Create case study guidelines

As a whole, the guidelines seem to make good sense, including the distinction between what goes to the forum and what should be created as a case study.

A few minor comments:

1. Is the second bullet referencing some information off page, or is something missing?
2. The numbered bullets 12 and 13 seem to be unfinished. Maybe that is deliberate.
3. I would include a short presentation of the intentions, goals and the concept of outstanding in the context of the cases, and have that on the same page as the guidelines. Even if it is repeated off-page somewhere - even linked - people won't read that information and we reduce some errors by including the cliff notes with the guidelines.

And I'll go look in the drawers for projects that fullfil the requirements :-)

I created Case Study guidelines page at http://drupal.org/node/1588136
Took Lisa's proposed guidelines as basis but changed them a bit to reflect Featured/Community case studies.

What needs to be done:
- Choose best case studies and add them as examples
- Seek volunteers to be "community-recommended writers" and add info on how to contact them to the page
- Create a page at Site maintainers guide on when and how to promote case study to Featured
- Maybe introduce some formal title or tag for issues requesting promotion to track them easier?

added in a lot of content from showcase forum guidelines; http://drupal.org/node/1496954

I've gone through and tweaked these a bit; they still need another round for grammar/spelling/style.

I edited the page a bit more today, added guidelines for all fields and screenshot guidelines.

What started as a tinkering-at-the-edges edit quickly turned into a full-blown offline edit and re-org in Jarte.

Wondering how best to present this I decided to drop it into a WP, apply formatting similar to that found on Drupal.org and PDF it up.

I know there have been a number of edits and reviews of the current guidelines already, so I hope I don't offend anybody by offering this revision. In fact, very little of this is my own work, I've simply taken what was already there and re-jigged it. And, of course, it needs fresh eyes to pick up any typos and capitalization I missed, as well as process errors in the parts I contributed.

It will likely need further work, but if you think it's not worth the wholesale replacement of the live guidelines I will not be offended :) I've learned and assimilated a great deal through this exercise, which included a very slow crawl through the Drupal.org content guidelines. Anybody seen my Sunday?

I note that these requirements assume Drupal-as-a-website paradigm, and potentially exclude projects that push the envelope. Given that we're moving quickly away from websites towards web/cloud-apps, and that some shops are strictly back-end development shops, I wonder if it would be fruitful to make the "custom theme" requirement a soft requirement. For example, I could see a very interesting case study using Drupal w Services where the custom theme requirement would be rather off-topic.

Thoughts?

Tezza, that was really a lot of work! Thanks for the detailed review. I went over and updated the guidelines http://drupal.org/node/1588136 incorporating a lot of your feedback, however not everything since I'd like them to be as short as possible (and they are already quite long) and more structured. Particularly I think such a detailed information on various issue statuses is a bit too much. Take a look if you have any more comments/suggestions and let's discuss on IRC.

I've added maximum 5 sectors requirement. Not sure what the number should be, but some case studies do choose too many.

Also maybe we should elaborate on the purpose of "Brief overview" field. I noticed often people describe there a company for which they've built a site, company's history, what does it do etc. Do we want this or?

laura_s, first line of the guidelines mentions "innovative website or application" now. I think we should leave custom theme requirement but decide on a case by case basis. For specific cases we could close eyes on the theme.

The Guidelines are looking well structured now, tvn. Good job. You're right about keeping them as short as possible. All the bases seem to be covered and they're less daunting than my full proposal, and perhaps less formal too, which is a good thing :)

Interesting point about 'Brief Overview'. It's quite an unspecific heading and likely causes a head scratch or two when an author sees also 'Why Drupal was chosen' and 'Describe the project'. I like the way it's been used though. Some background on the client, or even the design house/developer, is no bad thing and makes for a more interesting read. Also, it butts right up against the website/project URL so I do expect to read something about the client when I hit that section.

I imagine authors look at a featured case study or two and take their lead from there! So a bit more guidance on what we'd like to see in 'Brief Overview' would seem appropriate.

EDIT: Maybe we should suggest a max length for the Case Study 'Project name' too.

I think it would be helpful to emphasize that case studies should be success stories that describe how Drupal was used to solve a particular business problem or set of business problems. As written, I'm concerned that these guidelines encourage people to provide technical write-ups that will have little relevance to those outside the Drupal community, which should be one of the target audiences for Drupal.org case studies.

I'd encourage adding a couple items to these guidelines, e.g., "What business problems was this project trying to solve?" and at the end, "What results were achieved (e.g., increased traffic, better performance, etc.) as a result of using Drupal for this project?"

I just did a quick proofread of the case study guidelines.

I like that Brief Overview often contains a bit of background about the design house/developer doing the project and about the client. I agree that it helps put the project in context. Should we add something about this in the Case Study guidelines, encouraging people to add this info?

I agree with gdemet that it's very useful when the case studies show how Drupal helped to solve specific business problems. Would the items you suggest ("What business problems was this project trying to solve?" and "What results were achieved...?") be additional items added to the Case Study form, or just questions within the Case Study guidelines for case study writers to consider when filling out the form?

Maybe we should suggest a max length for the Case Study 'Project name' too.

We do keep repeating this while reviewing case studies, maybe indeed makes sense to add this. What would you suggest as a max length?

Let's not add more fields to the case study form, but update the guidelines to incorporate gdemet's suggestions and updates to Brief overview field.

How about something like this:

Brief overview: Provide an overview of the project, its background, the company behind the project. What business problems was this project trying to solve?

Describe the project: Discuss the project's goals and requirements, timeline and major milestones.
What project management approach you used? What was the outcome of the project? What results were achieved (e.g., increased traffic, better performance, etc.) as a result of using Drupal for this project?

Hi tvn

Here are my suggestions, for consideration:

Brief overview: Use this section to provide a brief outline of the business case and the background to the project. You may also wish to say something about the client. Information about the developer may be added to the Project team section below.

Obviously, I'm forcing the developer information ('company behind the project'?) out of this section.
I'm thinking the 'business problem' details might be better placed in Describe the project, perhaps?

Re: Project name - currently, around 40 characters (inc. spaces) is a good fit for a single line title on both the d.o homepage and the Featured slideshow - if a one-line title is a target. On the other hand, for case studies that do not aspire to Featured, perhaps that restriction is not so important.

I wonder if we might provide links to good examples of specific sections. For instance, if a case study has a very good Brief overview, should we provide a link just below the section description, labeled 'Best Practice:', or 'A good example:'? I don't wish to bloat the Guidelines, but just a thought.

EDIT:
Should we add something about 'Hidden' status?
Should we add something to the effect that case study writers could help authors bring a case study up to Community standard or to Featured standard? I would hope that authors would at least be able to make Community standard under their own power, or with minimal assistance (even if current evidence suggests that's not the case - hence the 'Hidden' status). After all, time is valuable and I would hope that any significant input from a community writer would be rewarded with a Featured case study.

Further EDIT:
There's nothing in the guidelines about posting case studies in English.

Updated the guidelines a bit.

If the bit that states 'the case study will be removed from the section' refers to the Hidden status then I think the Guidelines are pretty much complete.

There may be a few other tweaks to be made but I'm of the opinion that this issue has fully served its purpose. Additional changes could be agreed on IRC allowing this issue to be closed(fixed).

Yes, that refers to the Hidden status. I guess we can set this issue to "fixed" finally.