Mass.gov: Custom training on site development, security, and testing
To prepare Mass.gov to deliver exceptional services to support the ground-breaking new Drupal 8 site, Isovera worked with the Mass.gov team — a mix of senior level front-end and back-end developers and designers with varying degrees of Drupal and php knowledge- to augment their Drupal knowledge. Isovera did this by breaking up team training into two parts: general training with a standard curriculum (this was to be conducted as the Mass.gov site was being built by Drupal partner Palantir), and an additional custom training to be conducted after the site was developed and Palantir developers had handed off the site to Mass.gov.
General Training
To enable the Mass.gov team to best leverage their Drupal 8 site, Isovera put together a number of courses to create an “all-in-one” curriculum, and segmented that curriculum into two one-week pieces. These courses equipped the Mass.gov team with skills from developing secure modules and themes, to using Git version control, and adhering to convention and coding standards as well as security best practices when working in Drupal. By experiencing hands-on workflows and training, the Mass.gov was able to cultivate their cross-communication skills, and create a shared understanding of the big picture of developing and maintaining a website.
Custom Training
To help the Mass.gov team “take over” the development of their site from development partner Palantir, Isovera created custom training to target issues and questions concerning the Mass.gov site functions and capabilities. This training was conducted through post-training tutoring sessions, and was held remotely with small groups. The sessions provided instructional feedback and general insights to help the Mass.gov team with specific questions and issues regarding their site interaction. They walked away from the sessions with an awareness of the necessity for good code when it came to matters such as technical debt, regressions, and site security.
The Big Picture
Overall, Isovera helped the Mass.gov design and development team as they made the transition to a best-in-class, Drupal 8 website. Isovera provided Mass.gov with both general course curriculum and hands-on training, as well as custom training tailored to the dynamic needs and abilities of the team. By doing this, Isovera was able to address the need for broad knowledge of working with and leveraging a Drupal site, as well as the need for custom knowledge unique to the Mass.gov site. This allowed for the Mass.gov team to bring their skills up to standards of working with Drupal sites, as well as to tailor their knowledge and skills to the specific needs of their own site, equipping them to “support technical support requests that involve complex accessibility issues”, and to “be prepared to provide best support when tech support requests came into IT area”.
This article was originally posted on our Isovera Projects page.
