Article

Drupal websites are not just applications, they are complex applications. They encompass design, functionality, and content, and they’re updated at a furious pace.
In order to master the process for iteration, developers need a mental model for the interplay of code, content, and configuration.

These comprise the modern website’s Holy Trinity.

The Minimum Viable Workflow

Safely making frequent changes to a running website requires some basic capabilities, which I call the Minimum Viable Workflow. In a perfect world, all of these workflow steps are scripted or completely automated, leading to lower friction for developers, and improved reliability via reduced human error.

Three Environments

Being able to iterate requires a minimum of three separate operational instances of the web site; three environments. This is necessary to separate development work from quality assurance and approval, and from the actual live or “production” environment for the site. For safety, these environments must be isolated from one another. Development work can have unpredictable side-effects and cannot be allowed to disrupt the production environment. Likewise, quality assurance and testing should not block development.

These environments must also be as close to identical as possible. Unexpected surprises after deployments and the phrase “it worked on my machine” are the most frequent slayers of team agility and release cadence.

Minimum Workflow Steps

In the MVW (Minimum Viable Workflow), a developer does her work in the Development Environment. While she is active, that environment is unstable; it may appear broken or incomplete to an outside observer.

Code changes are committed to version control, creating a reliable, restorable record of progress. When work is ready for a stakeholder (e.g., project manager, site owner, QA team) to review and approve their work, they will deploy it into the Test Environment.