and the developer’s ability to be UX focused and keep our target audiences in mind.

Deciding on Drupal


Deciding on Drupal

Firewise had a few hurdles for this project:

● No in-house developers or IT

Drupal support

● We were moving away from

existing contracts

● Convincing Leadership

(NFPA had never used

Drupal)


Deciding on Drupal

Going from an idea to an RFP

● Re-evaluated the program and created a Firewise life cycle.

● Research and outreach with key stakeholders.

● Developed a Functional Requirements Document (FRD) which lead to

the RFP.

● Long process: Nearly two years from starting Firewise 2.0 to selecting

a developer.


Deciding on Drupal

Drupal 8 is a perfect fit for Firewise

● Multiple, complex user roles with custom permissions (D8 Core).

● Siloed access based on role in a state and/or community (Groups).

● Multi-step application process with nested data (Form API and

Paragraphs).

● Reliable uptime, even during deployments (CMI).


Why is Drupal a good fit for Nonprofits?

● Out of the box responsiveness- Everything is Drupal 8 supports

responsive design

● Flexibility- modules, integrations, customizations

● Security- large security team, constant monitoring

● Multilingual Capabilities- Quickly translate sites into any language.

Drupal 8 is multilingual throughout.

Drupal 8 for Nonprofits


Designing Firewise 2.0


Discovery Phase

Elevated Third’s in-depth discovery phase begins with a two-day discovery meeting that includes the entire Elevated Third project team and all client stakeholders.

● In this meeting, we cover everything from low-level requirements

and task priority, to big ideas such as how to improve the Firewise

application process from a UX and development standpoint


Initial UX

The Elevated Third team combined all of the notes from discovery and spent an afternoon creating an affinity diagram to help reveal patterns in the application process.


Personas

You can't write user stories if you don't know who your users are.

During discovery, we identified three main user personas that represented five different Drupal roles.

Pat, The State Liaison

Jim, The Property Manager

Dave, The Organizer


Site Architecture and Estimation

● Content types, entities, users and roles started to take shape based on wires and flows.

● Implementation estimate, based on user stories, wires and flows.


This final Discovery deliverable defines the project vision.

It combines all deliverables in one place and includes a full feature list and build estimate.

The Blueprint


Implementation


An Agile Mentality

Continuing a collaborative process

● The team chose to continue the collaborative process from discovery

that aided them well in understanding the project scope and

uncovering strong solutions.

● Dev and design worked together in sprints to quickly produce

working features.


Sprint Planning

Initial sprint planning involved the whole team, product owner included, to determine the plan and priorities for the duration of implementation.


Sprint Structure

An incremental development process

● The project was broken out into Two week sprints.

● Included three, 15-minute standups each week, one of which was a

progress review.

● Progress and new features were demoed live with the product owner

at the end of each sprint.


Implementation Must-Haves

The things that are essential to a successful implementation process are:

● Focused, organized meetings● Clear, honest communication● The right ratio of tools and docs to shared understanding.● An eye for the details without losing site of the big picture.


Drupal 8 Workflow


Drupal 8 Workflow

● Simplified thanks to tools available to Drupal 8.

● Configuration managed through CMI, along with the Config Read-Only module.

● Composer used to manage dependencies and packages.

Screenshot


QA & Functional Testing


QA & Functional Testing

● All testers need to work from the same test plan.

● Bugs should be reported and managed the same way across all teams.

● Releasing fixes on schedule in a dedicated testing environment is key to reducing confusion.


Launch.


Phased Rollout

This may not work for every scenario, but we had the luxury of this being a brand new site. Our rollout included:

● A closed, beta style launch.● Lots of testing and review in the production environment before the

new system was rolled out to the general public.● Some features needed to be in production to be fully tested (SSO).


Training & Documentation


Admin Training

Product owner and Firewise team learned the system gradually through sprint reviews, with one larger training after the end of the final development sprint.


PDF Manuals

PDF training documents targeted at specific user roles were produced and distributed. Documents were created with both new and current users in mind.


Video Tutorials

To make the app as easy to use as possible, we developed screencasts providing detailed walkthroughs of key user flows and made these videos publicly available.


Firewise

We helped Firewise transform a cumbersome paper process into a powerful digital workflow that was designed to simplify processes for internal admins and customers alike.


Lessons Learned


Track Everything

All projects float on a sea of uncertainty.

Try to limit that uncertainty by identifying all assumptions as early as you can.


Plan for Contingencies

Things will come up that you just didn't plan for.

Have a plan for unexpected contingencies.


Track Everything

Manage team expectations by tracking everything.

Meticulous documentation helps keep your team on the same page and avoid things like scope creep.


Straight Talk

Clear communication and honesty will always benefit the project.

Even when the news hurts a little, don't pull punches. Dig in and find a solution as a team.


Environment Parity

Push to make your dev, stage and production environments as similar as possible. Software stack is important, but don't forget things like users, SSL certificates, migration data and files.


Staying on Budget is a Team Effort

Project budget and burn rate should be communicated frequently to everyone involved with the project

This awareness of time allocation helps narrow the possible solutions.


Thank You!

Technology

How NFPA Is Bringing Paper Processes Online With Drupal 8