When people first learn about Drupal, their initiation often focuses on nodes, blocks, Views, and how to create SEO-friendly URLs. These concepts are important, but they often fail to answer the most essential question: How hard is this task to do? Product owners, project and client managers, and business-side team members all need to conceptualize difficulty in order to understand how long the work will take and how much it will cost. Those questions are at the heart of collaborative planning and the collaborating is easier when everyone envisions Drupal as a framework and not just a CMS.

Conceptualizing Drupal as a Framework does not require years of programming experience; it simply requires understanding what a hook is and why hooks are the source of Drupal's power. Nodes and blocks and Views work because the necessary hooks are already written. New functionality requires new (or edited) hooks.

This session will be a deeper dive into an article published in the Linux Journal: Drupal Special Edition. Non-developers will leave with better tools and concepts for planning functionality with programmers. And an essential understanding of what Drupal really is.